14 MR. percivall’s introductory lecture 
had it not been that the feet of the horses were well shod, and 
free from disease, how could they have acted as they did V 9 
Though, in the cure of disease, we possess some advantages 
over surgeons, there is a disadvantage in comparison with them, 
and a heavy one it is, under which we labour in veterinary prac¬ 
tice. If a surgeon attends a man for a bad compound fracture, 
and he recovers the limb sufficiently to enable his patient to walk 
about with a crutch, under all the circumstances of the case he 
obtains, and deservedly, great commendation: but if a veteri¬ 
nary surgeon, in a case of lameness (no matter from what cause, 
or how grievous a one), cannot restore his patient to soundness , he 
does little or nothing : not only not daring to ask for any praise, 
although probably he may richly deserve much ; but more likely 
incurring the censure of his employer because he has not done, 
what ?—why, worked impossibilities ! A man makes a very 
useful member of society with a wooden leg. But who would 
keep a horse with a wooden leg ? I know a cavalry officer of 
the British army who lost a limb, high up in the thigh, in the 
Peninsula, and who fought his way afterwards at Waterloo with 
a cork leg ! But how would he have fought if his horse, as well 
as himself, had had a cork leg ? 
Again, gentlemen, supposing a man to have a disease in his 
eye—a cataract we will say ; a disease for which the surgeon 
possesses no medicinal remedy, no more than ourselves. He is 
compelled to remove the lens (the diseased part) by operation, 
after which, though his patient is blind without optical aid, he 
enables him, by the use of spectacles, to recover very serviceable 
vision. But who would like to trust to a horse in spectacles ? 
Though the operation were practicable (which, by-the-by, it can 
hardly be said to be), yet would there be required such nicety in 
the adaptation of particular glasses to the sight, as well as in 
keeping them on, and clean and bright, that all this would 
prove an effectual barrier to their employment. Added to 
which, even suppose they could be worn with any effect, 
many horses would shy so with them, that they would prove far 
safer animals for use in a state of total blindness, than with such 
imperfect or dubious vision. 
Although, gentlemen, the preceding observations have been 
made chiefly in reference to the horse, yet I should not be doing 
my duty in this chair, were I not to impress upon your minds the 
almost equal claims other domestic, and, indeed, all animals 
have upon us. The faithful dog, who, on all occasions, attaches 
himself to his master, no less by his sagacity and fidelity than 
by his truly valuable qualifications; the patient sheep, doomed 
to die to supply us with food and clothing ; the ox, equally 
