ACCOUNT OF TIIE FRENCH VETERINARY SCHOOLS. 391 
Chabert, a very respectable practitioner, but not equal to his 
master, was chosen director-general of the schools, and principal 
director of Alfort. M. Flandrin, the director of the school at 
Lyons, was appointed assistant director-general, and acting 
director at Alfort; while M. Bredin succeeded him at Lyons, and 
M. Chanut became anatomical professor at Alfort. Chanut had 
particularly distinguished himself by his successful treatment of 
several epizootics, and particularly of one that devastated the 
duchy of Luxembourg' m 1770, and Flanders and 1 Artois in 
. 1776. Alfort, however, did not long enjoy the valuable services 
of Chanut, for he died two years afterwards of consumption, at 
the age of thirty-seven. 
An attempt was now made to remingle the veterinary and 
medical professions. M. Bertin adopted the mode of argument 
to which we have before alluded: he supposed that the veteri¬ 
narian would often be brought into contact with the lower class 
of agriculturists, who could not, or would not, apply for medical 
aid under various accidents and diseases; and he wished to 
qualify the veterinary surgeon for rendering that service which 
would not otherwise be obtained. Instruction was, therefore, 
given to the young veterinarian in midwifery, and in the treat¬ 
ment of dislocations and fractures. A chair was established at 
Alfort for these branches of medical education. The pupils 
crowded to this class, and returned to their native provinces ap¬ 
parently with enlarged means of being useful: but the occasions 
to exercise these new acquirements depending on the confidence 
which they might inspire, and this confidence being the natural 
and the sole consequence of high reputation and repeated suc¬ 
cess, and being associated with other branches of learning with 
which the veterinarian had neither time nor opportunity to make 
himself acquainted, it so happened that these half-medical men 
had very little employment in their new profession; and the 
limited knowledge which they evidently possessed of their new 
J )rofession, begat the suspicion that they were not too well in- 
ormed in their old and natural one. This course of instruction 
was, therefore, abandoned, yet seemingly abandoned with re¬ 
luctance, and other portions of medical study were attempted to 
be substituted: first, a knowledge of the signs of death ; for it 
was supposed that in some parts of France many persons had 
been buried who were merely labouring under temporary cata¬ 
lepsy ; and, next, a knowledge of the diseases of the eyes, to 
which M. Bertin was led by the frequency of blindness among 
the French peasantry, and by the adroitness with which he had 
often seen tne veterinary pupils operate on the eyes of domestic 
animals, in that (favourite with the French, but) scarcely practica- 
