JOHNA.SEAVERNS 
 
DnMnito 
 
 9090 014 531 632 
 
 Webster Family Library of Veterinary Medicine 
 Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at 
 Tufts University 
 200 Westboro Road 
 North Grafton, MA 01536 
 
I received a letter from a friend in El Paso (Page 51) 
 
VETERINARY MEDICINE SERIES 
 No. 11 
 
 THE 
 
 ITINERANT HORSE 
 PHYSICIAN 
 
 BY 
 
 MART R. STEFFEN, M. D. C. 
 
 Author Special Veterinary Therapy, Special Cattle Therapy, Etc. 
 
 Chicago 
 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF VETERINARY MEDICINE 
 
 1916 
 
3 
 
 1 
 
 Copyright 1916 
 
 By 
 
 D. M. CAMPBELL 
 
Introduction by 
 Chapter I 
 
 Chapter II 
 
 Chapter III 
 Chapter IV 
 Chapter V 
 Chapter VI 
 Chapter VII 
 Chapter VIII 
 Chapter IX 
 Chapter X 
 Chapter XI 
 Chapter XII 
 
 Chapter 
 Chapter 
 Chapter 
 Chapter 
 Chapter 
 Chapter 
 Chapter 
 Chapter 
 Chapter 
 
 XIII 
 
 XIV 
 
 XV 
 
 XVI 
 
 XVII 
 
 XVIII 
 
 XIX 
 
 XX 
 
 XXI 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 the Publisher 7 
 
 Early Training vs. Natural In- 
 | clination 9 
 
 A Practice Won and Lost in Mil- 
 waukee 15 
 
 A New Start in the Great Southwest 17 
 
 Practice in Texas 25 
 
 With Uncle Sam 29 
 
 Back to Milwaukee 43 
 
 I leave for Texas Again 45 
 
 In Practice at Houston 47 
 
 El Paso 53 
 
 Mexican Practice 63 
 
 A Town Day in Oklahoma 73 
 
 How I Began a Regular Tramp 
 Existence 83 
 
 In the "Abilene" Country 93 
 
 Unfair Competition 103 
 
 Farewell to Abilene 109 
 
 Dr. Asa Turns Up 115 
 
 I Get the Gold Fever 121 
 
 "Pastures New" 125 
 
 Idaho 135 
 
 We Make a Hit 145 
 
 Our Practice Prospers 151 
 
 5 
 
6 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 Chapter XXII We Get a Raw Deal 157 
 
 Chapter XXIII A Sudden Departure 163 
 
 Chapter XXIV My Brother Files a Claim 167 
 
 Chapter XXV We Go on a Loafing Tour 169 
 
 Chapter XXVI South Dakota Again 171 
 
 Chapter XXVII Back to Government Service 179 
 
 Chapter XXVIII The Teachings of Travel 187 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 The experiences of the Itinerant Horse Phy- 
 sician as recorded in the following pages can 
 never again be duplicated, for matters veterinary 
 have changed for the better throughout the 
 regions he traversed. Still the deplorable condi- 
 tions dependent upon unregulated veterinary 
 practice of unqualified men calling themselves 
 veterinarians, is yet a serious problem in far too 
 many localities and states ; and this work cannot 
 fail to help solve that problem by placing vividly 
 before the whole profession and others interested 
 the real calamity that unqualified veterinarians 
 constitute to the live stock industry. Never before 
 has the evil of the charlatanic veterinarian been 
 portrayed in such glaring ugliness or condemned 
 so tellingly. 
 
 It must not be thought that the author or the 
 publisher hold out the example of the Itinerant 
 Horse Physician for the emulation of the young 
 practitioner; rather is it to show the folly of 
 believing the largest and ripest berries are always 
 to be found on the next bush. But along with 
 considerable information of a scientific nature, 
 many a lesson in self-reliance can be gleaned 
 from these pages that will stand the young prac- 
 titioner in good stead when he faces that greatest 
 problem of a veterinary practice — the public. 
 
 The historical value of this record of expe- 
 riences of the Itinerant Horse Physician is not 
 
8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 to be minimized. Here we have delineated in the 
 inimitable style of the author the evolution of 
 farriery into the profession of veterinary medi- 
 cine, concurrently with the attainment of pro- 
 fessional accomplishments in older parts of the 
 country, of which every veterinarian may be 
 proud. 
 
 The historical value of the work and the inter- 
 est which it arouses are enhanced not a little by 
 the punctilious accuracy of the author as to 
 places and dates ; by the fact that he has neither 
 overdrawn nor underdrawn in his description of 
 occurrences and by the unusual realism of the pen 
 pictures of his characters. In only a few cases, 
 and then only for very obvious reasons, have fic- 
 titious names of persons been employed. 
 
 The Publisher. 
 Chicago, April, 1916. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 EARLY TRAINING VS. NATURAL INCLINATION 
 
 My father was in the tobacco business. When 
 I was born he began to make plans for me, his 
 first son, to follow in his footsteps, and had vis- 
 ions of an immense project in his line which was 
 eventually to make me the tobacco king of the 
 universe. 
 
 What I know about psychology is but little; 
 however, I believe his plans were knocked into a 
 cocked hat at the very 
 moment when he allowed 
 my first Santa Claus to 
 bring me for my first 
 Christmas on earth a 
 stuffed specimen of the 
 equine species. 
 
 As I have already re- 
 marked, my knowledge 
 of psychology is very 
 limited, but I do believe 
 that, with the plans he 
 made for me when I 
 made my appearance in 
 his family, he should 
 have picked old Santa's stock over a little more 
 carefully, and his first order for me should have 
 been a wooden Indian. 
 
 While I lived with my father eighteen years, 
 our home was on the western limits of the city of 
 Milwaukee. A few blocks from our home lived an 
 
 I early showed a predilection 
 for horses 
 
10 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 eccentric old man, who folks thereabouts called 
 "Cowboy Charlie." He made a good living by 
 trading horses and by taking city horses for 
 pasturage at a couple of dollars the month. He 
 was a sharp-witted old fellow and square and 
 broad-minded to a fault. He had received a good 
 education in the old country and had gravitated 
 to the level of a horse jockey as the result of 
 domestic disturbances induced by a flighty wife. 
 
 Here, with old Charlie, I spent my holidays 
 and evenings after school. When my compan- 
 ions of the day were playing ball or other games 
 I was with old Charlie, breaking broncos or 
 swapping horses. 
 
 When I had finished school, my father took 
 the bull by the horns, so to speak, and placed me 
 in the wholesale leaf tobacco house, where I was 
 to get my preliminary training for the work he 
 had outlined for my future career. While I 
 worked at this place I kept up my friendship with 
 old Charlie and evenings and Sundays were spent 
 in his company, and there, to old Charlie, I made 
 my protests against the work which my father 
 was forcing me to take up, and which was not to 
 my liking. Every night we would talk about it 
 and old Charlie sympathized with me always. 
 
 When I had been about a year in the leaf 
 tobacco house I began to be so dissatisfied that 
 every day became well-nigh unbearable. I longed 
 for the open, for the roughness of the horse world, 
 and my thoughts were never with my work. 
 
