CATARACT AND HERNIA. 
425 
ing served my apprentiship with him), and we had, perhaps, ten 
minutes’ conversation together on the subject of cataracts, when 
he informed me that he was of a contrary opinion respecting the 
formation of them. He, I grant, was the first person that 1 ever 
heard avow the opinion, that cataracts arise at times without in¬ 
flammation : he also said, that he did not believe this cataract was 
any harm to the horse, or interfered with his sight, and that he 
should consider the hernia a greater unsoundness than the catar 
ract. In the course of three or four months after this interview, 
the cases that I have recorded came under my notice; and in 
respect of the cataract in Mr. Croft’s horse’s eye disappearing, 
my informant was a Mr. Hampson, a veterinary surgeon in Elles¬ 
mere, and Mr. Hales knows I told him so. I also know of 
another case since I published the others. 
As to Mr. Hales saying he would not wish to “ detract from 
my professional reputation,” I cannot give full credit for his as¬ 
sertion, and I have thought so some time, or surely he would not 
have been the only man to find fault with several of my commu¬ 
nications to your Journal, which he knows is the case. I do not 
deny his right to act so; but one would have thought that com¬ 
mon courtesy would have induced him to have acted otherwise. 
I should also ask Mr. H. why he did not make some remarks 
on the subject when he forwarded the account of the trial? He 
must have thought very lightly on the benefit to accrue to the 
profession and the public by it, and also respecting his priority 
to the discovery of the fact. I should also like to know “ why 
he thought me wrong in publishing such a letter in the news¬ 
paper.” Does he think that I should suffer such a statement 
(although it might afterwards prove to be true) to pass unnoticed, 
when I knew at the time that it was in opposition, as far as my 
own knowledge went, to the generally received opinion of the 
profession, and of its authors ? I am sure that, up to the time 
I was with him, it was his; and I never heard him avow a 
contrary opinion for upwards of sixteen months after the trial. 
I could not, as a sincere lover of my profession, neglect the op¬ 
portunity of bringing it to the test; and I always shall, whenever 
I see anything asserted which I do not think true, contradict it, 
as I am not one of those meek bodies that likes to pin his faith 
upon another’s sleeve, however high the authority, and much more 
so, not upon Mr. Clay’s; and he may naturally expect, from 
seeing the cases that I have recorded, “ that I should be led to 
take the views of cataract that I have done,” even had I not 
have heard of the fact from him, but, of course, strengthened in 
that opinion by him. 
I, for my own part, should not have thought the speck in the 
