G94 
THE VETERINARY 
the knowledge and the practice of the veterinary student must 
be founded on facts alone. The diseases of the biped and the 
quadruped, and also of the different quadrupeds, were essen- 
tially different. It was impossible to predicate what would be 
the symptoms, or what should be the treatment, of any disease 
in one animal, from what we know of the same disease in another 
animal ; and comparative anatomy was too apt to lead on to 
comparative physiology and comparative pathology. So utterly, 
indeed, were the diseases of different animals at variance, that 
marsh miasmata, the most fatal of all poisons to the human 
body, had no effect on cattle and sheep ; and the seasons which, 
so far as the effects of a marshy country were concerned, were 
most destructive to the human being, were those in which health 
reigned almost uninterrupted among sheep and cattle. They 
agreed only in one point, — they were all subject to the destructive 
influence of that animal poison which is generated by every 
living creature. 
The difference between the medical pupil and the son of the 
farrier and the groom was also drawn in broader, harsher lines 
than we have witnessed on any former occasion. Little of the 
knowledge which the medical student brought with him could 
by possibility be useful to him ; for the diseases of the horse 
were few, and the remedies were few : but there was every thing 
new, and every thing disagreeable to him, as regarded the ma- 
nagement and the treatment of the horse. It might take him a 
long time — six or seven months — to recognize the existence of 
spavin, or to pick up a horse’s hind foot, or to prepare him for 
casting ; and in eight or nine cases out of ten, he would be wrong 
with regard to the lame leg. To the farrier’s son, on the con- 
trary, his study and his employment at the college was one con- 
tinued course of pleasure ; for he had been taught to perform all 
these operations, and to recognize the prevalent diseases, and it 
was now a pleasure to him to listen to the explanation of them. 
Then, after advising his class to make themselves acquainted 
with chemistry, so far at least as the medicinal agents which 
they employed were concerned ; and to frequent the knacker’s 
yard and compare the lesions which were found after death with 
the symptoms that had existed during life, he proceeded in 
nearly the following words : “ The subject which I have next to 
touch upon is one exceedingly painful to me. I have always 
been accustomed to recommend to my class diligent attendance 
on the meetings of the London Veterinary Medical Society. It 
was a society over which I have had the honour of being patron 
for more than twenty years, and in the formation of which I had 
a great share. Every opinion and every fact connected with 