 It was about at this stage of my development 
 that I made the acquaintance of a certain vet- 
 
TRAINING VS. INCLINATION 
 
 11 
 
 M\ 
 
 erinary surgeon, and he so imbued me with the 
 spirit of his calling that I then and there decided 
 that I had found my vocation. Prospectuses 
 from various colleges, were applied for at once, 
 and the tobacco business lost what little interest it 
 yet held for me. But, now to break the news to 
 the "governor." 
 
 This always seemed an easy matter when I was 
 in one end of the town and he in another, but as 
 soon as he stood before 
 me I lost all courage and 
 several months passed 
 before I could even 
 bring myself to think of 
 the matter in his pres- 
 ence. 
 
 I had not been losing 
 ground during this time. 
 My mother was fully in- 
 formed of my intentions, 
 and with her help I final- 
 ly faced the issue. Never 
 will I forget my father's 
 anger on this occasion. 
 He allowed me to finish my plea and then the 
 storm broke. When it was over I was packing a 
 satchel and my brain was having a storm of its 
 own. I had been ordered to leave the house. The 
 "governor " was done with me. 
 
 But I did not leave the house that day. I knew 
 my mother full well and I took a long time pack- 
 ing that satchel, and just as I was putting in the 
 last pair of socks my mother came up and said 
 
 "Cowboy Charlie" 
 
12 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 that Dad told her I might remain if I wanted to 
 continue at my job in the leaf tobacco house. 
 I took advantage of this truce and went back 
 
 I saved up some money and bought an anatomy and began to 
 
 study nights 
 
 to work. I saved up some money and bought an 
 anatomy and began to study nights, then, about 
 three months after my first break with the 
 
TRAINING VS. INCLINATION 13 
 
 "governor," I quit my job and went home and 
 faced him again. 
 
 The storm that struck me the first time was as 
 a gentle breeze compared to the one that I had 
 now to encounter, but I weathered through it, 
 backed up by mother. I was now in my 
 eighteenth year, and as I look back to that day, 
 now twelve years gone, I wonder at the ways of 
 men, and at the ironies of fate. I have faced 
 many storms since that day, brain storms and 
 every other kind of storm, against which that 
 second outburst of my father's was but a gentle 
 love tap. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 A PRACTICE WON AND LOST IN MILWAUKEE 
 
 After my resignation from the tobacco busi- 
 ness, I became a student at a Milwaukee vet- 
 erinary hospital and remained there for eight 
 months prior to my entering college. At the 
 termination of my apprenticeship in the Mil- 
 waukee institution, I matriculated in the Chicago 
 Veterinary College and after three years of hard 
 study I graduated with honors. This pleased my 
 father, who had now been wholly won over to my 
 view and who paid my way through college. 
 
 I had just become of age and at once opened 
 up an office on the south side of Milwaukee. 
 
 Within a few months, I was doing a very fair 
 practice and would probably have remained there 
 permanently but for two reasons. 
 
 The first of these was my old friend Charlie. 
 After I graduated our friendship continued and 
 1 took much delight in patching up various crip- 
 pled and unsound steeds which came into his 
 possession by various means and which he later 
 sold again at good profit. This was all right and 
 could do no harm. What did have effect on me 
 was the fact that old Charlie had traveled much 
 in his younger days. His stories of his travels 
 gave me the wanderlust and old Charlie rather 
 encouraged it in me. It did not set good with 
 him to see me come out of school with colors fly- 
 ing and then squat in the place of my birth. 
 
 15 
 
16 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 The second item which had some bearing on 
 my future life was in the form of one of those 
 imported German counts. 
 
 This gentlemen became very much attached to 
 me and as he retained quite a good many of his 
 foreign ideas about life, it became necessary for 
 me to join in his numerous sprees. I say neces- 
 sary; at least I thought so at that time. The 
 Count had control of several dollars' worth of 
 practice which was mine only so only as I was his 
 friend. 
 
 I tried to hold up my end of the performance 
 as well as he did his, but at the end of several 
 months, I found that I was going under. 
 
 When one gets so that he can't begin the day 
 without two or three doses of corn juice, he must 
 be going under. 
 
 On top of this, and, of course, as a result 
 thereof, more money seemed to be going out than 
 was coming in. When my clients wanted me I 
 could not be found and so my practice soon went 
 from me. 
 
 I had enough good sense to see how things 
 were turning out and before I went wholly on the 
 rocks, I sold my horse and buggy, promised to 
 pay my debts, and left for Texas. 
 
 Before I left, I took the United States Civil 
 Service examination for Veterinary Inspector, 
 and successfully passed it. This was in Septem- 
 ber, 1904. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 A NEW START IN THE GREAT SOUTHWEST 
 
 When I left Milwaukee for Texas, I was a 
 young fellow, just twenty-one, and had never 
 been more than two hundred miles from home. I 
 was a typical middle-westerner and my ideas of 
 life and the world were pretty simple ones. 
 
 I had no more conception of what I would find 
 in Texas than I now have of the next world. I 
 selected Texas as a place to go to merely because 
 the name had charms for me and because it was 
 far away. 
 
 I had in my possession a letter from one of my 
 instructors to the State Veterinarian of Texas 
 and on this letter I banked for a start. The State 
 Veterinarian at that time resided in Houston and 
 to that point I purchased my ticket, taking 
 advantage of the colonist rates then in force 
 which gave me a ticket to Houston and return for 
 twenty-two dollars and fifty cents. The return 
 portion of this ticket I have still in my keeping 
 and it is a highly treasured souvenir. 
 
 My route lay over the Chicago, Milwaukee and 
 St. Paul road to Kansas City and from Kansas 
 City over the "Katy" (Missouri, Kansas & 
 Texas), through the old Indian Territory. I 
 remember, better than all else on this trip, the 
 booming towns in the territory where oil had 
 recently been struck. Never before, nor since, 
 have I seen such an example of hustle and bustle. 
 
 17 
 
18 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 I arrived in Houston on the sixth of October; 
 and it was hot. I left the north with my winter 
 clothes, as it was getting quite chilly there when 
 I left. There, in Houston, for the first weeks I 
 thought I would die from heat and I spent a 
 great part of the time riding on the front end of 
 street cars, where the breeze was strong, trying to 
 keep cool. 
 
 When I arrived and got out of the Grand 
 Central Station, I got into one of the hotel buses 
 standing at the curb and was taken to the Hotel 
 Rice. I registered, and then went into the cafe ; 
 then I went back into the lobby and got my grip 
 back and told the clerk to check me off the reg- 
 ister again. I had found out that it would cost 
 me about four dollars a day to stay there and in 
 view of my cramped financial position, I had to 
 change hotels. 
 
 I went from the Hotel Rice to. the Bristol 
 Hotel, where I could stay for two dollars a day. 
 I remained a guest there for half a day. 
 
 After depositing my satchel at the Bristol 
 Hotel, I began a search for the State Veterina- 
 rian, to whom I had a letter of introduction, and 
 found him in a small wooden building very much 
 like a small real estate office on a new town addi- 
 tion, on the corner of Famine and Prairie 
 Avenues. 
 
 He was a fine, gentlemanly man and, as he 
 was a native of the north, I soon came to feel at 
 home. He was in need of an assistant but could 
 not quite afford to pay me what I thought I was 
 worth. 
 
