A plea Pop Veterinary surgery. 
169 
The double practice would, in many cases, add largely to their 
emoluments as well as their usefulness; their employers would 
esteem them all the more highly that they could turn to them with 
confidence to prescribe for their valuable stock, as well as their 
sons and daughters, while to the physicians themselves would 
belong the enviable distinction of conservators of the lives and 
fortunes of the community. In many districts where two profes¬ 
sional men, medical and veterinary, could scarcely subsist, one 
with the combined qualification would make a good livelihood. 
If properly educated, he would prove a sounder guardian of 
human health, from his acquaintance with the diseases of the 
dependent animals, and he would he a safer veterinary physician 
for his extensive acqaintance with the pathology of man. His 
better position and more abundant resources would enable him to 
keep lip with the times, and to avail for his employers of the 
most recent advances in pathology, therapeutics and sanitative, 
so that the dweller in the remote country districts could have 
nearly all the advantages of the denizens of the city. Finally, 
the practitioner would have the uncommon advantage of a most 
extended field of observation, and not only would he be enabled 
to add many new facts to pathology, but he might gain a breadth 
and soundness of erudition, that would, in some cases, especially 
fit him to be a teacher of the science. 
In advancing such a proposition as the above, I by no means 
advocate that the simple physician should encroach on the sphere 
of the veterinarian, or the veterinarian on that of the physician. 
It is a matter of common observation with veterinarians, that 
when a physician prescribes for his own horse, he is as likely as 
not to blister the shoulder for a lameness due to disease in the foot, 
or to give a few grains of tartar emetic, which would be entirely 
inoperative on the equine system. So with the veterinarian, in 
prescribing for his own family, he is stepping out of his sphere, 
and is likely to act detrimentally, rather than beneficially. For 
this new field, I propose a new style of practitioner, more com¬ 
prehensively educated and equipped than either physician or 
veterinarian—one who has given a longer time to acquire his 
education, who has earned both degrees by faithful and conscien- 
