317 
THE EPIDEMIC AMONG CATTLE. 
farmer or the bailiff to steer between this Scylla and Charybdis 1 
Why, according to the instructions here given, he is fearlessly to 
pursue his course. I am not speaking in disparagement of these 
persons, for some of our best practitioners have wandered where 
they are urged fearlessly to proceed. They are to purge and 
bleed, and then, when the disease will not yield to their treat¬ 
ment, that is, when the game is up, they are to apply to “ an 
experienced veterinary surgeon.” Surely such a course must, 
in the long run, be destructive to an almost incalculable extent! 
Is there the man of good sense and of humanity who would ad¬ 
vise the nurse and the empiric to act in the same manner with 
regard to the human being 1 Would he permit any member of 
his own family to be subjected to such hazardous practice 1 
What, then, would w^e have done? Precisely what every 
l)oard of health would have done, and does. We would have in- 
(piired thoroughly into the case. We would have requested 
Professor Sewell to throw the whole into proper form and order; 
or, perhaps, as in the present instance, we would have taken his 
opinion from the beginning, and then we would have sent this 
document to every certificated veterinary surgeon in the United 
Kingdoms. Our purpose would be fully effected, and in the le¬ 
gitimate and safe and honourable way. This is the only docu¬ 
ment of the kind which exists in veterinary medicine. The re¬ 
cords of human medicine contain nothing similar to it. 
It was done in a moment of inadvertence; and the most in¬ 
advertent and culpable of the whole set—if he knew what use 
was about to be made of his communication—was Professor 
Sewell. He is sufficiently convinced of this ere now—we will 
therefore let it pass; but it is our sincere wish that every benefit 
which the committee contemplated may be more than effected, 
and not one of the evils occur which we apprehend. The Essays 
on the subject of Cattle Medicine, which immediately follow this 
remonstrance—and the author of not one of them was directly or 
indirectly prompted—will give a pleasing and faithful representa¬ 
tion of the knowledge of the diseases of cattje which a great 
many of the country veterinary surgeons have acquired, notwith- 
standing the almost perfect state of ignorance of the subject in 
which they were accustomed to be dismissed from the Veterinary 
College. Nothing is now needed but a little of the support of 
the English Agricultural Society, and the obtaining a teacher 
who has seen and studied and treated the maladies to wliich cat¬ 
tle are liable, to make us as useful as we are anxious to be, and 
as we ought, long ago, to have been to the agricultural public.] 
y. 
