COMMERCIAL VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE. 4G9 
agreed on certain defects which should prohibit the sale of them: 
the law, therefore, would only interfere to regulate customs and 
usages which were founded in error. In fact, usage was intro¬ 
duced when veterinary medicine was in a most deplorable state ; 
when grooms and farriers alone practised it; when the grossest 
errors prevailed as to the nature of the diseases of animals, their 
duration, their progress, and the-time which was necessary to 
develop them. 
Usage and custom then constituted the only evidence. The 
disease which constituted unsoundness in one country, did not do 
so in another; some maladies, which ought everywhere to be con¬ 
sidered as unsoundness, were not recognised in any usage or cus¬ 
tom ; and there was no time agreed on for the development or 
• discovery of unsoundness. In some provinces, the buyer was 
allowed thirty or forty days before he returned the animal; in 
other provinces, and for the same disease, usage allowed him 
only eight or nine. In the delay of forty days many diseases 
might be contracted, and the usage threw on the seller a responsibi- 
lity which he ought not to incur; while, on the other hand, 
there might be other maladies existing at the time of sale, but 
which could not be fully developed in the space of eight days; 
and the usage would then deprive the buyer of his right of guaran¬ 
tee, or render it illusory. 
Veterinarians, who were so often consulted in the purchase of 
horses and cattle, were long annoyed by these abuses; and they 
received with gratitude a general and uniform law which would 
overthrow these customs, the application of w 7 hich was so little in 
harmony with the actual state of their art: and M. Huzard, the 
inspector-general, traced certain rules of veterinary jurisprudence, 
which the schools adopted, and which the tribunals of commerce 
at Paris and Lyons confirmed by numerous and equitable deci¬ 
sions. 
Taking for their base the terms so precise as the 1641st article 
of the civil code, M. Huzard and the schools considered as un¬ 
soundness all concealed defects at the time of sale, and which the 
buyer had not been able to discover, and all vices or diseases which 
rendered the horse unfit for the work required of him, or which 
diminished his value so much that the purchaser would not have 
bought him, or would not have given so much for him, if he had 
been aware of them*. 
The greater part of the tribunals of France continued, however, 
to receive as the guide of their decisions the ancient custom of 
* Malleville thinks that the third case, in which the buyer would not have 
#iven so much for the horse, ought to be omitted, as encouraging fickleness 
in the purchaser, and shackling commerce. 
VOL. IV. 3 s 
