OF THU VETERINARY PROFESSION. 
89 
has thought proper, and been permitted, to take the twenty gui¬ 
neas of such a man; and because Sir Astley Cooper, Sir Charles 
Bell, and other medical friends of the Professors, have subjoined 
their names, after a social glass of wine in Conduit Street, in tes¬ 
timony of his veterinary acquirements. 
In all racing-stables, there are reasons too obvious to require 
comment to operate against the veterinary surgeon being called 
in to cases where secresy is the only remedy for getting through 
a bad speculation. But, in a place like Newmarket, there are 
about four hundred horses in training, of enormous value. Take, 
for instance, Priam at £5000, the Colonel at 4000 guineas (the 
sum he was sold for to the late king), Zinganee at 3000 guineas, 
Rid dies worth at 3000 guineas (the price he sold for), Zany, Va¬ 
riation, Lucetta, Fleur-de-Lis, the Saddler at 3000 guineas, and 
a long list of others too numerous to register, that are not under 
engagements, like colts and fillies in the Derby and Oaks, but 
yet are liable to all diseases at any moment; and besides these, 
a number of valuable stallions, mares, and blood stock in the 
neighbourhood, together with the hunters and hacks of gentle¬ 
men and trainers; post-horses, and others employed in agricul¬ 
ture, the same reasoning does not apply to any of these. 
By many it is argued, that the prejudices of grooms and 
jockies are too great to suffer a veterinary surgeon to be called 
into their stables at all; but I will ask, where would such preju¬ 
dices be, after thirty-five years’ cultivation of the veterinary art in 
this kingdom, if veterinary surgeons in general were not equally 
as ignorant as the grooms themselves ? 
To apply my argument, let us for a moment suppose that one 
of the present members of the Jockey Club in his younger days 
was accustomed, perhaps in the vicinity of his paternal estate, to 
converse with a bell-hanging veterinary surgeon, whose occupa¬ 
tion at the mansion was, perhaps, not alone the practice of veteri¬ 
nary medicine, although his diploma, attested by such high- 
sounding names as Abernethy, Babington, and others, might be 
distinguished hanging among the pots and pans in his shop; is 
it not more than probable that the ideas so conceived by the 
young gentleman would be such, that, when at years of maturity, 
he would have some difficulty in forgetting the impression such a 
character was calculated to produce ? 
It is not then to be so much wondered at, when gentlemen at 
Newmarket prefer the knowledge of their grooms to that of a 
tinker; particularly where the groom, as in most racing-stables 
is the case, has been accustomed from his boyhood to the care of 
horses : and while we ascribe some prejudices to the ignorance of 
grooms which would weigh but little in the scale against us with 
