NORTHERN EMPIRICISM. 
532 
hands in Edinburgh; and, by his own account, six are very 
ill. Pretty good work for one week! Lately he made a 
poor man, named Pringle, believe he could cure one of his 
cows, (he had two.) He could have got 4 l. for her for 
slaughter, from Mr. Alexander Watson, our pleuro doctor. 
But Wallace fed her on laudanum and salts for near a 
month. She cost the poor man \l. 4 s. for medicine, and 
died at last, and was sold for 3,$. 6d. ; and his neighbour’s 
cows immediately followed. A poor widow, in the back 
street, shared the same fate. 51. would have been given her 
by Watson; but 3s. 6d., at His Grace’s dog-kennel, was all 
the poor woman obtained. I do not know what she paid for 
laudanum. One of the Marquis of Lothian’s workmen had 
another. He has had her buried in the garden, to make the 
cabbages grow. And a week or two ago, I examined a cow 
belonging to a travelling dealer, which had fallen ill at an 
inn, with hoven from eating wet clover. Some person told 
him of Wallace’s great skill in cows. He was sent for, and 
proclaimed it the disease ’at is ! began pouring in his medicine, 
while doing which the cow dropped; nevertheless, he con¬ 
tinued to pour, the dealer calling out all the time to him, in 
his south-country tongue, “ What ar’ ye power, powerin at ? 
the cowe is deyin, the cowe is deyin !” And so she did 
immediately, Wallace declaring, “ I was ower lang ye see, 
ower lang ye see.” Mr. Gray, one of our extensive mill- 
masters, had a cow calved a few weeks ago. The weather was 
very warm at the time, and puerperal fever followed. Wal¬ 
lace ran to the case,—“The disease ’at is,the disease ’at is!” 
—the cow got the medicine, but soon was gone. The ken¬ 
nel-keeper told me he came to see her. He said he knew 
“ what was wrang,—it was the blether ’at is,—the blether 
’at is.” 
I send you this communication, not under the impression 
that it can turn out of any service, or be of any great in¬ 
terest to the veterinary profession; but to show—what 
they will hardly credit,—that such things as I have en¬ 
deavoured to represent have transpired, even in this present 
age of improvement, notwithstanding veterinary surgeons of 
ability and experience are scattered over every part of the 
country. I am sorry to be obliged to avow that my country¬ 
men—notwithstanding some of them enjoy the credit of 
being intelligent—are, in medical cases, extremely gullible; 
else, would anybody believe it possible, in the nineteenth 
century, for an ignorant, drunken blockhead to succeed in 
making himself of importance enough to assume a profession 
neither nature nor art ever fitted him for, and be able to per- 
