632 PRESENT STATE OF THE VETERINARY PROFESSION. 
He could scarcely have done this with the doubtful success of 
gaining popularity among the agriculturists, although by it he 
annihilated the veterinarian’s practice in the epidemic that lately 
prevailed, and still prevails to such an alarming extent among 
neat cattle and other domesticated animals. 
Veterinary popularity should not, however, be gained by at- 
tempting to teach our employers the practical principles of our 
art ; for after that, nothing short of uniform success will satisfy 
their expectations or induce them duly to appreciate our scientific 
attainments. 
If Professor Sewell had duly considered the difficulties with 
which the veterinarian has to contend, and the strong bias that 
still exists among some agriculturists in favour of the old system 
of farriery, and also the limited extent of veterinary knowledge 
in the rural districts, he might have felt assured that we have 
difficulties enough to surmount before we can obtain any thing 
like a tolerable share of practice, without his writing a circular 
detailing a mode of treatment of the late epidemic, which, in the 
opinion of the agriculturist, would altogether supersede the ser- 
vices of the veterinary surgeon. 
He should likewise have considered whether the possession of 
such a list of recipes was not much more likely to intoxicate the 
brain than prove beneficial to the interest of the agriculturist, as 
it would lead many of the graziers to suppose that, as the circular 
came from Professor Sewell, it must necessarily contain all the 
requisite information for the treatment of the disease ; and as 
they were capable of giving th q prescribed medicine to their cattle, 
it would be useless for them to send for a veterinarian, for there 
could be no possibility of possessing more knowledge of the nature 
and treatment of the then prevailing epidemic than they had 
obtained ; for most of us had been educated at the Royal Vete- 
rinary College, where Mr. Sewell was the principal teacher, and 
who doubtless inculcated on the students the same principles 
as those which he now taught the agriculturists. 
Thus many farmers had their minds perverted by a foolish and 
cruel plausibility, which induced them to use, for the treat- 
ment of the epidemic, Professor Sewell’s recipes to a degree of 
infatuation, rather than confide in the skill of those practitioners 
whose professional acquirements and integrity had previously 
been acknowledged to be of essential service. 
This wholesale system of quackery, however, although written 
with a Professor’s pen, was at length discovered to be mere de- 
lusion ; and when once the public mind clearly perceives that it 
has been the creature of credulity, it turns in disgust from its 
delusive object, fully determined to gain wisdom from past expe- 
