IMPORTANCE OF THE VETERINARY ART. 
495 
4th. By studying the diseases of our domestic animals, we may 
rescue them from the hands of quacks, who add to the mischievous 
and unsuccessful efforts of nature the evils of absurd, painful, and 
destructive remedies. Under this head I shall introduce a pas¬ 
sage from the words of Mr. Vial, which exhibits those evils in 
the most expressive and affecting language. Speaking of the 
veterinary science, he says, “ At this moment all appears ob¬ 
scured or bewildered by the ill-placed confidence of the owners 
of cattle upon the blacksmith of the parish, upon illiterate and 
conceited grooms, stupid and listless shepherds, or upon a set 
of men infinitely more dangerous than all the rest, who, arro- 
oatino to themselves the style of doctors, ride about <rom town 
to town, distributing their nostrums, compounded of the le.use 
and vapid scraps of druggists’ shops, to the destruction of 
thousands, whose varied disorders they treat alike, neither con 
sultino- nature or art for the cause or effect. 
“ Miserable animal! bereft of speech, thou can st not com¬ 
plain, when, to the disease with which thou art afflicted, ex¬ 
cruciating torments are superadded by the ignorant effort of 
such men, who at first sight, and without any investigation to 
lead them to the source of thy disorder, pronounce a hackneyed 
common-place opinion on thy case; and then proceed with all 
expedition to open thy veins, lacerate thy flesh, cauterize thy 
sinews, and drench thy stomach with drugs adverse, in general, 
to the cure they engage to perform.” 
5th. It is our duty and interest to attend in a more especial 
manner to the health of those domestic animals which constitute 
a part of our aliment, in order to prevent our contracting diseases 
by eating them. Certain vegetables upon which they feed by 
accident, or from necessity, impart to the milk and flesh of some 
of them an unwholesome quality. Great laDOur sometimes has 
the same effect. A farmer in New-Hampshire, who had over¬ 
worked a fat ox a few years ago in the time of harvest, killed 
him and sent his flesh to market. Of twenty-four persons who 
ate of it, fourteen died, and chiefly 01 diseases oi the stomach 
and bowels. Putrid exhalations produce obstructions and ulcers 
in the livers of cattle, sheep, and hogs, which rendei them unfit 
for aliment. They are, moreover, always unhealthy during 
seasons in which they propagate their species; hence the wis¬ 
dom of that church which substitutes fish for flesh during a part 
of the spring months, liven the heats in summer, in micicile cli- 
mates, lessen the wholesome quality of flesh ; hence the pio- 
priety of living chiefly upon vegetables with a small portion of 
salted meat during the summer and autumnal seasons. 
Qth. We arc further called upon to study the causes, seats, and 
