106 
THE VETERINARY ART IN INDIA. 
in the diseases of the skin they positively aggravate and render 
them fatal ; yet they are all complaints, void of danger, and very 
speedily yield to a proper treatment. I hope it will not be 
thought that I make the remotest insinuation in compliment to 
my having discovered the fallacy of these people, and the true 
mode of success, as there can be no difficulty in detecting the 
errors of a salistry. The only point I have in view is the neces- 
sity of introducing a more successful mode of medical treat- 
liient for the horse, and the gratification to my feelings from the 
reflection of having endeavoured to diminish the sufferings of so 
useful an animal. 
The knowledge of the operations of medicine on the horse is 
likewise advanced, and proves very different from that in the 
human subject. Opium does not produce sleep ; tartar emetic, 
given in doses of four ounces, produces no visible immediate effect ; 
sugar of lead and hellebore given in extensive doses have neither 
increased nor decreased the action of the system ; salts, jalap, and 
rhubarb, seldom purge ; sulphate of copper and verdigris, which 
act so violently when given in small doses to the human subject, 
prove but simple tonics or astringents in very extensive doses to 
the horse. 
Yet I will acknowledge, with all these advantages, we are yet 
very much in the dark as to the principles of our practice. This 
may, perhaps, in some measure be the effects of the various and 
opposing systems of physic that have continually affected the medi- 
cal world, by which the student’s opinions must be for ever wa- 
vering, and never fixed. In the midst of such perplexed, obscure, 
and elaborate theories which have so long pervaded the study of 
physic, there at length appears one founded on that beauty and 
simplicity which is ever attendant on the operations of nature. 
The medical student has been always forced into the arbitrary 
opinions which he received from the public chairs, nor was he 
ever permitted to appeal to his reason : if any part appeared ob- 
scure, his inquiries were answered by a quotation from the favour- 
ite character of tiie day — a quotation conveying a mere assertion 
without adducing a proof. 
The new system alluded to is the production of the late cele- 
brated Dr. Brown, a man educated with all the prejudices of the 
fabricated doctrine of Cullen, but whose independent genius, ex- 
pelling the mystic clouds of error which surrounded his youth, 
yielded only to the dictates of his unbiassed reason. He fol- 
lowed the tracts of Nature, where, minutely observing her various 
operations in the animal world, he erected thaUsystem which has 
reason for its basis and truth for its object. 
This system he published before the death of the celebrated 
