242 OBSERVATIONS ON THE VETERINARY ART, AND 
expressed will meet with cordial support from my brother practi- 
tioners, and such proposals made, and plans adopted, as may seem 
best suited to attain the desired end. 
Many attempts have been made by different individuals to place 
our art upon a more liberal footing ; but this one error seems to me 
to hold with all, that the appeal has been made to the good sense 
and kind feeling of those who held us under oppression : as 
well might the slave hope for redemption from the strength of his 
wrongs. 
It is only by our acting as a body that we stand the remotest 
chance of improving our rank ; and it is therefore with this hope 
that I address myself to the body of my profession at large. 
There are also other causes upon which much might be said; 
for the subject is so important, and there are so many illustrative 
facts to be adduced in support of each, that it would be impossible 
in a single essay to enter fully even into any one of them. I have, 
therefore, taken that which appears to me to be one of the most 
important, and have endeavoured to condense it as much as 
possible. The first thing to be done is to be FREE to act inde- 
pendently, which at present we are not ; for let us speak or act 
as we may, we are still, as a professional body, but a germ, 
growing, it is true, but requiring care and fostering to bring into 
maturity; therefore, all attempts at precedence and rule are not 
only futile, but positively fatal. He is the best, the first, who 
has the power and inclination to do the most towards bringing the 
young body into active strength. 
It is the general practice amongst human medical men (and by 
consequence the public generally) to place the veterinary practitioner 
at so low an ebb as to knowledge, that should any member of the 
latter art enter the lists as a physiologist or pathologist, he is set 
down as being most presumptuous, and whatever may be the trutli 
or value of his observations, they are scouted as totally unworthy 
of attention. 
Now, so far as the importance and usefulness of the human 
medical practitioner is considered, from the object of his care being 
man himself, it may serve as a good reason for the greater con- 
sideration paid and the higher rank in the social scale accorded to 
him ; but it cannot serve as a reason for treating with unfair and 
rude neglect those who have already proved, and might under a 
proper position be much more, valuable coadjutors in the investi- 
gation of the ills to which all flesh is heir; for in practical im- 
portance and usefulness the veterinarian is second only to the 
human practitioner ; and when we consider that the first, and for 
ages the only, knowledge of anatomical structure — the nature of 
