THE USE OF ANAESTHETICS IN VETERINARY PRACTICE. 753 
by all means, repeat it. What I have to say will in part 
apply to my own experience in the use of anaesthetics; and I 
shall also act the part of a supplicant in behalf of our dumb 
patients. 
Notwithstanding the wonderful progress that has been 
made in veterinary science during the last two or three 
decades, as is shown by the extensive study of bacteriology 
and its application to general practice, and the improvement 
of our profession from a social standpoint, yet I fear there 
are far too many of our graduated veterinarians of to-day 
who do not use anaesthetics even when performing the most 
painful and prolonged operations. 
The veterinarian, above all others, should be humane; and 
it appears to me that if he does not exercise every power to 
make the necessary operations painless, he is not doing his 
duty as a man, nor conducting himself in a manner befitting 
our noble profession. 
What is more repulsive to a sympathetic, kind-hearted 
person, than to see a horse tied in such a manner that he is 
forced to submit to the most cruel operations upon the most 
sensitive structures while in a conscious condition ? 
The removal of diseased eyes; operations involving the 
sensitive parts of the foot; firing exostoses and tendons with 
red-hot irons; making extensive incisions in operations for 
fistulous withers and poll evil; spaying of bitches, and dozens 
of other painful operations, which occasionally take an hour 
or more to perform, done without an anaesthetic. 
These are acts of barbarism, and should have no place in 
progressive veterinary science; and until we cease to think 
lightly of these things, we should be a little slow in applying 
the term quack and empiric to practitioners who have not 
had the advantage of a college education. There are several 
factors which no doubt tend to prevent the more general use 
of anaesthetics in veterinary practice. Judging from what 
has been written by some authors, the use of anaesthetics in 
veterinary practice is attended with a great deal of danger. 
Finlay Dun, in his work on “ Veterinary Medicines,” states 
that chloroform anaethesia is attended with more risks in vet- 
