28 
ON PROTECTIVE VETERINARY SOCIETIES AND 
ASSOCIATIONS — THE CHARTER — 
THE COUNCIL, &c. 
By Trios. Mayer, senior , M.R.C.V.S. 
To the Editors. 
Messrs. Editors, — In The Veterinarian of last September I 
observed a plan for the establishment of a Protective Veterinary 
Society, by Mr. J. Anderson, of Leicester, for the purpose of institut- 
ing legal proceedings against irregular practitioners, who too often 
groundlessly, if not maliciously, assail the professional characters 
of the regularly educated veterinary surgeon. 
If such a society could be organised with any certain prospect of 
securing the object intended, with ultimate benefit and advantage 
to the parties aggrieved, I, for one, should hail its establishment with 
pleasure. 
But I feel assured no such benefits would accrue to the profes- 
sion ; for no sooner would an action be commenced against the 
offending parties, than the public sympathies would be enlisted on 
the charlatan’s side as being the weakest party, and, consequently, 
considered by them as the aggrieved and oppressed party ; there- 
fore, the verdict of juries in such cases would oftener go against the 
veterinary surgeon than for him ; and even allowing that you ob- 
tained a favourable verdict, the really aggrieved party who brought 
the action would damn himself in his own neighbourhood, and pro- 
portionably advance the fortunes of the quack. 
In asserting what I have, the data are taken from facts gleaned 
from prosecutions that have been conducted by the Apothecaries’ 
Company against irregular practitioners in the medical profession. 
It was seldom they ever obtained a verdict in their favour, and if 
they did, it was attended by no advantage to the injured party. 
I recollect a case in point in this district, where a young man was 
practising as an unqualified practitioner. An action was com- 
menced against him ; and what was the result I He being a steady, 
industrious young fellow, it brought him prominently before the 
public, and consequently made him generally known. It enlisted 
the sympathies of the neighbourhood where he dwelt ; it compelled 
him to carry on his practice under his assistant’s name till he had 
regularly qualified himself by going up to London; and it thereby 
made his fortune in the same proportion as it depressed his oppo- 
nent’s, the latter (although a clever scientific man) dying in com- 
parative poverty. 
Such would be the result, under similar circumstances, to the 
