ON GLANDERS AND FARCY. 
237 
we read (p. xv) that it was his object to “correct the striking* errors 
into which he (Professor Coleman, another £ teacher of anatomy 
and physiology at the Royal Veterinary College ) has fallen, and 
in some degree to counteract their dissemination, by putting into 
the hands of the profession, the student, and the public, a work 
w hich the author flatters himself will prove a satisfactory check 
to the too prevailing influence they have hitherto enjoyed and 
when, in addition to the account already given of Mr. Sew T elPs 
(another “ teacher of anatomy and physiology at the Royal Vete¬ 
rinary College**) uncommunicativeness, we also read (p. 179), “ as 
Mr. Sewell has long boasted of possessing a cure for glanders 
(sulphate of copper given in solution), I hardly need inform my 
readers, who are acquainted wdth his disposition, that cantharides 
has not yet received at the college a sufficiently fair trial in glan¬ 
ders.*’ We presume not to decide w r ho is right or wdio is wrong ; 
but all this is in very bad taste among brother teachers in the same 
school. If there be this contrariety of opinion, and this avow^ed 
hostility, among the professors, there must be “ something rotten 
in the state of Denmark.” If the luminaries of our art are thus 
wandering in error, little is to be expected from the profession ; 
and God help the poor students. Who shall guide them when 
their masters thus disagree ? What settled principles can they 
acquire amid this confusion w orse confounded ? They had much 
better be content with the little knowledge they can acquire at 
home than go to the College to be thus “ puzzled in mazes 
and perplexed with errors.” 
But seriously, and apart from Mr. Vines's work, this difference 
of opinion among the professors is a growing evil, and one that 
ought to be remedied, and it is and must be fatal to the proper 
improvement of the students. Mr. Coleman, if we understand it, 
is the professor; Mr. Sewell is the professor's assistant; and 
Mr. Vines is the assistant demonstrator. Mr. Coleman is to 
teach the grand principles of physiology, and the treatment of 
disease; Mr. Sewell is to illustrate the application of these 
principles in the clinical department, of which he has the su¬ 
perintendance; and Mr. Vines is still further to illustrate and 
confirm them, by references to more minute anatomy than the 
lectures of the professor could embrace. Here is a gradation of 
officers and of offices well adapted to prepare the pupil for the 
scientific practice of his art. He may be led on, step by step, intel¬ 
ligibly and without confusion, to the important object at w hich he 
aims. But when Mr. Coleman teaches one thing, and his assistant , 
instead of illustrating', confounds and subverts it; and the de¬ 
monstrator proves, or endeavours to prove, that both were in the 
wrong, and have committed “ striking errors/'’ the “ dissemina- 
vol. iv. k k 
