THE NECESSITY OF A REGISTRATION BILL. 
237 
reasons : — one being, that their “ elder brothers/’ the surgeons, had 
no such privilege granted them; the other, that the Home Secre- 
tary of that day — Sir James Graham — held that no such enact- 
ment was required by practitioners of the healing art, the public 
being able to judge for themselves between medical competence 
and incompetence, professional honesty and fraud; and that as sur- 
geons and veterinary surgeons were, or ought to be, men of superior 
skill and ability in their respective arts, they would be sure, in the 
long-run, to go a-head of any empirics or pretenders in medicine*. 
No doubt, Sir James’s head was full of liberal free-trade principles 
when he answered the Committee after this manner : free trade, 
however, well as it may work in commercial transactions, is — has, 
indeed, over and over again proved itself to be — in medicine, a 
most dangerous maxim. It was free trade in medicine, or, what is 
the same thing, free practice, that did the fatal mischief the other 
day with the almond water ; it was free practice that used to kill 
and ruin more horses in our cavalry and other large equine esta- 
blishments in one y r ear than now die in ten ; it was free practice 
that killed so many of our cattle at the time they had the murrain 
raging among them. These are the fruits — the natural fruits — 
of free trade in medicine! 
The public, it is said, will know how to discriminate between a 
scientific practitioner of medicine and a man of no skill or craft in 
what he equally professes. So they will ; but not until after the 
mischief is done. The judgment of the public in medical matters 
is necessarily governed by results. They possess no knowledge — 
they pretend to none — of medical practice itself ; but they know 
well enough by their own feelings whether “ the doctor” has 
“ cured” them or not; and are equally good judges of the benefit 
their sick or lame animals have derived from the aid of the veteri- 
nary surgeon or cowleech. Supposing the case of sickness or 
lameness, whatever it may be, to do well — and we know how 
many cases there be, so over-powering is the vis medicatrix naturce 
in animals, that, “ in spite of the doctor,” eventually do do well — • 
“ the doctor” is said to be a clever fellow, and the affair is at an 
end. Supposing, however, the case turns out differently from what 
* The replv given to the Veterinary Committee deputed to wait upon the 
Secretary. 
VOL.’ XX. K k 
