49(5 
riG-SPAYING EXTRAORDINARY. 
water, runs wildly, or merely runs wildly in search of a lost 
master. A pack of fools imagine that he is mad, and run after him, 
just as they do after what are called mad bulls. Public alarm 
does the rest, and the incautious editors of newspapers, who, 
by the by, ought never to report such cases; for I know it for a 
fact, that the mind may be so affected by fear, and the parts 
about the throat so disordered in consequence by sympathy, that 
an imaginary disorder, sufficient to kill the patient, may be 
brought on. A dog that has bitten a person should be tied up, 
and carefully fed and watei^ed and observed, that it may be 
known, as in most cases it will be, that he is not mad, and the 
patient’s mind set at rest. Witchcraft was formerly believed 
in, and, when that was the case, persons actually swore to en¬ 
chantments in courts of law. The witches were burned, and 
the bewitched died of imaginary disorders.” 
PIG-SPAYING EXTRAORDINARY. 
Sir,—If you think the following account of the performance 
of an operation in a very important branch of veterinary practice, 
viz. spaying, worthy of insertion in your valuable periodical, it is 
at your service, and I will vouch for the authenticity of it. 
I remain. Sir, your obedient servant, 
Joseph Gamgee, V.S. 
Mr. John Bowman, of Howden, a practitioner there, and a 
member of the Veterinary College, undertook, for a wager, to spay 
one hundred sow pigs in two hundred minutes. The number 
being procured, and umpires chosen from amongst the neighbour¬ 
ing practitioners, Mr. B. commenced at ten o’clock in the morn¬ 
ing, at the Wellington Inn. The first eleven were disposed of in 
twelve minutes; the next forty-five in fifty-nine minutes and 
thirty seconds, and the remaining forty-four in seventy-nine 
minutes and fifty seconds; thus completing the task in two hours, 
thirty-one minutes, and twenty seconds,—being forty minutes 
and forty seconds within the given time, and averaging only one 
and a half minute for operating on each. 
The ninety-third occupied only fifty-six seconds. The task 
would have been accomplished sooner, but it took Mr. B. six 
minutes to operate on the forty-fifth pig, from a malformation 
of the ovaria, and the consequent difficulty in extracting it. 
[We esteem this adroitness, even in so humble a branch of our 
art as the spaying of pigs, highly honourable to Mr. Bowman ; 
and we thank our friend from Florence for the opportunity of 
inserting an account of this unique performance in our Jour¬ 
nal.—Y.] 
