423 
F. S. BILLINGS. 
tunate cases permanently, healed. But so long as the danger of reci- 
i ^ ^ remains through life, I am not cured. 
The practitioner who advertises thus, no matter who he is, no 
matter even if he has great abilities, adopts the methods of quackery , 
and is to be classed with quacks. Not every man we are so willing to 
style quack is veritably one. It is the character of the man, the way 
he represents himself, which .constitutes the quack. The first requisite 
is to learn the philosophical application of words. And so it comes 
that V. S., D. V. S., M. R. C. V. S. may all amount to nothing also. A man 
who styles himself M. R. C. V. S. and prefixes the letter E as indicatory 
of Edinburg, is in some senses a quack, for the unsuspecting American 
people think it means England. He is a thorough quack when neither 
a member of the Royal College, or graduate of a veterinary school ; 
and there is no Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in Scotland, or, 
in a logical sense, in London either, that being a British and not local 
institution. Genuine men should write, not L. or E., but graduate of 
London or Edinburg under their names. 
The V. S. who advertises himself as able in any case to cure spavin 
or lameness, in fact, any disease, adopts the method of quafckery, and 
should be considered as a pariah by every true veterinarian, and 
shunned as a pest. The use of the word Professor by any practitioner 
is quackery, and to the writer s mind the assumption of it by teachers 
in American or British veterinary schools flavors of the same thing. 
Unintelligent or unthinking owners fondly believe a spavin can be 
cured. Arthritis delormans, once generated, cannot be cured , and all 
the veterinary surgeons from Columella to eternity will never be able 
to cure it. If the surgeon is enabled to overcome a painful inflamma¬ 
tion, but leaves me with a stiff knee, am I cured ? The pain is re¬ 
moved, and I can use my limb, but it is not free as before. Is that a 
cure ? So it is with spavin. We may ease the strain ; we may hasten 
the inflammation, and bring it to an end ; we may even reproduce it, 
and make it more complete in its work ; we may produce a complete 
anchylosis instead of a partial one, and the pain may cease, but we 
leave a stiffened limb, which may, however, do good service, though at 
a disadvantage. Is that curing? Away with such nonsense. No one 
but a quack will, under general circumstances, mention the word cure. 
And all men, in either profession, who advertise themselves as curers, 
adopt the method of quacks, and should be treated as such. Alas ! 
they cannot be prosecuted as such. 
