256 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
CORRESPONDENCE, 
New York, August 21, 1880. 
Editor Am. Vet. Review : 
Dear Sir: —Availing myself of an invitation to see a friend’s 
horse trot, in company with him, I arrived at the Prospect Park 
trotting course, where, on enquiring for Supt. Jarvis, was in¬ 
formed that he was out in the lot with a veterinary surgeon, 
destroying a horse who had lacerated his gullet, as they put it. 
In order to obtain permission to drive over the course we started 
for the lot, and arrived just in time to hear the veterinary surgeon 
explain to the gaping crowd of horsemen who surrounded him 
(and who knew all about a horse) the mysteries of the cardiac 
apparatus. Having divided the right ventricle, he exposed the 
tricuspid valves, explained to the crowd that they were the semi¬ 
lunar valves; he then went into rhapsodies over the beautiful way 
the cardiac nerves showed themselves. At the same time, pickihg 
up the chordae tendinoso, showing them to those around, he ex¬ 
pressed a fear about never seeing such a sight again, and said he 
would take the heart away with him and have a drawing made 
from it; ignorant, no doubt, of the fact that in any illustrated 
work on anatomy he would find a drawing far superior to any¬ 
thing that could be produced from his specimen in the condition 
he had put it. He then indulged in a mild tirade on the useless¬ 
ness of studying such subjects in books. 
This new expounder of veterinary anatomy we were informed 
is a practitioner of the city of churches, enjoying a large prac¬ 
tice, and is, I believe, a regular graduate of medicine by one of 
the newly-born diploma machines, called County Veterinary Med¬ 
ical Societies. 
I know that this is but one of the many ignorant quacks who 
are found throughout the country, and I know also that it is best 
to leave them alone; but at the same time cannot help thinking 
of what harm the profession has received from the legally char¬ 
tered machinery of these mills and the shame which must forever 