A NEW START 19 
 
 After haggling over my salary for several 
 days, we agreed on a kind of partnership. All 
 business done up to two hundred dollars each 
 month was to be divided between us equally. All 
 over that sum went to him in a lump. This 
 arrangement made it possible for me to make a 
 hundred dollars a month and I did so as long as 
 I worked on this basis. 
 
 I found many things here during my first few 
 months' stay which took a good bit of the middle- 
 westerner out of me and which broadened mv 
 mind considerably. Also, I found that I would 
 have to brush up on several points in my pro- 
 fession. I encountered many conditions and dis- 
 eases here which were rare or unknown in the 
 north. 
 
 When I had entered into the partnership above 
 referred to I took a room with an elderly couple 
 in the residence section and soon I was very much 
 at home in my new surroundings. Only at cer- 
 tain times did I have a longing for my northern 
 home and I will never forget how I was affected 
 by the advertising signs of a certain brand of 
 tobacco which was on the market at the time. It 
 was called "Old North State"; everywhere on 
 telephone poles, on fences and barns these signs 
 were tacked up. "Use Good Old North State"; 
 many weeks passed before I could read one of 
 the signs without flinching. 
 
 Another difficulty I experienced in Houston 
 during the early part of my stay there was in con- 
 nection with the attitude of the whites towards 
 the negroes. It was quite a long time before I 
 
20 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 could refrain from showing them courtesies which 
 were considered out of place there. I had the 
 middle-westener firm grounding on the equality 
 of peoples and it hurt when I had to extract it. 
 
 But this was overcome in time and gave me no 
 trouble later. 
 
 I had not been in Houston many weeks before 
 I got the "happy-go-lucky spirit" of the south 
 and west. I began to have visions of big deals in 
 lands, in cattle and other big enterprises and I 
 wanted to expand. Everybody who amounted to 
 anything talked of big things; big oil strikes or 
 cattle deals ; or a land sale of thousands of acres. 
 My middle-west sense of proportion was torn into 
 shreds and I began to get the wanderlust again ; 
 wanted to see some of this big action. 
 
 To this day I have not entirely overcome that 
 desire to move; it comes to the fore every now 
 and then and it has cost me dearly more than 
 once. 
 
 At just about the time when that hundred dol- 
 lars per month was getting on my nerves, I 
 received a commission from the United States 
 Department of Agriculture as a veterinary 
 inspector in the Bureau of Animal Industry, with 
 orders to report for duty at Fort Worth, Texas. 
 I have mentioned before that I took the civil 
 service examination before leaving Milwaukee; 
 this appointment followed it. 
 
 I had not notified the civil service commission 
 of my change of address and the appointment 
 letter had been sent to my home address in Mil- 
 waukee and forwarded to me by my father, reach- 
 
A NEW START 21 
 
 ing me in Houston on the day on which I was to 
 go on duty in Fort Worth. 
 
 The position paid only a hundred dollars a 
 month also, but I thought it would give me an 
 opportunity to satisfy my craving for a change of 
 environment and so I wired my acceptance and 
 left for my station that night. 
 
 Before leaving the State Veterinarian assured 
 me that he would be pleased to have me return 
 and continue in his employ if the government 
 position should be unsuitable. I am not sure 
 whether he made the assertion in good faith. 
 Nevertheless, I was back in Houston inside of 
 two weeks and he kept his word. 
 
 Arriving at Fort Worth, I was put on hog 
 inspection in Armour's Packing House. Meat 
 inspection at that time, as governed by govern- 
 ment regulations, was a farce and in the light of 
 my opportunities in other fields, I did not care 
 to be a party to what I considered hoodwinking 
 the public. The reader must remember that this 
 was twelve years ago before the meat inspection 
 law of 1906, before the publication of "The 
 Jungle" and when congress was niggardly with 
 the Department of Agriculture and looked upon 
 meat inspection chiefly as a means of procuring 
 export trade. 
 
 The climax of this part of my career was pre- 
 cipitated by a quarrel with the chief inspector 
 who persisted in releasing animals which I con- 
 demned, and I resigned. He had been in the 
 service so long that he had become calloused to 
 conditions which were repugnant to me. As 
 
22 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 evidence that I was not entirely wrong about this 
 I had the satisfaction to see him reduced to the 
 rank of ordinary inspector soon thereafter. 
 
 As I said, I resigned and went back to Hous- 
 ton and took up my work where I had left off. 
 I was in a restful frame of mind again and for 
 about two months I was satisfied that Houston 
 just suited me. 
 
 The hot weather kept right up and on Christ- 
 mas day there came a nice warm rain. This rain 
 interfered with the proper Christmas festivities as 
 they are conducted there, which is on the order of 
 our Fourth of July celebration in the north — 
 fireworks and all that goes with it. 
 
 Speaking of Fourth of July celebrations 
 brings to my mind a type of native which I fre- 
 quently encountered in east Texas and who gave 
 me much concern at first. They are "old timers" 
 who do not seem to know that the Civil War is 
 over and forgotten. To them every man from 
 the north is a hated "Yank" and in some of the 
 "back-in-the-sticks" places in east Texas it is best 
 not to speak too plainly about your place of birth 
 if you happen to be from the north side of the 
 Mason-Dixon line. 
 
 The month of February came and I began to 
 get the spring fever. I had now been in Texas 
 four months and I wanted to see more of it. I 
 began to look around for a location with a view of 
 going into practice on my own hook again, and 
 after some casting about, I decided to go to 
 Temple, in Bell County, one of the best farming 
 counties in Texas. 
 
A NEW START 23 
 
 I had not saved a dollar in Houston during the 
 four months and had to borrow some money to 
 get started in Temple. I thought I could well 
 afford to do so considering what bonanza location 
 Temple seemed to be. It was then a town of 
 about ten thousand people and a few miles away 
 is Belton, the county seat, also a good town. An 
 electric railway connects them. In neither of 
 these towns nor in any town within a radius of 
 fifty miles was there a graduate veterinarian. 
 
 The surrounding country was thickly settled 
 with good farmers and it looked like a fine 
 opening. 
 
 I stayed there about six weeks. During those 
 six weeks, I earned about six dollars. 
 
 After I had been there a few weeks and saw 
 how things were going, I made application for 
 reinstatement in the government service and 
 through the good offices of my friend, the State 
 Veterinarian in Houston, I was given an assign- 
 ment on Colonel Dean's force in the quarantine 
 division. This meant field work, in the open, and 
 suited me exactly. 
 
 I had been corresponding with a classmate of 
 mine who had located in Massachusetts. He 
 wanted to come west. Although I had done little 
 or no business in Temple, I could see no reason 
 for it, I can't see any reason to this day, why 
 there was no business there. I sincerely believed 
 that the business was there and would come in 
 time. I wrote my former classmate about the 
 situation and he came and took my office a few 
 days before my government job went into effect. 
 
24 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 He remained there three months and had to 
 borrow money to get out of town, as I had to do 
 also when I left there. 
 
 I borrowed money to get in and start and then 
 borrowed more to get out and quit. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 PRACTICE IN TEXAS 
 
 When I first began to practice my profession 
 in Texas I made the discovery that there were a 
 number of diseases among animals which I had 
 never seen in the northern animals. 
 
