SUGGESTIONS FOR ITS IMPROVEMENT. 
247 
proper place ; and whoever takes such a course as tends only to 
his own personal aggrandisement or caprice at the expense of the 
body, is not only a false member, but will find that the mischief 
which he for the time produces will recoil with double virulence 
upon himself. 
I trust that the facts which I have here stated will not be con- 
strued into an attempt to detract from the position, or into under- 
valuing the learning and science of the human medical practitioners, 
for no one can be more ready to bear testimony to them than my- 
self. I do not attempt to deny that my object is to take from them 
that which they have for so many years unfairly usurped, viz. the 
claim of being the whole and sole possessors of comparative me- 
dical lore : not only do they act upon thi$ assumption, by never 
alluding to the researches of any veterinarian, but, still farther to 
mark the utter contempt in which they hold us, we are not consi- 
dered fit, as veterinary surgeons , to mix with them : they declare 
that we are not fit to become members of their societies, in which 
we might meet and mutually exchange the results of practical ob- 
servation. The professional chairs of comparative anatomy and 
physiology, w'hich by right ought to be ours, are usurped by 
them : in fact, the body which has been in so great a measure 
made, or, at all events, sent into the world under the sanction of 
the names of human medical practitioners of high note, has by 
its producers been considered to be so worthless a production 
as to be on all and every occasion treated not only with con- 
tumely, but positively as a non-entity *. But how have we met 
our condemnators 1 By making them our Teachers, our Examin- 
ers, our patterns for imitation, our idols; by courting them to be- 
come the patrons of our art and of our societies ; in fact, by every 
servility. 
I therefore must be pardoned, under these circumstances, if I 
speak strongly ; for desperate diseases call for desperate remedies. 
I have not advanced any thing but what is strictly true, and which 
probably arises out of existing things. I do not mean to assert 
that the veterinary profession is what it ought to be : but even here 
again we may cast back a deep shadow of reproach on the sister 
profession ; for it was in the power of that body, at the commence- 
ment, and throughout the career of the late Professor Coleman, to 
* Who, having once heard the late Professor Coleman, must not recollect 
the particular pains which that gentleman took to point out the great benefit 
— to say nothing of the honour — that his pupils derived from being allowed 
to attend lectures on human medicine, and how much their professional 
knowledge was advanced thereby ? In very truth, giving the Lecturers and 
Medical Examiners the credit of having very much to do in making veterinary 
surgeons. 
