ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS ON COW-SPAYING. 
93 
well-qualified veterinarians, not only in Scotland, but through¬ 
out Her Majesty’s dominions”!!! And all this at the time 
without, comparatively speaking, any library, and with no 
museum, or collection of illustrative drawings, or staff of 
officials attached to the college. Professions such as these 
form no part of the character of a calm, cautious, deliberate 
inquirer, anxious to accumulate facts to enable him to convey 
sound instruction. This rage for newly projected operations 
is to be traced to the same love of notoriety. In place of 
cautioning his students against undertaking rash and hazard¬ 
ous operations, he rushes himself into the field of action 
with impetuous precipitancy, thus encouraging instead of 
repressing the passion for cruel experimenting—a practice 
which young vets, are so prone to indulge in. The following 
is the concluding sentence of his paper published “ On the 
Advantages of Spaying Dairy Cows/’ in the October number 
of the Journal of Agriculture for 1857, page i()2 ;—“I have 
procured (he states) the necessary instruments from Paris, 
and am engaged in testing practically the truth of all that 
has been asserted, and I hope in time to have occasion to re¬ 
port on the advantages accruing from spaying dairy cows in 
Edinburgh and other British towns.” He thus boldy inau¬ 
gurates his campaign, proclaims he is armed and ready to 
carry his spaying operations through the length and breadth 
of the kingdom. Throwing aside the necessary calculations 
of the dangers the animals were subjected to from vaginal 
and peritoneal incisions and ovarian torsions, and ignoring 
all reflection on its inutility, he took, however, the precaution 
to protect himself, by a charge of two guineas for every case 
in w hich he used the scalpel and extracting forceps, whatever 
was the result, against any present or prospective loss to 
himself. With all the high pretensions to honorable fame 
and reputation, I fear there will be found at bottom little dif¬ 
ference between professional and commercial enterprise, espe¬ 
cially among those to whom Mr. Gamgee has shown himself 
to belong, who commences a new trade on his own account, 
which holds out the greatest and hitherto unknowm advan¬ 
tages to the public, while the projector takes good care to 
secure all the immediate profits of the undertaking to 
himself. Is this a professional w r ay to put dowrn quackery 
and empiricism, which he professes so ardently to do, or to 
“ elevate the standard of education,” one among the many 
inestimable advantages which he boasts his college will secure 
to the students under his tuition, and which no other institu¬ 
tion of the kind can supply in Great Britain? It is im¬ 
possible that a more profitable investment of instrumental 