 The first one of these was anthrax, and, by the 
 way, one of the first cases that came into my 
 hands after my arrival in Texas was a case of 
 anthrax in a horse. I remember the case very 
 well. It was on a hot Sunday afternoon, and the 
 horse in question was a driver stabled in a private 
 stable in the residence section in Houston. The 
 animal was taken sick about noon and the owner 
 called me at about two in the afternoon. When 
 1 arrived, the owner stated that the sickness came 
 on suddenly ; the horse had been standing, quietly 
 eating, when suddenly he stopped eating and 
 seemed somewhat delirious. Very soon there- 
 after he went down. I found him down, showing 
 some delirium. On various parts of his body, but 
 mostly in front of the trachea and under the 
 belly, he had an edematous swelling. The owner 
 stated these came on since he was taken sick. 
 
 The visible membranes showed echymoses ; the 
 temperature was quite high. 
 
 The owner was a pleasant chap and did not try 
 to "think what is the matter with him," but when 
 I told him I thought his horse had anthrax, he 
 disagreed with me; he said he thought it was 
 
 25 
 
26 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 charbon. I explained that charbon and anthrax 
 were the same and complimented him on his 
 ability to diagnose the case. He stated that he 
 was quite familiar with this disease, having been 
 raised in the low-lands of east Texas. "But," he 
 said, "folks hereabouts always call in charbon." 
 
 Of course I remembered the synonyms of anth- 
 rax. 
 
 The horse died in about three hours, having 
 had, no doubt, the apoplectic form. 
 
 Anthrax, or charbon, was very common in that 
 country in those days. Even within the city it 
 was not rare. I clearly remember an instance in 
 my experience occurring in a small dairy which 
 was conducted in the residence portion of Hous- 
 ton. Three or four cows died in two davs with 
 
 ml 
 
 anthrax. 
 
 So common was the disease that many people 
 would not call in the veterinarian at all, recogniz- 
 ing the disease themselves and "just letting them 
 die." 
 
 This was no doubt one of the reasons why the 
 disease was so common; almost no preventive 
 measures were taken and carcasses were not 
 properly destroyed. 
 
 Another disease which was very common there 
 was tetanus. Very few horses died from it, how- 
 ever; it seemed to run a very mild course. The 
 latter point made it necessary for me to change 
 my prognosis in tetanus cases; in Wisconsin we 
 usually gave a very unfavorable prognosis 
 because the mortality there from tetanus was 
 very high. Here, in Texas, I discovered that I 
 
PRACTICE IN TEXAS 27 
 
 could usually give a very favorable prognosis for 
 eases of tetanus. 
 
 The disease which gave me the most trouble 
 when I first began to practice in east Texas was 
 the botryomycotic infection commonly known as 
 ''summer sores." 
 
 Some of my experiences with this condition 
 were most discouraging and I did not make much 
 progress with my handling of these cases until an 
 old practitioner "put me next" to a few things. 
 Most of the practitioners with whom I discussed 
 this disease had only a very poor understanding 
 of the pathology of it; most of them had never 
 heard of botryomyces. Some of them attributed 
 the condition to the filaria irritans. A few of them 
 ascribed the condition to cancerous processes, 
 calling it cancer. Nearly every one had a differ- 
 ent form of treatment for this disease ; and most 
 of the treatments did not accomplish very much. 
 
 I remember one instance which occurred while 
 I was in Texas in which a very competent veter- 
 inarian diagnosed a botryomycotic infection of 
 the genitals in a stallion as dourine. I mention 
 this merely to illustrate how little even the local 
 practitioners knew about botryomycosis at the 
 time of which I write. 
 
 One condition which I expected to find in the 
 south was insolation, or heat stroke. Great was 
 my surprise when an old practitioner in Houston 
 told me that this condition was practically never 
 seen there. Later I found this to be true. I had 
 one or two cases of "over-heating" in a mild form, 
 
28 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 but regular sun-stroke such as we get in the 
 north, I never encountered in the south. 
 
 An interesting point along therapeutic lines I 
 learned in the extreme western part of Texas, 
 where the altitude is very high, being sometimes 
 5,000 feet above sea level. This point was in 
 regard to the treatment of pneumonia, and other 
 febrile conditions, but pneumonia most especially, 
 and consists in the fact that one must be very 
 careful in the use of heart depressants such as 
 acetanilid, phenacetin, all coal-tar products, and 
 even quinin. 
 
 The doctor who treats his pneumonia cases 
 there as most of us do in the lower altitudes will 
 have many deaths, usually in the first day or two 
 of the attack. Pneumonia patients in those alti- 
 tudes truly die of heart exhaustion, and few fatal 
 cases live over a few days. It is a good place in 
 which to take lessons in the treatment of this dis- 
 ease — lessons that are valuable in any altitude. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 WITH UNCLE SAM 
 
 A whole year had gone by now since my grad- 
 uation and I had nothing except a little expe- 
 rience to show for it. Money I had none, and 
 what was worse, I was in debt. 
 
 I owed several friends money in Milwaukee 
 and also in Houston. Likewise in Temple where 
 I had had to borrow money to get out of town. 
 
 I was now twenty-two years old and in good 
 health. I was full of life and the world looked 
 bright to me in spite of my misfortune. 
 
 So far only one occurrence had the effect of 
 sadness on me and that was a notice which I 
 received, while in Temple, of the death — self- 
 inflicted — of my old friend Charlie. Aside from 
 this, I could see nothing but cheerful success 
 ahead of me, as I began my duties for the second 
 time in the government service. As my work 
 this time would be inspecting animals on the hoof 
 at various ranches and stock yards, I looked for- 
 ward to my new appointment with much interest. 
 
 My first appointment as veterinary official in 
 the Bureau of Animal Industry was in the fall 
 of 1904, shortly after my arrival in Texas. By a 
 strange coincidence I was to go on duty at Fort 
 Worth, Texas. 
 
 The position at that time paid only $1,200.00 
 a year, and the veterinarian went by the title of 
 "Meat Inspector." 
 
 29 
 
30 
 
 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 The inspection, as it was carried out then, was 
 very slipshod and unscientific. Under instruc- 
 tions, I -sat for nine hours, with a short lunch 
 period, in a chair inspecting hog viscera. I was 
 supplied with a pronged stick for poking any 
 particular set into position for a better view. 
 Unless a gross pathological process was present, 
 it was impossible to detect abnormalities. 
 
 This system of inspection did not agree with 
 
 I was sent to Colorado City, Texas, to inspect cattle for interstate 
 
 shipment 
 
 my ideas of "value received," and when my 
 superior persisted in releasing the few carcasses 
 which I did hold up in spite of this poor method 
 of inspection, I resigned. I had been on the job 
 only two weeks. 
 
 When I was reinstated in the service, in the 
 spring of 1905, I went into the quarantine divi- 
 sion. 
 
 In this division I found an entirely different 
 state of affairs. The inspectors were capable 
 and efficient fellows, and did their work well. 
 
