CRUELTY TO HORSES. 
465 
can explain the reason, the importance, or the danger of every 
step. The veterinary pupil has advantages far superior to those 
which are enjoyed by the student of human surgery. At the 
knacker’s he finds a constant supply of dead subjects, and he 
procures them, or the parts he wants, at a cheap rate. But this 
does not satisfy him,—he, “ vox faucibus hseret!” with fewer ope¬ 
rations generally to perform, and still fewer of importance, prac¬ 
tises on the living subject. A knot of pupils go to the knacker’s ; 
they bargain for some poor condemned animal; they cast him, 
and they cut him up and torture him alive. They perform the 
nerve operation on each leg and on each side ; they fire him on 
the coronet, the fetlock, the leg, the hock, and the round bone; 
they insert setons in every direction ; they nick him, they dock 
him, they trephine him: when one is tired of cruelty another suc¬ 
ceeds ; and, at length, perhaps they terminate his sufferings by 
some new mode of destroying life. Did the Coopers, the Greens, 
the Brodies of the present day thus acquire precision and judg¬ 
ment ; or, if they had, would they not have been supposed to have 
been qualifying themselves for the office of familiars at the in¬ 
quisition, rather than of humane surgeons ? would they not have 
been detested while living, and held in lasting execration when 
dead ? But, these operations on the living subject teach the 
youngster how to accommodate himself to the struggles of the 
animal; how to feather his lines with mathematical exactness, 
and to acquaint himself with the true colour produced by the 
iron when it has seared the skin sufficiently deep ! Would notone 
or two operations on the real patient have given all of this that 
is necessary, without engaging the conservators of the health and 
enjoyment of the horse in the function of demons; and giving 
them an indifference to suffering and a callousness of feeling 
which taints the whole course of their after practice ? 
That school wants reform which by the dearth of operations 
that are committed to the pupils tempts to the commission of 
atrocities like these. Every pupil, after having been compelled to 
operate once, or twice, or thrice on the dead subject before the Pro¬ 
fessor, should, in his turn, be called on to operate on the different 
cases which arc brought to the College. Under the immediate 
