A concise account of veterinary surgery, its schools and practitioners, for the benefit of proprietors of domesticated animals. / By a Veterinary Surgeon.

Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A concise account of veterinary surgery, its schools and practitioners, for the benefit of proprietors of domesticated animals. / By a Veterinary Surgeon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that his vaunted compounds are in no danger of interrupting a curative, or aggravating a destructive process. Yet it is true that his weapons are in general so ill chosen, and so indiscriminately employed, that instead of assisting or encouraging Nature’s attempts to repair injuries, they often frus¬ trate her altogether, or give her efforts such a direction, that what before might be trifling and curable if left alone, often becomes mortal. It was a favourite saying of a worthy physician, that in all cases there were three things to be considered—the patient, the disease, and the doctor; and, con¬ tinued he, when any two of these pull well together, they generally beat the third. Now, whoever entrusts a sick animal to ignorance, should consider that he is, in all probability, pitting the disease and the doctor against the patient, and that nothing but great constitutional strength will enable him to survive the combat. It frequently does so, though he is sometimes so completely shattered, that he had better died. Altogether the quack doctor, whether he practise on man, or on the lower animals, is one among the lowest and the vilest of human beings. He is detestable and dangerous in proportion as he knows his ignorance, and has art to hide it. His life is one continuous course of fraud; for he is as destitute of honour or honesty as of professional abilities. He deludes his employ¬ ers into a belief, that he can serve them; and maintains his pretentions by incessant boast. At one time he affects to despise science, to ridicule books and collegians; and he trusts all to his own unequalled sagacity : his knowledge is the pure offspring of instinct. At another time he is loud in praise of his scientific acquirements ; and he confounds his auditor with a volley of unintelligible babble. He peeps into a learned work, which he cannot understand, but from which he commits to memory a few tech¬ nical terms and phrases : with these he astonishes both the illiterate and the learned; the former by his display of science, the latter by his inco- herance and pronunciation. If fortunate enough, by means of big words and mystery, to extort deference or flattery from the lowly, he straight¬ way assumes consequential airs of superiority, and struts about in pom¬ pous emptiness. If his infallibility be doubted, he blusters, talks big, and threatens for the future to refuse aid, which he intimates cannot be dis¬ pensed with. Those who tolerate the quack, do not know him. Those who know, but think him too low for exposure, are little aware of his influence ; or they think too much of themselves, and too little of others. They surely cannot have beheld with indifference, multitudes of sensitive beings, silently, yet mournfully writhing under his cold blooded ferocity, and ulti¬ mately sacrificed to his ignorance. They have not seen the poor man and his family deprived of their little all, of their only means of subsis¬ tence, while, from the defective state of our laws, the shameless ruffian escapes with impunity. Bet,i. Sc Bain, Printers, Glasgow