402 THE INSTRUCTION OF FARMERS SONS 
The Diseases of Cattle. —This is an important subject. There 
is no individual of many years 7 experience in farming who has 
not suffered severe losses from the death of horses, cows, or 
sheep. Diseases amongst sheep are, perhaps, the most common 
and the most extensive; and to whom is the cure of them en- 
trusted? Generally to a labouring man, who has not the re¬ 
motest knowledge of the several organs which compose the ani¬ 
mal frame, or of their functions, and whose education has not 
fitted him to reason correctly upon the few facts which he 
knows. What should we think of entrusting our friends or re¬ 
lations in sickness to a man who had studied no more of anatomy 
or medicine than a shepherd ? And the mischief is not con¬ 
fined to their ignorance of the true remedy. Ignorant men are 
the most irreclaimable theorists; they attribute disorders to the 
most fanciful cause, and then, from their assumed and absurd 
premises, they argue away to a conclusion as hardily as a geo¬ 
metrician. I have heard many striking instances of this from a 
friend of mine, who is himself both a physician and a philoso¬ 
pher. One poor patient laid the blame of his sufferings upon a 
cause which few would have thought of. “Sir, 77 says he, u it 
is the wind meeting the disgester and no doubt his remedy 
would have been, to have put some covering round the disgester 
to keep the wind away. Another poor fellow was troubled with 
u a rising of the lights and being asked whether he had taken 
any thing for it. “ Yes, 77 he said, “ he had swallowed some shot 
to keep them down . And I beg to assure the incredulous, that 
this is an extremely common disease and remedy in this neigh- 
hood. If you send for a farrier, the message not unfrequentlv 
is, that he cannot come to see the horse to-night, but that he has 
sent him a drink, and will come and see him in the morning. 
Now, try this system by the same test: How would you like it 
yourself? You are suddenly attacked with a violent complaint, 
and you send for Sir H. Halford. He never saw you, perhaps, in 
his life, and knows nothing whatever about what is the matter 
with you; but he sends his compliments, anddesires you to take 
a dose of Daffy’s Elixir: and if your complaint be what is very 
common with horses, viz. inflammation of some of the viscera, 
this dose will probably finish you, as out of all doubt it has 
finished many an unfortunate quadruped. Not that the absence 
of the farrier signifies much ; he probably does not know a bit 
the less of the disease on that account. The study of 'horse 
medicine and surgery has, no doubt, made much greater progress 
than that of cows or sheep; and some of its professors are men 
of sense and education, as I am personally able to testify; but 
how few are they compared to those of an opposite character. 
It was said, with much point and truth, by an old physician, 
