THE EARLY HISTORY OF VETERINARY MEDICINE. 273 
of every being endowed with life, with that true and enlarged 
spirit of philosophy which such a subject requires. Even in 
modern times, after so many volumes, and with so much ability, 
have been written on one or the other of these divisions of me¬ 
dical research, who is there who has dared to attempt a work of 
this kind ? It would, therefore, be unjust to expect to meet with 
such an union in the productions of the writers of antiquity. Phy¬ 
siology, indeed, presents us with the noble works of Aristotle and 
Galen, in which man and the inferior animals are so advanta¬ 
geously and so accurately compared together; but Pathology, 
limited to the human being, has scorned to avail herself of the 
important aid she might have derived from veterinary medicine. 
At the period in which these great men lived, science was in a 
flourishing state; later, when it fell into decay, the union of 
which we have been speaking would have been less practicable. 
Veterinary medicine, however, so necessary in civilized socie¬ 
ty, and which follows so closely the track of human medicine, 
has long existed as a separate branch of science. It was not 
forgotten by the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who, 
animated by an ardent zeal for the progress of science, caused 
the most careful research to be made in every branch of knowledge 
of which antiquity could boast. A collection of fragments from 
the most valuable of the older veterinarians was made, in which 
are found the rudiments, at least, of much of the knowledge of 
modern times. 
I 
In ages of the remotest antiquity, little notice was taken of the 
diseases of most domestic animals. The Greeks were the first 
who shewed a laudable disposition to elevate those servants of man 
from the state of neglect in which they lay, and to render them 
more useful. The work of Xenophon on equestrian matters 
shews how diligently the Greeks had studied the various quali¬ 
ties of the horse ; but it is to be regretted that we have no record 
of the treatment of the diseases of the horse at that period when 
Greece flourished most. Xenophon mentions only one disease 
to which the horse is subject—acute rheumatism, 
Simon, whose writings on this subject were antecedent to those 
F P 
VOL. VIII. 
