860 LIVERPOOL VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
and there can be no doubt but this our Association will soon be a 
united, faithful, respected, and happy body; then we shall feel a 
pleasure and a deep interest in being in each other’s society; we 
shall be able to speak our minds freely, without reserve, for each 
other’s good; and not only will our connection and practice be 
legitimately respected and safe, but our characters and our honour 
will be safe in the keeping of our fellow-veterinary-surgeons. Thus 
it must follow that this Association will become in reality everything 
that its most ardent advocates can reasonably expect. 
Practically, we know it will ever happen in the common order of 
things that a customer will leave one practitioner and go to another, 
and vice versa, owing to some whim or caprice of his own, to some 
real or fancied superiority of one professional man over another, or 
to any one of a thousand trifling circumstances; and he has a 
perfect right to do so without asking leave of any one. So long as 
no illegitimate influence has been exercised, none but a very narrow 
mind indeed would entertain ill-feeling towards the practitioner 
who obtains the custom, neither would an educated and liberal- 
minded man feel it to be a severe trial of friendship, but would look 
upon it as an event which must be expected, and which will 
occur, however clever he may be, and however attentive to his 
business. If, however, a customer of mine has one of his most 
valuable horses suddenly attacked with some serious illness, and 
I cannot be found, or if found I can be of no service to him through 
being in a state of intoxication, and this having unfortunately 
•happened before ; or if I am found and am sober, but my knowledge 
of my business is such as to lead me to adopt a method of treat¬ 
ment which is entirely unsuccessful, and this result has unfortu¬ 
nately happened repeatedly before, in such a case it is not to be 
wondered at, nor is the employer to be blamed if he determines to 
try another surgeon; and I have no right to complain, or to take 
umbrage if yon, my neighbouring practitioner, get the customer 
and happen to keep him—“ this is legitimate If, on the con¬ 
trary, I am always on duty, always sober, and I adopt a plan of 
treatment which is attended with as great a measure of success as 
any other practitioner, and with which my employer is entirely 
satisfied, and in this state of things some other practitioner ob¬ 
trudes himself unasked, unsought, and repeatedly solicits the 
business, offering to do it at 10, 20, or 50 per cent, below the price 
I am doing it for, and endeavours to raise himself by trampling 
upon my fair name, this is what I characterise as mean, dastardly, 
unprofessional conduct , richly meriting to be visited by the se¬ 
verest censure this Association can inflict. Let such a one, I say, 
be “anathema maranatha,” for we maybe sure that the man so 
acting is either a low-bred, unprincipled, necessitous fellow, or else 
he is fully conscious of his own inferiority of ability, and offers the 
article he has to dispose of at his own low estimate of it, as an in¬ 
ducement for the employer to make a trial of a cheap thing; 
but long experience has taught me this lesson, that such bargains 
are nearly always soon regretted, and never satisfactory ; they soone r 
