VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE. 
.31 
facts and habits of induction. To illustrate : an intending pur¬ 
chaser brings you a horse for examination. Is ho*sound or other¬ 
wise ? a sale, and possibly a lawsuit, depends on your statement. 
A valuable colt may have been found; was it born dead or alive? 
The body of a horse is discovered: what was the cause of deatli ? 
You are called to see a patient; is its illness natural disease or 
the effects of poison ? These are a few examples of many hun¬ 
dred of questions, any one of which your first day’s practice may re¬ 
quire you to consider—for the practice of forensic medicine 
devolves on the profession generally, and not on a few in particu¬ 
lar. I admit that in some cases experts are consulted, but for the 
actual facts, conditions, symptoms and the like observed at the 
moment, the general practitioner must, as a rule, be held respon¬ 
sible. Think of your responsibility. The evidence given and the 
opinion expressed by you in open court may be reported in several 
papers and will be conned over and discussed whenever read; 
depend upon it, if your evidence in any case be one-sided, if your 
judgment be biased, if your opinion is not founded on knowledge, 
or is swayed either for or against the accused by popular senti¬ 
ment, friendship, or by a want of common-sense or science, that 
one medico-legal case may mar your career, as it may—if you 
being thought, learning, power, judgment, discrimination, dis¬ 
cretion and common sense to bear upon it—make it. In your 
testimony be jealous for the truth, careless whom you please or 
displease; do not let your judgment be influenced one iota by 
the lawyers or interested person; be careless which way the ver¬ 
dict goes so long as your evidence is that of honest conviction, of 
intelligent judgment, and of accurate observation. 
The faculty of observation, next to the power of scientific 
analysis, which is so essential to the veterinary practitioner, is 
almost the essential of a good medical jurist, for many of your ob¬ 
servations will have to be conducted under difficulties of a most 
unusual nature; many in attendance will have an interest in rais¬ 
ing a moral dust-cloud to blind your eyes or obscure your vision. 
Probably the most trying position of the veterinary surgeon is 
when giving evidence, and for that reason I shall consider briefly 
that important branch of forensic medicine, as upon it a great 
deal depends, for by it he brings the facts he has observed or 
