ORIGIN OF VETERINARY SCIENCE IN GREAT BRITAIN. 639 
acquainted; accordingly, we find that human and veterinary 
surgery started hand in hand; and at first it was evident 
that the professions were united , and considered equally worthy 
of attention. Aristotle alone, by dissecting the bodies of 
animals, with a powerful, active, and unprejudiced mind, 
arrived at discoveries which forestalled the labours of future 
centuries. Hippocrates, Celsus, and Galen, drew their 
knowledge of anatomy and physiology from the same source. 
When Rome arrived at its height of luxury and refinement, 
the professions first became distinct, and the veterinary de¬ 
partment was studied and practised by men whose works 
show them to have been no way inferior in education or 
attainments to their contemporaries of the human school . It was 
then, we may observe, a profession of respectability and con¬ 
sideration: but afterwards, in the general ignorance and 
superstition which prevailed, during the middle ages, it was 
wholly transferred to the hands of the shoeing smiths; and 
its sister science, human surgery, experienced a somewhat 
similar fate, being engrossed by the barbers for a long period: 
but as the latter is more nearly connected with the interests 
of mankind, it has resumed much earlier its station among 
the liberal sciences, which have slowly and separately revived 
in improvement and estimation. The various causes which 
have combined to retard the progress of our art, are not now 
to be considered; but it is only fifty years since, that animal 
medicine became a distinct profession in this country; and, 
even yet, the vulgar leech maintains his ground against the 
modern veterinarian. That great benefit has already re suited 
from the application of science to this degraded art, will not, 
we believe, be denied by any; but much still remains to be 
done: when the successful practice of the College diplomatist 
shall correspond with his high profession, and when the 
public, rejecting advice and medical interference from unedu¬ 
cated men , shall place full confidence in the veterinary character , 
then, and not till then, will it merit congratulation.” 
That the scientific veterinary surgeon has great difficulties 
to contend with, no one for a moment will doubt, and more 
particularly w 7 hen the public are informed, that at the present 
day there are numbers who attempt to practise the veterinary 
profession, and have the impudence to call themselves vete¬ 
rinary surgeons, who have never seen nor entered the 
Veterinary College during the whole course of their lives. 
On the other hand, there are those who have paid the fee, 
and thereby become pupils of that establishment, only with 
a view of connecting themselves, to a certain extent, with the 
real members of the veterinary profession, and not of studying it 
