652 
PRACTICAL VETERINARY SCIENCE. 
delaying the getting of a Bill or an Act of Parliament to 
put down the non-qiialified man, and to force society to 
employ none but the qualified man. I have listened 
patiently to many tales from these men, some of them very 
plausible and very pitiable, but, after all, I could only repeat 
to them what I have said a thousand times before to others, 
that it is utterly impossible to get an Act of Parliament 
granted us that will force society to employ us in preference 
to the non-qualified men, so long as it can be shown that in 
many instances the non-qualified man is equally successful, and 
in some instances even more successful in the treatment of 
his cases than the qualified man is. It is in vain you show 
that the empiric’s ignorance causes him to make blunders for 
which society suffers, so long as it can also be shown that the 
ignorance of the educated causes them to make blunders for 
which society suffers. Society discerns this, and hence it is 
that the empiric is in some instances preferred to the quali¬ 
fied man. This is one of the disaOTeeable and vexatious 
O 
circumstances, or conditions, surrounding our profession. 
I have been engaged pretty extensively in this calling for 
between thirty and forty years, and I verily believe I have 
scarcely an employer who would not remove his business out 
of my hands and place it in the care of some other man if 
such employer was convinced in his own mind that his 
interests would be better served at the same price, or that 
his business would be done equally well at a less price. And 
this totally regardless as to whether the person he selected 
was, or was not, a qualified man. I have on more than one 
occasion been told, ‘^It does not by any means follow, 
because a man is a highly educated man he must, therefore, 
he a clever man.^’ The fact of examiners saying that a man 
is competent does not (of itself) make him competent to 
practice the veterinary art; it is absurd to suppose that it 
has added one whit more to his knowledge than he possessed 
half an hour before such ceremony was gone through, and at 
which time he was to all intents and purposes a non-quali¬ 
fied man. To raise the profession we must in every instance 
become better practitioners—more successful practitioners; 
we must show by results that there is no comparison between 
the empiric and one of ourselves. Now comes the next 
question, how is this to be done ? 
( To he continued,) 
