584 VETERINARY MEDICINE IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE. 
to obtain at a short notice, or at any notice, and without which 
the animal will assuredly perish. He must have a plant gathered 
on St. John’s day before the rising of the sun — or one plucked on 
St. Judy’s day during the performance of mass — or a third on the 
day of Pentecost. Then they must be infused in the sacred water 
on the evening of the Passover ; but as it is not possible to pro- 
cure these simples gathered on the days indicated, he is left 
without means to perform the cure, and he declines it, notwith- 
standing every entreaty ; consoling himself with the reflection, 
that it does not depend upon him whether the cure takes place 
or not, and the owner of the animal has not the slightest doubt of 
the virtue of the remedy, if it had been possible to procure the 
materials. 
One of them, named Vital, being consulted with regard to an 
ox that had been ill some time, and, no doubt, was very seriously 
so, ordered, without seeing the animal, a drink which most cer- 
tainly could not do him any harm, but as certainly could not 
cure, although the impostor had positively assured him that it 
would. It consisted of a decoction of nine grains of juniper in 
a pint of the blessed water of the feast of Pentecost, to be taken 
on three consecutive days, at the expiration of which time the 
beast would be radically cured. 
I met the owner of the ox as he returned. He stopped me to 
tell me of the promised cure of his beast, in which he placed so 
much faith, that it would have been impossible to persuade him 
that he had been duped. It is true, that the juggler had promised 
him that, every morning at the appointed hour for adminis- 
tering the drink, he would offer up a certain prayer that would 
very much increase its efficacy. The animal died in the due 
course of the disease. 
The same impostor, in a case of laborious parturition in a cow, 
took up his residence at the house of the owner during two days. 
He advised the owner to give, as infallible, the decoction of’ a 
plant which he brought with him, and which proved to be nothing 
but pimpernel ; and when, afterwards, the cow laboured under 
complete prostration of strength, he ordered a bleeding from the 
coccygeal arteries. 
Many other accounts are given of the strange superstitions 
and trickeries that prevail, but we retain them for some other 
idle moment. 
The Committee appointed by the United Veterinary Surgeons’ Club with 
sorrow announce, that, as the number of adherents to the proposed Veterinary 
Benevolent Society amounts to only sixty-one, its formation, for the present, 
will not be entered upon. 
j it is with much regret that we insert this notice. We trust that we shall 
have better news to communicate, when, a little while hence, our other 
affairs are arranged. This is a noble cause, and must not be abandoned.] 
