574 
LIABILITIES OF VETERINARY SURGEONS. 
and would be a great boon to the profession at large. There 
are other cases of hardship than those referred to by Mr. 
Brown, which arise from no fault of the practitioner, and 
in which our employers, either from ignorance or selfishness, 
are apt to be unreasonable, if not unjust, towards us. I shall 
give two instances; viz., First, fatal or injurious results from 
castration. Second, pricks in shoeing. Now every prac¬ 
titioner knows that castration may be performed in the most 
careful and scientific manner possible, and yet you may have 
injury to the spinal cord in casting, or from the excessive 
straining and struggling of the colt when down ; or peritoneal 
inflammation may set in afterwards and death ensue, baffling 
the most approved remedies for the prevention of such 
result. I have heard of practitioners in cases of this sort, 
although honestly free from blame, giving a considerable 
sum of money to prevent annoyance and exposure, which 
might lead (especially with young practitioners) to further 
loss from damaged reputation, &c. 
But the second case appears to me the hardest of all; viz., 
when a claim is set up for damages for injury from a prick in 
shoeing. I will not only say that every veterinary surgeon, but 
every person who has had much to do with shoeing, or seen 
but a moderate degree of forge practice, must know that every 
horse-shoer has at times pricked horses. Not the tyro in the 
art, but the most experienced workman, and this not always 
when he is careless, indifferent, or incapable, but frequently 
when he is in best trim, and particularly desirous of making 
a good job. If our employers were better acquainted with 
the anatomy of the foot, knew the slender thickness of horn 
on which the shoe has to work, the wonder would be, not 
that a horse was occasionally pricked, but that there were 
so few; and we should not then be subject to the vexatious 
annoyance on this head which is so grievous and tantalizing. 
Suppose we put on a shoe, for which we charge 10 cl. or Is., 
and the horse is accidentally pricked; bad consequences 
ensue; a claim for damage is made, and sustained, as I have 
heard, by some of our local judges. Is the charge made 
proportioned to the responsibility? or is it fair or reasonable 
that a claim of this kind should be heard of at all, unless on 
the ground of intent or sheer carelessness, which would be 
difficult to prove? Now, the formation of a society such as 
proposed in your Journal—call it “ The Veterinary Protec¬ 
tion Society,” if you will—a very suitable title—would do 
much, if not to obviate, at least to soften down these evils. 
I hope the matter will be generally taken up by the pro¬ 
fession. I for one am ready to join, and do whatever may be 
