94 
THE VETERINARIAN, FEBRUARY 1, 1840. 
Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat.— Cicero. 
The following beautiful and unanswerable letter of Mr. Percivall 
demands a place, and the first place, in our Leader :— 
TO BRANSBY COOPER, ESQ., F.R.S. 
Surgeon to Guy's Hospital. 
Hyde Park Barracks, 
January, 1840. 
My dear Sir,— The circumstance of your having become a 
Veterinary Examiner recalls to my mind so many singular co-inci¬ 
dences in your professional life and my own, that I cannot re¬ 
frain from giving them to my veterinary brethren: not, I beg to 
observe, out of any disrespect or disparagement of a name which 
the medical world, both human and veterinary, have reason 
enough to hold in pride and veneration; but for the purpose of 
shewing, in a yet stronger light, perhaps, than has hitherto been 
exhibited, the absurd lengths to which our Royal Veterinary Col¬ 
lege seems disposed to drive veterinary affairs. 
In your own case, fond as you have always been of horses, and 
really conversant as you are in horse-knowledge, compared with 
the medical profession generally, your appointment as one of our 
examiners ought to be, and most assuredly would be, matter of 
congratulation to us, did not the same insurmountable objection 
apply as, olim, operated in the case of your highly-distinguished 
uncle. Sir Astley. Unfortunately for us, you are, both of you, 
surgeons ; while we are, all of us, veterinary surgeons; and be¬ 
tween our two sciences, in matters of practice, there is, as every¬ 
body now-a-days knows, far too wide a difference ever to admit 
of any person professing but one to pretend to examine another 
individual in regard to his qualifications to practise the other. 
Plain and full of truth as this axiom is, yet are there those who 
think otherwise ; and to such I would put your case and mine, as 
being, perhaps, about one of the most unanswerable that the two 
professions have ever been able to furnish. 
