VETERINARY EDUCATION IN FRANCE. 
641 
parties ; and, after an apprenticeship of two years, that he be 
empowered to give a certificate of expert mareschal, subject to 
the counter-signature of the prefect, or sub-prefect, or mayor, &c. : 
there is no order that the qualification of the veterinarian shall be 
tested, or is there any prescribed limit set to this authority. It is 
merely ordered that he shall keep a forge. 
As might readily have been foreseen, a privilege evidently so 
extravagant was not long before it became the source of scandalous 
abuses. Neither checked nor arrested by any surveillance , 
numbers of veterinarians, with and even without forges, made it 
an affair of speculation to grant certificates of expert mareschal, 
granting them with the more facility and less observance of the 
term of apprenticeship, according as those who asked for them were 
able to pay for them. And in this manner has a great number of 
ignorant empirics succeeded to a certain point in establishing their 
position, and more effectually imposing upon the farmers. 
In fact, with an immense majority of farmers, the qualification 
of “ expert mareschal ,” which, before the creation of veterinary 
schools served to designate men who undertook the medical 
treatment of animals, has to the present day the same signification. 
So true is this, that in most of the country places, and in some 
towns, people hardly know what a veterinarian means ; or know 
him who bears such a title in no other respect than that of expert 
mareschal. Indeed, under no other appellation are veterinarians 
found noticed in an act of parliament thirty years posterior in date 
to the foundation of veterinary colleges. 
* * " * * * 
Few words will suffice to demonstrate the evil of such a state 
of things. 
Animal medicine, it will be imagined, in order to be practised 
to advantage, demands of those professing it an amount of know- 
ledge not to be obtained but through long and arduous study. 
Therefore it follows that, practised by men possessing no such spe- 
cial knowledge, and even for the most part unpossessed of any 
science at all, not only is it deprived of any real advantage to 
farmers, but cannot have other results than the compromise of the 
preservation and life of their cattle. In fact, experience every 
day shews that it is better to suffer a disease to take its own 
course, than to combat it by treatment so irrational, violent, and 
incendiary, as the generality of quacks employ. 
Recueil de Medecine Vettrinaire, April 1848. 
