756 INTRODUCTORY LECTURE ON HIPPOPATHOLDGY. 
and deserving of attention throughout the Roman empire. 
Still; notwithstanding all these necessary and fortuitous 
circumstances the Romans never, at any period of their 
history, could with justice be deemed an equestrian people. 
The cavalry contingents of all their armies were in every 
instance most probably mercenary or allies. 
As regards the condition of the medical art, human as 
well as veterinary, in all pertaining to its cultivation, ad¬ 
vancement, and the light in which it was viewed by those 
from without its pale during the period of the Roman 
supremacy, we have abundant information, or more probably, 
we ought to say, information sufficient to enable us to form 
not an altogether unjust estimate of its condition and 
character. 
This information is certainly, in the greater number of 
instances, obtained in an indirect or casual manner, by the 
allusions which the several writers may have occasion to 
make to passing events, or from the necessity which they 
seem to feel to bring into prominence this particular act, 
for the purpose of illustrating some other study or pursuit 
which for the time specially occupies their attention. In 
this manner do we glean information respecting the condi¬ 
tion of our special department from the writings of Cato, 
Varo, Virgil, Horace, &e. In other cases, however, the 
writers start with the avowed object of placing us in a 
position to understand all that was then known respecting 
the subject of which they treat; giving us a systematic and 
detailed account of some particular department of the heal¬ 
ing art, both as respects principles and practice. Of this 
class are Celsus, whose surgery is as good as his latin; Colu¬ 
mella (a.d. 40), a man of science and a scholar, who de¬ 
scribes most carefully and pointedly the various sanitary 
precautions necessary for the maintenance in health and 
perfection of formation of the legs and feet of horses, and 
whose records of veterinary medicine, as known to, and 
applied by, the Romans of his day, at once stamp him as an 
able hippiatrist, and one to whom the profession is thus 
early indebted for an influence favorable to its cultivation 
and development. 
Vegetius—Flavius Renatus— (a.d. 450—500), who, of 
all the writers on veterinary medicine during the Roman 
period, has left us the most complete description of the 
diseases and accidents to which the horse is liable. He 
collected and put into form all that was previously known 
regarding the maladies of this animal and their treatment. 
His mind appears to have been neither narrow in its grasp, 
