448 
MR. YOUATl’s INTRODUCTORY LECTURE 
months are now sufficient to enable the barber, the tailor, and the 
shoemaker, to practise the veterinary art in all its branches—who 
permitted one practitioner to write over his infinnaiy, horses 
Skillfully treated When diseas’d,’’ or another to inscribe on his 
residence Mutton-pie-maker and Veterinary Surgeon,” by 
what strange and incomprehensible delusion all this was effected, 
I will not now inquire. 
The cause of the incompetency of the veterinary pupil witli 
which I am at present most interested, is the lamentable curtail¬ 
ment in the objects to which his attention is directed. 
St. Bel stated, that the art of the veterinaiy surgeon com- 
prehended the cure and preservation of every kind of useful ani- 
maland so says the prospectus of the veterinary college, even 
that of the present year: ‘‘ The grand object of the institution has 
been, and is, to form a school of veterinary science, in which 
the anatomical structure of quadrupeds of all kindsj horsesy 
cat thy sheepy dogSy &)C. the diseases to which they are subject, 
and the remedies proper to be applied, might be investigated and 
regularly taught, in order that by this means enlightened prac- 
titioners of liberal educatioriy whose whole study has been de- 
voted to the veterinary art 'mall its branches, may be gradually 
dispersed over the kingdom, on whose skill and experience con- 
^^fidence may be securely placed^’ 
St. Bel had no experience on the diseases of any quadruped, 
except the horse, and he was cut off before he could acquire it. 
The present professor, when he accepted the chair, had no expe¬ 
rience. No animals, except horses and a few dogs (sixteen, I be¬ 
lieve, in the last year) are sent to the veterinary college; conse-. 
quently no experience on the treatment of their diseases could be 
acquired, and the professors are too candid, as well as too politic, 
to profess to teach that which they had no opportunity to learn; 
therefore of the diseases of cattle, sheep, swine, dogs, scarcely a 
word is heard at the veterinary college. 
This is undoubtedly to be lamented. It is altogether departing, 
from the original object of the institution, and it is rendering the 
education of the veterinary pupil sadly deficient. 
To supply this deficiency, the present lectures are attempted. 
My humble and subsidiary school will be devoted >to those sub¬ 
jects, which were not intended to be, but which are utterly neg¬ 
lected at our principal seat of learning. 
I come before you with no hostile spirit towards others, nor with 
any spirit of rivalry: I know myself too well for that. 
What are my qualifications? A practice peculiar in this 
country, but not in any other;—reckoned, or attempted to be re¬ 
presented, as somewhat degmding here, but elsewhere accounted 
