VETERINARY SCIENCE DEFENDED. 
505 
nations of the earth, yea, the trained beast of the field, and he 
shall shew thee — ask the refined, enlightened, and learned Eu- 
ropean, and he shall explain to thee the advantage — yea, to thee, 
who knowest not the solace and satisfaction of mind, the non- 
upbraidings of conscious inferiority derivable from a thorough 
knowledge of the profession thou pretendest to practise. But, to 
be lenient, where is the opportunity afforded the more enlightened 
and intelligent empiric, who blushes unseen in consequence of 
that natural genius of his not being acted upon or stimulated 
further than that of a school-boy’s education? 
But to be serious: I admit that there are a few untaught prac- 
titioners of good sound common sense, of diligent inquiry, mode- 
rate success; but who are these ? Let us trace them, and we shall 
find each who is worthy of the slightest notice to have either served 
an apprenticeship to a college-educated veterinary surgeon, or 
have himself been to college and spent a lew months and gained 
an outline of his profession, and learned a few cant technicalities; 
or, he may have tried it on still farther — he may have made an 
attempt to gain the honor of a people- gulling diploma, but, having 
failed, and his father not having been possessed of much wealth, 
he is compelled by pecuniary circumstances, or a sense of his 
own inferiority of capacity or want of education, to return home, 
to seek by nightly toil how a poor pittance is to be gained. Well, 
he commences practice as a qualified veterinarian ; but to repre- 
sent himself as possessing that which he has never gained — to as- 
sume a title which has never been bestowed upon him — to be con- 
scious that he is not what he professes to be, — that is gross deceit. 
Why forge an appellation which he does not merit? But strange, 
ay, passing strange, we are told that the bulk of society appre- 
ciates the non-educated, mal-educated, the quack, the empiric, 
more than the truly educated man, especially if he is a graduate 
of any college, or disgraced with a diploma. But why, I would 
ask, do not these men acknowledge themselves to the world as 
they are? Why call themselves veterinary surgeons when they 
are not so, and especially when, as they say, that title is disgusting 
to any man of common discernment. The choice is their own. 
They would then be honest men : but no; they are aware it would 
be bad policy to do so, and this fact at once confutes in toto 
the grossness and absurdity of their assertions. 
Whether the design of such publication be to deepen the dis- 
content of the discontented, or to increase the disposition which 
exists on the part of some to render more intense and morbid the 
jealousies which subsist between the employer and employed, 
and to render still more evil the eye ever eager to look for con- 
tentions and increase dissension or otherwise, I know not ; but 
vol. xv. 3 Y 
