327 
VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE. 
By Judex. 
In the March number of your Journal (p. 167), there is a plan 
for the reorganization of veterinary schools in France, and a very 
excellent organization it will be if carried out. I mention it only 
in reference to the 9th Chair, Jurisprudence, or, as they call it, 
Commercial Veterinary Jurisprudence,” than which nothing in 
our art in this country has been so much neglected, nothing so 
much illustrates our backwardness or more loudly calls for im¬ 
provement. Nobody appears to be listened to in a court of justice 
with less attention than a veterinary surgeon ; the mysteries of no 
profession appear to be so easily acquired as those of the veterinary 
profession. It is the great slur, “ the blot in our ’scutcheonit 
makes liars, or worse, of the professional witnesses engaged, on 
one side, at least, in every horse cause; it makes honourable men 
shrink from, and weak men tremble at appearing before the majesty 
of the Queen’s representative; it entails an odium as undeserved as 
it is common on the whole profession as witnesses. Occurring as 
horse causes do at every assize and in every term, and advancing 
as the profession certainly is in science as well as respectability, 
something ought to be done in the way of improvement: we should, 
at least, all be taught to call the same disease by the same name, 
and to know as much as a barrister of acute and chronic, and cause 
and effect. How this improvement is to be brought about I am 
not prepared to say: it will be too much, I suppose, to expect a 
chair of jurisprudence at either of our schools; still something 
might be done there by registering causes and noticing the most 
important. In the mean time you, as Editor of our leading journal, 
certainly ought to take the initiative in reporting more fully than 
you have hitherto done, and from a different source than the 
Times , Post , See.*, those cases which are important, either from the 
novelty of the question at issue, or in which the veterinary 
witnesses so differ in opinion that it becomes important, profes¬ 
sionally, to know which are right. To illustrate what I have above 
said, both as regards our inefficiency as witnesses and the slovenly 
and incorrect mode of reporting you copy from the daily and other 
papers, let us take a review of the jurisprudence of The Veteri¬ 
narian for the last year. 
First in importance as in date is Smart v. Alison. In this case 
one dealer or breeder sells for a handsome price to another dealer, 
both good judges, a black horse, which in a short time is re-sold at 
a fair profit: within a short time of the second sale the horse is dis¬ 
covered to be lame, is returned to Smart, who refunds the money, 
* What sources does the writer allude to ?— E. V. 
