PRACTICE OF VETERINARY MEDICINE. 
569 
usually allowed to any paper published in this Journal, that, for 
the present, I must forbear. I forbear also to enter upon the ques- 
tion of treatment, and also upon a number of interesting but minor 
topics in relation to these important diseases. It appears, accord- 
ing to the date at the head of “a rough outline” of a paper 
published in the Posthumous Extracts of John Field (a paper from 
which the reader will recollect I have quoted some portions into 
the present Contribution), that he wrote his fragmentary remarks 
in the year 1839, a period now of eleven years, or near upon it; 
and yet, strange to relate, not a single contribution giving even the 
most distant approach towards a complete view of the malady has 
appeared from that time to the present. The profession may flatter 
itself that it is advancing ; for my part, however, I see little or no 
advancement. Our labours for the last ten years have been little 
more than a repetition of what has gone before. Our books are 
things of shreds and patches; the system which is followed in the 
investigation of disease, in the treatment of disease, and in the re- 
porting of it, is altogether so crude and barbarous, that, for my 
part, I am thoroughly ashamed of the whole matter. The micro- 
scope is altogether unknown to the great body of the profession ; 
the examination of the urine in equine disease is a process which T 
may say the same of; nay, so little is known upon the matter, that 
I question if even the average specific gravity of this fluid could be 
told by one veterinarian in a hundred ; and yet it is a field which, 
if any one would cultivate, an abundant harvest would reward the 
labourer. Then, again, with respect to the anatomy of the horse, 
the ox, or the dog, so profoundly silent are the members of the pro- 
fession upon these heads, that such a branch of science might never 
have been taught them. 
I have heard much noise about a Charter , the clamour of which 
may be compared to the rattling of peas in a dried bladder, or to a 
storm in a horse-pond ; I have also read much which has been said 
about the “ spirit ” of this Charter. Until I am convinced that it 
is the best term which can be applied to it, verily the whole is 
spirit ; for no one, I am persuaded, has ever yet discovered the 
substance. It is not Charters that we want, but it is that quiet spirit 
of earnestness which characterises the true labourer in science. We 
require men who will labour for the advancement of the profession 
from the pure love of the thing ; we want, in fact, a few John 
Fields, or men who know what to work at — who know how to 
work , and who are possessed of the will to do it. 
