486 
CORRESPONDENCE WITH 
run, every thing finds its proper level. The possessors of these 
books, although sometimes learning wisdom a little too slowly, 
yet find at last that the professional man alone is able to suit his 
treatment to the real state of the patient. Our profession is as 
yet in its infancy, and, therefore, jealous of every rival : but me- 
dical men, who have passed through the same course and met 
with the same discouragements, have at length learned to view 
the matter in its proper light. The periodical press has com- 
pletely lost its terror with them ; nay, they would now view with 
indignation every possible attempt to prevent the fullest and freest 
discussion of all that has relation to the public health ; and 
this will gradually be the case with our humbler profession. The 
number of those who build their faith on recipes, compounded, 
few know how, and producing effects which a still smaller num- 
ber know how to estimate or describe, is rapidly decreasing, and 
the profession of veterinary medicine is daily assimilating itself 
to that of the human being. He, indeed, is becoming more 
highly and justly estimated whose practice is most scientific; 
while the labourer in the dark is left to the too frequent and fatal 
consequences of his blundering ignorance. Such was the pro- 
gress of human medicine, and such will be that of the veterinary 
art. 
There have been, but their numbers have gradually de- 
creased, those who were jealous of the slightest interference of 
the scientific or medical man. It was a consciousness of their 
own ignorance which taught them this ; but when they were 
competent to the task, and could meet their employers without 
fear — when practitioners were pursuing that course in the treat- 
ment of disease which common sense as well as scientific re- 
quirements dictated, he speedily found in the qualified veterinary 
surgeon the man he wanted : they understood each other’s object 
and the mode of effecting it — the reputation of the one and the 
confidence of the other increased, and they became friends and 
associates ; and the result of this association was advantageous to 
both. 
Such was the connexion which was slowly but evidently form- 
ing between the owner of horses and cattle and the professional 
man whom he employed. It was but another form for the respect 
