456 
VETERINARY SURGEONS 
ignorance and indolence, is despotic. Some masters submit to it 
reluctantly, but all do submit to it; and the management of the 
race-horse, in health and in sickness too, is the peculiar pro¬ 
vince of the training-groom. This person is much improved of 
late; but still there is in all these stables a great deal which, in 
point of sound practice, and now and then of honesty too, he 
knows will not bear the light; therefore he is exceedingly cau¬ 
tious how be admits in the stable the man who will detect at a 
glance the errors of which he himself is beginning to be conscious, 
although he obstinately clings to them. So far is this carried, 
and that not merely at Newmarket, that we know two cavalry re¬ 
giments, into the stables of the commanding officer of which the 
veterinary surgeon is not admitted, and the colonel does not dare 
admit him, because he would incur the high displeasure of his 
master, the groom. 
The whole management of the training-stable is a perfect mys¬ 
tery. Each groom has his own peculiar mode of training and of 
doctoring, which he guards from the inspection and knowledge of 
others with the most scrupulous care. What takes place in one 
stable is not supposed to be known to, and is concealed as care¬ 
fully as possible from the inmates of another. The veterinary 
surgeon, if he is suffered to enter there, will develop, and may 
divulge the mystery; he may reveal a secret supposed to be well 
worth knowing ; or he may throw discredit on a system which 
has been the foundation of the trainer’s reputation and profit. 
And veterinary surgeons have not always been discreet: they 
have forgotten the obligation which they should have felt, if they 
did not formally take it—to see and hear, but say nothing. The 
secrets of the prison-house have sometimes escaped, to the annoy¬ 
ance or discredit of the groom, or the loss of the owner. 
In such an establishment, the veterinary surgeon will always 
be most unwillingly sent for; because it may make a most serious 
and ruinous change in the odds, if it be suspected that there is 
any thing amiss. The veterinary surgeon, once called in, must 
be aware of the real state of the stable; and there are plenty of 
knowing ones about such a place, who will artfully obtain some 
information from him, or some hint, at least, which they may 
turn to their own account and the injury of the owner of the 
