154 FRENCH VIEWS OF VETERINARY PRACTITIONERS. 
and it is a mode of proceeding much to be approved of: besides 
ensuring; the man an honest name who has devoted himself to 
the cares, fatigues, and occasional disgusts of a profession little 
respected, it is a plan possessing the advantage of setting aside 
all feeling of venality, and of permitting the repetition of visits 
without exciting any suspicion of dishonourable avidity. Thanks 
to the paternal views of government, to the protection and en¬ 
couragement it holds forth to those engaged in useful pursuits, 
salaried veterinary surgeons have been appointed to the regiments 
of cavalry, and at every head-quarter of prefecture. The same 
appointment as in a regiment of cavalry has been made in 
several prefects; and we hope the plan will become general. 
It has the especial advantage of dispersing accredited veterina¬ 
rians through the country, and of providing for them as they get 
established. The completion to this measure would be to pro¬ 
hibit farriers, and such as were not veterinarians, from attending 
to disease, or at least to confine their practice to the foot, al¬ 
though for the most part they are unequal even to that; not to 
admit such persons to be subpoenaed as witnesses, or as examiners 
of horses; to publish a list of the veterinarians in every county, 
with their residences; to prevent any man from practising an 
art of which he is ignorant, by imposing penalties upon him, 
and to institute repressive measures against charlatans who give 
themselves out to be magicians. Is it not truly deplorable to see 
such a herd of cow-leeches, farriers, and blacksmiths, setting 
up for being skilled in that of which they are grossly ignorant; 
without instruction, and with the most barefaced want of pro¬ 
bity, speculating upon the credulity of the simple country people, 
by compromising the lives of those animals who contribute so 
much to their service; pursuing a practice equally ridiculous 
and inhuman; bleeding, whether right or wrong; weighing 
out, as though it w^ere gold, some pretended specific, some 
secret remedy, often one pernicious to the patient; administering 
as an all-curing panacea some universal drench, a cunning com¬ 
position from numberless substances of entirely different proper¬ 
ties ; and, what is still more lamentable, to see persons of this 
description seducing and misleading the public, taking public 
confidence captive, and enabled to make their fortunes to the 
prejudice of veterinarians? Hence it is that many veterinarians, 
and those from among the best informed, finding themselves 
blended in practice with such characters as these, discouraged 
by base proposals, humiliating comparisons, and often an unjust 
preference; and seeing nothing to look forward to but contra¬ 
rieties and rebuffing vexations, quit a profession that has dis¬ 
appointed their hopes, that no longer fulfils their objects, and 
