14 
ON CATTLE PRACTICE. 
vered by Mr. Ferguson, in Dublin, on the prevailing epizootic, 
or that of Mr. Stewart (late of Glasgow), delivered in the Hall of 
Science, at Sydney, New South Wales, before a mixed audience, 
were at all calculated to lessen either of those gentlemen in the 
estimation of their hearers or their employers ? On the contrary, 
would not the thorough acquaintance displayed by Mr. Fergu- 
son on the prevailing disease tend to exalt him in the estimation 
of owners of cattle ? 
By what rule of reasoning, then, is the scientific discussion of 
any matter regularly brought before the Veterinary Medical As- 
sociation at all likely to prejudice the general weal of the vete- 
rinary surgeon with the community ? Did the publication of 
Dr. Elliotson’s admirable clinical lectures, as delivered to the 
students in the Theatre of St. Thomas’s Hospital, and published 
in that highly useful and equally popular periodical, the Lancet, 
have a tendency to diminish the learned doctor’s practice? Oh, 
no ! — he admitted to his class, that, since the medical press had 
published to the world his clinical observations, his practice in 
the course of two years increased in a quadruple ratio. Is it, 
therefore, likely that our practice would diminish by an exten- 
sion, or an admission at least, of the public to the privilege of read- 
ing the debates of the Association through its original channel ? 
I rejoice to find that the trustees of the College have, at length, 
appointed a teacher of cattle pathology. The importance of it 
must be best known to those who were sent out from the College 
some ten years since, “ with all their blushing honours thick 
upon them,” into an agricultural district, where one-half of the 
practice of a veterinary surgeon consisted in an attendance upon 
neat cattle and sheep. Many of those young men, at the time 
referred to, had not even served an apprenticeship with a veteri- 
nary surgeon ; and many who had, and even their preceptors in 
large towns and cities, scarcely ever saw or were ever called to at- 
tend the diseases incident to this class of patients. Such I can 
aver was the case with myself, and my instructor was the present 
Alderman Steere, of Southampton. What a sorry position some 
of the practitioners cut, when called on, in their new vocation, 
to attend some difficult case of parturition in the cow or sheep ! 
How frequently did they display a want of tact and judgment 
in affairs of this description, which subjected them to much 
mortification ! 
In a visit which I made to London, and to the Royal Agricul- • 
tural Society, at Bristol, I had an opportunity of seeing a case 
in point. A veterinary surgeon who passed in 1832, and who 
had a tolerable horse practice, but, I believe, little among cattle, 
went to see a cow that had calved on the previous day. The 
