DEONTOLOGY. 
339 
veterinary practice, is without doubt a great drawback in 
many instances. 
In human medicine it does not hold good, for if a case is 
incurable, no skill or expense is spared to prolong the life of 
the patient, and the practitioner gains credit for his efforts in 
this direction. But with us the case is very different, and 
unless our patient is restored to practical utility, all our efforts 
are not appreciated, and the owner will freely admit that it 
would have been better if the animal died at the outset of the 
disease and so saved him expense and trouble. Indeed in 
many instances we find that it is difficult to obtain fair remu¬ 
neration in cases where the patients die after an illness, either 
long or short, and in a country district this fact is greatly 
intensified. 
Under such circumstances it is clear that where one 
practitioner finds it difficult to obtain remuneration for his 
attendance and medicines, it would be impossible to expect 
the owner to pay for a consultant. And yet there is no call¬ 
ing in life, in which the adage “Two heads are better than 
one” could be more appropriately applied than in veterinary 
practice. The obscurity of symptoms, the difficulties of 
diagnosis, and the varieties of patients and of diseases, render 
the advice and assistance of the consultant of supreme 
importance. And in surgical cases similar remarks would 
apply with equal force, whether the consultant be a senior or 
a junior. 
But it is apparent that there are other reasons for the 
paucity of consultations, and chief among these we must 
place the want of observance of the ordinary rules of profes¬ 
sional ethics which we so frequently notice among prac¬ 
titioners. In many instances the consultant endeavors to 
demonstrate his superiority over the attending practitioner. 
If he be a senior and holding a high reputation, then he will 
make a hurried diagnosis, of course differing widely from that 
of the attendant, and as a result a different line of treatment 
is ordered. If an error has been committed in the first instance, 
no attempt is made to conceal it, and it is either blurted out 
before the owner and his groom, or, what is far worse, told to 
