PRESENT STATE OF THE VETERINARY PROFESSION. 663 
the world, on a higher eminence and in a brighter aspect than it 
has ever yet obtained. I assure you, I long to see the time when, 
instead of the Veterinarian and Co., it shall again be “ Left alone 
in its glory,” The Veterinarian, and with an implied N.B. — 
No connexion with any other work or party. 
I am late in the field with my opinions : but they are now fear- 
lessly and openly avowed ; and I should be unjust to you and to 
myselfif I did not thus publicly express them with regard to The 
Veterinarian and yourself as Editor. You will perceive that I 
am exceedingly anxious for the welfare of the profession in the 
opinions I have adopted. The Veterinary Medical Society, under 
proper regulations, is calculated to be of immense advantage to 
the profession, and I sincerely hope that its future proceedings 
will be conducted in a way to obtain this desirable end. 
A great deal has been said, and well said, as to the way in 
which our future communications to The Veterinarian ought 
to be made; and yet I cannot help intruding a word of advice on 
this part of the subject also. I have seen many remarks in 
which the educated veterinary surgeon, in the plenitude of his ac- 
quirements, is apt to congratulate himself, that, despite the unedu- 
cated quack or their own nostrums, the proprietors of horses and 
cattle cannot do without us. I have lived long enough to know, 
that in many cases this is correct enough ; but I have also lived 
long enough to know that we cannot live by these sort of cases 
alone. Our aim in our future correspondence with The V eteri- 
narian ought to be to endeavour to prove to the new profes- 
sional reader, that a high degree of science can be applied to 
every branch of our art ; and that what is considered often of 
little consequence — which every one has a right to attempt, and 
any one may do — is more important in the ultimate results than 
they are at all aware of at present. Let us prove to them that we 
have a reason founded upon principle for every operation we per- 
form, and for every class of medicines we give. I shall venture 
a short essay of this kind at the conclusion of this paper, in which 
I shall endeavour to shew that an instrument that has been 
in every man’s hands (which nearly every one who has ever kept 
ahorse considers himself qualified to use and able to judge of 
the necessity for its use) has been the destruction of a thousand 
fold more property than ever was saved to the community by the 
non-employment of the regularly educated professional man. Let 
us endeavour to rescue what is too thoughtlessly considered the 
less important part of professional practice from the hands of the 
quack, whether proprietor or not, and the other will follow as a 
matter of course. 
One word on that very disagreeable subject, the injury which 
