236 
ON VETERIRARY JURISPRUDENCE. 
I cannot tell how many draughts I may have given to horses, 
but I am quite sure that I have lost three patients by them, and 
perhaps more, for a thing is soon forgotten while it is not compre- 
hended. So far as I can remember, the first case occurred in 
1837. The patient was a draught horse, who had taken colic, and 
I was called to treat him. I gave a drench composed of turpen- 
tine, tincture of opium, and oil. The horse resisted, and was 
twitched, a part of the operation I will not again perform. He 
coughed immediately. The colic was cured, but the breathing 
became very quick, and the horse died in two days, standing till 
he died. The lungs were deeply inflamed, and the bronchi full 
of froth. — The second case happened in the spring of 1837. It 
was a draught horse, attacked with colic. He got the same drench 
as the other, but it produced no relief, and had to be repeated in 
less than an hour. He coughed violently ; the colic disappeared, 
the breathing quickened, and in ten days the horse was dead. His 
lungs were full of abscesses and tubercles ; the pleura was in- 
tensely inflamed, and the chest half full of water. — The third case 
took place last May. The horse took colic very acutely, got a 
strong drench, and was almost immediately cured of the colic ; but 
his breathing became so quick, that I could not count it. The 
horse died in six hours. I could not get an opportunity of examin- 
ing the body. 
I have lost no cows, so far as I know, in this way ; but I have 
heard of three. Two of them died almost immediately. The 
other fell while getting the medicine, and died in about twenty 
minutes. I rather think that precaution is of more avail in the 
drenching of cows than of horses. In both, there is a right and a 
wrong way; but in horses we cannot always do it in the right, at 
least in the safe way. 
STRAY PAPERS ON VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE, 
INCLUDING MEDICAL ETHICS : 
ADDRESSED TO VETERINARY STUDENTS. 
By Thomas Walton Mayer, Esq. V.S . , Newcastle-under-Lyne. 
“ By proper reflection, we may amend what is erroneous and defective.” 
Gentlemen, — ACTUATED by feelings of no common character 
for the advancement of that science with which it is our mutual 
interest to become perfectly acquainted, and to which we have 
devoted ourselves ; and being also fully convinced that there is 