WITH UNCLE SAM 31 
 
 My orders were to report for duty at Fort 
 Worth to Dr. Wallace (who has since died), 
 there to get my instructions and to he "broken 
 in." After ten days, I was supposed to be "broke 
 in" sufficiently and was sent to Colorado City, 
 Texas, to inspect cattle, out of the modified quar- 
 antine area, for inter-state shipment. My instruc- 
 tions were to report to Dan McCunningham, 
 inspector in charge at Colorado City, and work 
 under his orders; but when I arrived McCun- 
 ningham was away making an inspection. 
 
 Somehow word had reached Colorado City that 
 an assistant inspector would make his appearance 
 on that day and my services were in demand at 
 once. A certain cattle man had fourteen hundred 
 head of steers he wanted to ship. The cattle were 
 gathered, cars ordered and they must be 
 inspected at once. My chief was away, and I, as 
 assistant, must make the inspection which, in that 
 locality, was for Texas fever ticks. 
 
 These "ticks," when full grown, are about the 
 size of a grain of corn and my inspection papers, 
 when signed by me, would certify that every one 
 of those fourteen hundred steers was free from 
 ticks ; if I could have found one tick on one steer, 
 I should have had to refuse to issue them clear- 
 ance papers. 
 
 From this you can imagine that I was not very 
 much at ease on this job. Here I was, new at the 
 work, and new to this life, with fourteen hundred 
 wild Texas steers staring me in the face, demand- 
 ing inspection. But "I slipped one over" on this 
 
32 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 first job in my new official capacity in the follow- 
 ing manner: 
 
 It was the custom at that time for the state of 
 Texas to appoint local inspectors in each county 
 to assist in maintaining the federal quarantine 
 lines and to make inspections of cattle for move- 
 ment within the state of Texas. In addition to 
 this they also made an inspection ( for the state of 
 Texas) of all cattle moving out of the quar- 
 antined area for any purpose whatever. 
 
 These state inspectors were laymen, but usually 
 expert "cow-men" and very dependable inspec- 
 tors. In the instance of my first inspection two 
 of these state inspectors, Tom Benson and Joe 
 Merritt, were present. I allowed them to make 
 their inspection first and when they gave me their 
 opinion that the herd was free from ticks, I felt 
 that I need have no scruples about issing my cer- 
 tificate. I made only a casual examination and 
 frankly told the state inspectors that I had con- 
 fidence in their inspection. In this manner I not 
 only slipped through an embarrassing position, 
 for I knew absolutely nothing about inspecting 
 cattle in herds on the plains, but I also gained the 
 friendship and good-will of the two state men. 
 They did many good turns for me as long as I 
 was stationed at Colorado City and are num- 
 bered among my staunch friends to this day. 
 
 On the following day McCunningham made 
 his appearance and I worked under his super- 
 vision for a time, until I was capable of making 
 a thorough inspection. 
 
 This McCunningham was one of the old live- 
 
WITH UNCLE SAM 33 
 
 stock agents of which not many are left in the 
 Bureau of Animal Industry. They were not 
 veterinarians, but most of those with whom I 
 became acquainted were good "cow-men" and 
 had a very good knowledge of the quarantine reg- 
 ulations and of the diseases for which they were 
 on the lookout: 
 
 One of these government agents, the late Col. 
 Albert Dean, will bear mention especially. He 
 was a fine man in every respect and for many 
 years was in charge of the quarantine division 
 covering Texas, New Mexico and Arizona and 
 portions of other states. Veterinarians as well as 
 others were under his supervision and all held 
 him in high esteem. Officially he ranked even 
 above the inspector in charge at Kansas City and 
 was for many years and until his death, about 
 three years ago, an instructor in a veterinary col- 
 lege there. 
 
 I remained at Colorado City about two 
 months and was then transferred to El Paso, to 
 inspect animals of all kinds for importation into 
 the United States from Mexico. 
 
 In this position, I traveled along the Mexican 
 border from Sanderson, Texas, to Nogales, 
 Arizona. It was interesting work, although at 
 times hazardous and connected with much hard- 
 ship. In a short time I could speak Spanish 
 enough to make my dealings with the Mexican 
 cattle-men more agreeable and this knowledge of 
 Spanish came to be quite useful in other lines. 
 
 After I became proficient in the art of inspect- 
 ing stock on the hoof, I found the work very 
 
34 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 interesting. The constant traveling about, from 
 one town to another and from the towns to the 
 various ranches and ranges, was exactly to my 
 liking. Besides, there was plenty of chance for 
 excitement; in some spots the territory which I 
 had in charge was quite "wild and woolly." 
 Almost every day there was need for consider- 
 able "backbone," and now and then for more 
 than considerable. A few of my experiences will 
 suffice to give the reader an idea of what the vet- 
 erinary inspector does in the quarantine division 
 for a hundred dollars per month. (Today he 
 gets $116.67 per month.) 
 
 A request came to the office one day for 
 inspection of some two thousand head of steers 
 out of the modified quarantine area. I was 
 detailed to proceed to the point given and make 
 the inspection without delay. I left my station 
 in the evening, rode on the train all night and 
 arrived at the place, Marathon, early the next 
 morning. 
 
 The regulations affecting the modified quaran- 
 tine area stipulated that the cattle must be 
 inspected on the ranch or range; they must not 
 be trailed until the government inspector had 
 certified them. The inspection was chiefly for 
 Texas fever ticks, but other infectious diseases, 
 like scab for example, must not be ignored. 
 
 When I arrived at Marathon the owner of the 
 cattle met me at the depot. He stated that the 
 cattle were within a few miles of the town, hav- 
 ing been driven from the ranch in Pecos County. 
 Here was a calamity. Pecos County, where the 
 ranch was located, was in quarantine. Mara- 
 
WITH UNCLE SAM 35 
 
 thon, where the cattle now were, was in Brew- 
 ster County, in the free area. My duty, accord- 
 ing to the government regulations bearing upon 
 a case of this kind, would be to declare the 
 cattle in quarantine at once wherever I found 
 them. I had no right, even to look at them in 
 an official capacity. The cattle were from an 
 infected area and must be looked upon as 
 infected. The fact that they had been trailed 
 out of the quarantined area in violation of the 
 regulations placed them beyond the pale of eligi- 
 bility for inspection for the time being. I must 
 place them under quarantine for thirty days, at 
 the expiration of which the owner might apply 
 for inspection to obtain their release. 
 
 You can imagine that a cow-man would not 
 take this matter very lightly. Here were around 
 two thousand steers, valued easily at $50,000.00, 
 in prime shape for market. Along comes "a 
 young kid of a government inspector," working 
 for a hundred dollars a month, who says the 
 cattle cannot be shipped. But this was not the 
 biggest trouble. When word was passed around 
 that the government inspector had said the cattle 
 were to be considered under quarantine, the 
 ranchmen on whose property the cattle hap- 
 pened to be at the time wanted to drive them off ; 
 their district was in the free area, open to all 
 markets, and they did not want the herd on their 
 places. 
 
 My first act was to wire my chief, old Col. 
 Dean, at Kansas City, what I was up against. 
 I received a reply which upheld my action and 
 ordered me to properly institute a quarantine 
 
36 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 over the herd and then return to my station. 
 This made me feel good, I assure you. 
 
