350 THE EARLY HISTORY OF VETERINARY MEDICINE. 
excelled by any one in the fourth century. He advocates, some¬ 
times, the principles of the Methodists*, which proves, as also 
the experience of other times has shewn, that veterinarians are 
always in the rear in the progress of medicine, and adopt those 
theories alone which had grown old, and were abandoned by 
othersf. 
Vegetius has profited much by the letters of Apsyrtus, with¬ 
out servilely copying them. He finds fault with them on 
account of their incorrect style, and he attributes the same 
defect to some other writers ,* and at the same time, he success¬ 
fully labours to give the stamp of originality to his own work. 
His speaking so often of the Huns and their horses, proves 
that he lived after the irruption of these barbarians into the 
centre of Europe. The Huns passed the Volga in 314; our 
author could not be later than the commencement of the fifth 
century, and, at that period, the Latins were well acquainted 
with the Greek language. 
He considers disease according to the situation of the different 
parts of the frame, and his descriptions differ little from those 
which the Greek veterinarians have left us : and, beside this, we 
should not form a very high idea of his knowledge after read¬ 
ing the very incomplete anatomy of the horse, which he has 
affixed to his book. 
He adds to the precautions which should be taken against 
contagious diseases, by ordering that the horses that die of 
them should be deeply buried. His opinion of the origin of 
these diseases is just. He attributes them to some malignant 
principle in the atmosphere ; and, in order to cure or check their 
progress among other horses, he recommends that the air of the 
stables should be purified by certain fumigations. He combats 
the old opinion, which attributes founder in the horse to the 
eating an undue quantity of barley. In some parts of his work 
* A sect of physicians who attril)ute every disease to contraction or 
relaxation of the solids, and founded their indications of cure on these dis¬ 
tinctions : thus Vegetius ranks tetanus, and gout, and phthisis, as diseases 
of contraction.—[E d.] 
f How true is this observation ! 