 When, four weeks after, I was again detailed 
 to inspect the herd I found them absolutely free 
 from infection. As far as I know the owner of 
 that herd has not forgiven me to this day ; I lost 
 his goodwill. But, — I had to enforce the regula- 
 tions. 
 
 On another occasion I was detailed to inspect 
 a small herd of cattle, numbering about three 
 hundred head, for shipment out of the modified 
 quarantine area near the town of Colorado, 
 Texas. 
 
 The ranch on which the cattle were at the time 
 was known to be infected with ticks, and no cat- 
 tle had passed inspection there for several 
 seasons. My superior officer gave me warning 
 to "look sharp" and be on my mettle, for not 
 only was the ranch known to be infected, but the 
 owner was also known for his trickery in "trying 
 to get by." 
 
 Two inspectors acting for the State of Texas 
 accompanied me to the ranch. We found the 
 herd gathered in a small corral, barely large 
 enough to hold them. This was the first evidence 
 to me that the owner of the herd was on to his 
 job; it is a most difficult matter to make a 
 thorough inspection for ticks under such condi- 
 tions. The cattle crowd and join together, giv- 
 ing the inspector no chance to view the parts 
 where ticks are most commonly seen, such as the 
 dewlap, escutcheon, udder, lower flank, and so on. 
 
 When the inspector pushes his horse into the 
 bunch, he is immediately surrounded by the 
 
WITH UNCLE SAM 37 
 
 herd; the cattle find it impossible to spread out, 
 and handle his mount as he may, the inspector 
 remains constantly in the jam. Besides, it is a 
 very difficult matter to "cut out" a cow or a steer 
 for individual examination under such condi- 
 tions. I had been "up against" just such propo- 
 sitions before this, however, and I made that 
 owner and his little bunch of cow-punchers earn 
 their bread that day. 
 
 For nearly two hours I had them jumping 
 cows into a chute, where I made a thorough 
 inspection at my ease. I had examined probably 
 a couple of hundred head of the herd in this 
 manner without finding a sign of a tick. The 
 owner and the punchers were getting balky ; they 
 began to make remarks about the government's 
 ideas of the cattle industry and about some of 
 the "damphool" inspectors working for the gov- 
 ernment. This "got my goat." I told them that 
 I was there to find ticks on their cows; that I 
 knew there were ticks on them, and that I would 
 have every cow go through the chute. "And 
 then," I said, "if I haven't found any ticks, we 
 will run them all through the chute once more. 
 You guys are nothing but a bunch of bluffers 
 and I know that too. Now get busy, or I go 
 back to town." 
 
 Well, I had them sized up right; not a man 
 peeped, and they rushed the cattle through the 
 chute plenty fast. 
 
 When I had examined all but about twenty or 
 thirty head, they chased in a big red cow; and 
 there the performance stopped. I found a 
 couple of nice, big, fat ticks on the inside of one 
 
38 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 thigh. Under the magnifying glass they proved 
 to be the Margaropus annulatus. 
 
 The owner of the herd stood by my side when 
 
 CAUGHT HIM WITH A FULL ARM SWING ON THE 51DE OF" THE NECK 
 
 I pulled the ticks off the cow, and he wanted me 
 to hand him the ticks. This I would not do 
 until both the state inspectors had seen them 
 
WITH UNCLE SAM 39 
 
 and confirmed my findings ; then I let him exam- 
 ine them. When he had done looking them over, 
 he claimed they were not Texas fever ticks. I 
 did not argue with him, but simply told him he 
 could not ship the cattle. Thereupon he rushed 
 at me, fumbling with his right hand in his shirt 
 front. I stepped to one side and, whirling partly 
 round on one foot, I caught him with a full arm 
 swing on the side of the neck. He seemed to 
 become suddenly rigid and toppled over like a 
 post. 
 
 I expected the gang of punchers to jump me, 
 but no one interfered. The two state inspectors 
 accompanied me back to town, and on the way 
 they advised me to be on my guard for the fellow 
 from now on; they said he was a "bad actor" and 
 would "get" me. Imagine my surprise when the 
 next day he appeared at the office and begged 
 my pardon for having lost his temper. When I 
 saw him coming, I thought he was coming to 
 shoot it out with me, and I "fixed" myself; that 
 is, I met him at the door with a heavy "44 Colts' " 
 in one hand. 
 
 Later I was told that his pardon begging stunt 
 was the result of certain information imparted to 
 him by one of the state inspectors. This partic- 
 ular bit of information related to the Act of 
 Congress which provides for the severe punish- 
 ment of parties guilty of threatening or attack- 
 ing an inspector performing his duty. 
 
 While such episodes as I have just related 
 were common occurrences in the routine of quar- 
 antine work in those days, I remember only one 
 or two instances where the inspectors took 
 
40 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 advantage of their official capacity in thus prose- 
 cuting an individual. As a rule the occurrence 
 was not reported by the inspector. Usually we 
 came out on top anyhow, and we merely counted 
 it as a little spice to our sauce. Nearly every 
 inspector in the quarantine division in those days 
 could tell you a number of similar experiences. 
 
 The fault in every case lay with the cattle men, 
 who looked upon the matter as personal between 
 them and the inspectors. They did not stop to 
 consider that everything the veterinary inspector 
 did was under rigid rules and regulations. A 
 government veterinarian in that branch of the 
 service really had no personality while on duty. 
 He was bound to enforce the government regu- 
 lations regardless of sentiment or personal bias, 
 and it could make no difference to him what the 
 circumstances, or who the sufferer. For the 
 inspector it is always an "open and shut" propo- 
 sition. 
 
 For a period of five months I was stationed at 
 El Paso, Texas, making inspections of live stock 
 imported into this country from Mexico. My 
 territory extended along the Mexican border for 
 a distance of about three hundred miles on each 
 side of El Paso. 
 
 At that time Mexico had no rules or regula- 
 tions affecting live stock diseases and the U. S. 
 government regulations on Mexican stock cov- 
 ered all communicable diseases. The U. S. 
 inspectors were supposed to "spot" anything and 
 everything on Mexican stock presented for 
 importation into this country; the inspectors 
 could use their judgement to a great extent. 
 
WITH UNCLE SAM 41 
 
 This work was very interesting, but no "snap" 
 by any means. The transportation and hotel 
 accommodations were far from being first-class, 
 and the inspector found many things to worry 
 about. 
 
 I remember one instance in which I was 
 detailed to make an inspection of Mexican cat- 
 tle across the line from Columbus, N. M. I left 
 El Paso at six in the evening on a mixed freight 
 and passenger train, arriving at Columbus about 
 midnight. Columbus at that time consisted of 
 the depot, a section house, and the cow pens. 
 Getting off the train, I asked the depot agent 
 where I could get a night's lodging. He said 
 there was no place "in town" where they put up 
 travelers, but there was a man living about a mile 
 west who "usually took them in." He pointed 
 out a light to me in that direction, saying, "See 
 that light? Well, that's the place." 
 
 I did not like the idea of walking a mile 
 through that rattlesnake desert at midnight; I 
 followed him into the depot and asked permis- 
 sion to sleep on the floor. At first he refused my 
 request; but when I told him I was a federal 
 officer, and after he had taken a look at my 
 badge, he said I might stay. 
 
 So I made a pillow of my grip and slept away. 
 
 About 2 o'clock I awoke, chilled to the bone. 
 Although the month was July, I was experienc- 
 ing one of those cold nights so common in that 
 high altitude; I don't believe I ever suffered so 
 from cold, before or since, as I did there that 
 July night. 
 
 I found it impossible to sleep again and got 
 
42 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 up with the intention of building a fire some- 
 where outside to get warm by, only to find that I 
 had no matches. So I began to walk up and 
 down the track, keeping it up until sunrise, 
 somewhere around four o'clock. 
 
 About six o'clock the agent got up and was 
 kind enough to invite me upstairs to breakfast, a 
 breakfast that I enjoyed too, thankfully. 
 
 I had just finished the breakfast when a rider 
 appeared with an extra horse to take me out to 
 the herd; twelve miles below Columbus they 
 were, he said. You can imagine how I felt 
 about riding twelve miles on a horse after walk- 
 ing the track the greater part of the night. 
 
 And then, when we got to their camp, the boss 
 informed me that the herd had stampeded during 
 the night ; the boys had been successful in holding 
 about half of them, around seven hundred head, 
 and it would take a day or two to gather the run- 
 aways again. He thought, though, that I might 
 look at those they held and issue a certificate on 
 the entire shipment if I found these were alright ; 
 they were all "clean," he was positive, and he 
 couldn't see why that could not be done. 
 
 I told him I could not do this ; I would have to 
 see every animal I certified. However, I told 
 him that I would inspect the seven hundred head 
 they had now and give him a certificate on that 
 number if I found them alright. 
 
 This he did not want, and I rode back to 
 Columbus. 
 
 It took nearly two weeks before the office 
 received another request to inspect the herd, 
 when another inspector was detailed to the work. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 BACK TO MILWAUKEE 
 
 I remained in El Paso five months and was 
 transferred again to Colorado City to relieve old 
 Dan McCunningham, resigned. This was vir- 
 tually a promotion for me and considering the 
 fact that I was only a few months in the service, 
 it should have elated me in the highest. I did 
 not look at it in this light, however, and one 
 month later I resigned my position to take up a 
 road position with C. BischofT & Co., of New 
 York City. 
 
 This was at the time of the advent of Prof. 
 Yon Behring's Bovo-vaccine for the immuniza- 
 tion of cattle against tuberculosis and my duty 
 was the introduction of Bovo-vaccine among 
 veterinarians, health officers and stock raisers. 
 Besides this, I was to appear at various live-stock 
 meetings and address them on the subject. This 
 position paid a good deal more than the govern- 
 ment position and was a grand opportunity for 
 me to do something more than most veterinarians 
 have a chance to do. My territory included the 
 states on both sides of the Mississippi from Mex- 
 ico to Canada and I had visions of great variety. 
 
 I held this position just three weeks. It took 
 much patience for me to stay with it even so long. 
 Bovo-vaccine was entirely in the experimental 
 stage at the time and I could not "talk" it strong 
 enough. I could not bring myself to the right 
 pitch of enthusiasm in the stuff and of course 
 nobody wanted to subject his cattle to an experi- 
 ment. I got as far as Kansas City and then sent 
 
 43 
 
44 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 in my resignation, leaving at once for my old 
 home in Milwaukee, after having been away a 
 year and two months. 
 
 A few days after my arrival in Milwaukee, I 
 received a letter from C. BischofT & Co., in which 
 they expressed their regret at my resignation 
 and urging me to come to New York at their 
 expense for the purpose of instructing me in the 
 art of introducing Bovo- vaccine. 
 
 This offer I also turned down. To this day I 
 have regretted this. One of the qualifications 
 which gave me the position with these people was 
 my knowledge of German. It was desired that 
 I make first-hand translations from literature 
 obtained from Behringwerk in Germany and 
 other matters. This knowledge of German had 
 other value with this position which might have 
 come later and I have always been sorry for my 
 action in declining the offer. 
 
 Now I found myself back in Milwaukee under 
 my father's roof. I had been gone a little over 
 a year and had given the finest exhibition of 
 bone-headism during this time which was ever 
 witnessed. I was only twenty-two years old and 
 although Opportunity had already knocked twice 
 at my door I had set the dog on her each time. 
 
 Had I remained in the government service at 
 Colorado City I might now be a superior officer 
 in that organization. Setting this aside, had I 
 remained with C. BischofT & Co., I might now be 
 hobnobbing with Prof, von Behring himself. 
 But as things were, I was out of a job, had not 
 even a bread and butter practice, and I was 
 "broke" besides. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 I LEAVE FOR TEXAS AGAIN 
 
 When I made up my mind to return to my 
 home in Milwaukee it was with no intention of 
 doing anything in particular. I was floundering, 
 mentally, like a fish in a net. I was full of energy 
 and ambition, but I could not become anchored. 
 
 While I was in the government service I saw 
 many chances for making my fortune, by the 
 investment of a few hundred dollars, but I could 
 never assemble the few hundred dollars. One of 
 the opportunities which I saw at that time has 
 recently come to the fore and when I read the 
 notice of it in the papers a few months ago, I 
 almost got the wander-lust again. The notice in 
 the paper referred to the fact that the waters in 
 the springs at Fort Stockton, Texas, are heavily 
 charged with radium; and of course, you know 
 what that means for Fort Stockton. 
 
 Fort Stockton was one of the towns to which 
 I made a number of trips while in the service and 
 I could see a great future for it as a health 
 resort. While I knew nothing about the radium 
 in the water, everything else was ideal for the 
 purpose, and I endeavored on several occasions 
 to interest certain parties in the project, but 
 never successfully. 
 
 At other places in west Texas I saw towns 
 spring up from a few tents to a thousand inhab- 
 itants in a few months' time. Many of these 
 towns are now hustling, solid places and the best 
 
 45 
 
46 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 for them is yet to come. All these things and 
 many more were constantly almost within my 
 grasp. In many instances a few hundred dollars 
 properly placed would have made a snug fortune 
 for me. 
 
 These, and many other thoughts, began to cir- 
 culate around in my think machine when I 
 landed in Milwaukee. Everything seemed small 
 and narrow now at home. In Texas everything 
 was done on a large scale and I saw more money 
 floating around in a few months in Texas than I 
 ever saw in a year in Milwaukee. 
 
 Probably the reason for this was, nearly 
 everybody else there did as I did — spent what 
 they got as fast as they could lay hands on it. 
 Nevertheless, the money works there; they don't 
 let it rest much. They keep it busy passing 
 from pocket to pocket and I didn't stop to 
 analyze the situation. 
 
 The first time I went to Texas the penny was 
 seen there only in the postoffices. Merchants 
 had no use for it. Prices were all even money, 
 nickels or dimes. When I got back to Mil- 
 waukee, a real town full of German, penny- 
 saving people, I became more than ever 
 impressed with the bigness of Texas, and all 
 things Texan. I looked around for a few weeks 
 and once more got on board the cars for Hous- 
 ton, having once again borrowed money for a 
 start. This time I had outlined a plan of prog- 
 ress and I made up my mind to gather in some 
 of that floating money and hang on to it. 
 
 How successful I was in this resolve will be 
 seen in the following pages. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IN PRACTICE AT HOUSTON 
 
 On leaving Milwaukee this time my plans 
 were to return to Houston and remain there 
 until such a time as I would have an opportunity 
 to find an opening for a good practice. Hous- 
 ton, itself, was a fairly good location at that 
 time. It was a city of about sixty thousand with 
 a grand country surrounding it, and there were 
 only three veterinarians there, meaning, of 
 course, graduates. Of empirics there were a 
 number, but these never caused me much con- 
 cern. Any graduate of ability need have no fear 
 of the best non-graduate that ever put a blister 
 on an abscess. (Where the empiric usually has 
 the advantage over the young graduate is in the 
 art of handling people. Most of them are past 
 masters at this and the young practitioner as a 
 rule does not give this part of the business much 
 attention. He relies too much on his actual pro- 
 fessional ability. As far as ''delivering the 
 goods" is concerned, I say again, no non-grad- 
 uate, be he ever so good, can stand with a 
 graduate of average worth. I have "bucked" as 
 many different empirics, some of the best of 
 them included, as any graduate in the country 
 and I never yet found it difficult to make them 
 lay down. But more of the details later. 
 
 I proceeded to Houston once more, arriving 
 there this time in the early part of February. 
 
 47 
 
48 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 My friend, the State Veterinarian, still held 
 office, and for the first few weeks I spent the 
 greater part of my time with him, earning a few 
 dollars now and then, helping out in odd cases 
 and making a long distance call now and then. 
 At that time it was nothing unusual to receive a 
 call from points fifty to a hundred miles away. 
 Graduate veterinarians were few and far 
 between in Texas in those days and one who 
 established a practice and gained any kind of 
 good reputation could always get more of these 
 long distance calls than he could handle. For 
 these trips it was customary to make a charge of 
 twenty-five dollars per day with expenses. 
 
 When a few weeks had gone by in this man- 
 ner I opened up an office in the down town 
 section on Franklin Street and hung out my own 
 sign. The State Veterinarian gave me all the 
 assistance he could in the beginning and I began 
 to do quite a bit of work. In this regard he, the 
 State Veterinarian, stands in a class of veteri- 
 nary practitioners which is not very large. He did 
 everything in his power to make it easy for me to 
 work up a practice, and that in his own territory, 
 within a few blocks of his own office. With very 
 few exceptions the other graduate veterinarians 
 with whom I have come in contact always 
 attempted in every possible manner to discourage 
 new beginners. In one instance phvsical violence 
 was threatened if I should have the courage to 
 compete with a certain practitioner. This was 
 not quite as bad as an instance, which I shall 
 relate later, in which two quacks brought com- 
 
IN PRACTICE AT HOUSTON 49 
 
 petition in their town down to an affair of sawed- 
 off shotguns; but, considering that both parties 
 were presumed to be professional gentlemen, it 
 was bad enough. 
 
 One of the ways in which the State Veteri- 
 narian helped me was in turning over to me some 
 of the long distance calls which he could not find 
 the time to attend. Such calls as these, fifty to a 
 hundred miles from the office, are the kind that 
 demonstrate the real worth of the veterinarian. 
 In such instances he must do to the best of his 
 ability in a few hours' time, what he would do at 
 home in the course of a few days or a week. He 
 must put things in a "nut shell" and his treat- 
 ment must hit the spot. Also, he must be able to 
 see ahead and prepare the owner for the handling 
 of possible complications or unexpected develop- 
 ments. The man who can make good on these 
 long distance cases will be a winner anywhere 
 and it is good training for young fellows. 
 
 In a few years I did so much of this long dis- 
 tance work that it left its mark on me. By this I 
 mean that I got the habit of handling my practice 
 at home in the same manner. To this day I find 
 myself making this mistake in my practice every 
 little while; a mistake from a financial stand- 
 point. I have treated many cases of pneumonia 
 and other long drawn-out cases, at home, making 
 not more than two calls and frequently only one 
 and while I usually get a proportionate fee, just 
 the same, the client thinks you are earning your 
 money if you call oftener, and it is probably bet- 
 ter to call oftener in a home practice. Many little 
 
50 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 things can be done for the patient under the 
 veterinarian's suggestion which will hasten the 
 recovery and oftentimes he can prevent compli- 
 cations by seeing his patient frequently. 
 
 Very soon after I started in practice on Frank- 
 lin Street I was given a contract for the veteri- 
 nary attendance on two hundred head of mules, 
 which were being used in grading the right of 
 way for a new railroad, east of Houston, running 
 through the lowlands, sometimes at sea level. 
 The main camp of this outfit was near Liberty, 
 Texas, about sixty miles from Houston, and 
 according to my contract I was to make two trips 
 to this camp each week. For this I was to get 
 fifty dollars per month for my services, medicine 
 and other essentials to be paid extra. When I 
 had held the contract for about two weeks a mule 
 died suddenly and I was summoned posthaste. 
 History and appearance, without autopsy, 
 pointed quite plainly to anthrax, and as we were 
 in a country where anthrax was common, I pro- 
 cured enough vaccine for the entire bunch and 
 vaccinated every one of them. Xot another mule 
 died. It may not have been anthrax, although I 
 was quite familiar with anthrax then, having seen 
 much of it while with the State Veterinarian. At 
 any rate I took no chances and the owner of the 
 mules was well satisfied. He had had experience 
 with this disease and he gladly footed the bill for 
 the vaccine. My contract had been running about 
 six weeks when the entire outfit changed hands 
 and another veterinarian got my job. 
 
 Now, at the time of which I write, automobiles 
 
IN PRACTICE AT HOUSTON 51 
 
 were not yet very plentiful and the livery busi- 
 ness was still flourishing, with horses for motive 
 power. There was one large stable in Houston, 
 known as the Wilson Transfer Company, which 
 at that time used several hundred horses. 
 Through the influence of a mutual friend I was 
 given a chance at the veterinary attendance in 
 this stable and would undoubtedly have been suc- 
 cessful in landing the contract for the entire out- 
 fit if I had remained there. Another live con- 
 cern whose veterinary services I performed dur- 
 ing this time was the Smithy Cab Line. This 
 concern had about thirty horses and used them 
 on a string of one-horse cabs, hauling passengers 
 fourteen blocks for twenty-five cents. This was 
 the only concern of the kind I ever knew and it 
 was a money maker. 
 
 I was now doing a very nice little bit of prac- 
 tice and was just getting a good grasp of the 
 entire opening when I received a letter from a 
 friend, a Doctor Thatcher, in El Paso. I had 
 met the doctor while I was stationed at El Paso 
 in the government service and before I left there 
 we had become very close friends. Doctor 
 Thatcher was a graduate of one of the old coun- 
 try schools in Scotland or England and had been 
 in practice at El Paso for about fifteen years 
 when I first met him. He was a good veterina- 
 rian, had seen much of the world and was a man 
 whose friendship was worth something. 
 
 In his letter he stated that he had been ap- 
 pointed bacteriologist for the city of El Paso 
 and wanted a man to take charge of his practice. 
 
62 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 If I wanted to come he would pay me a hundred 
 dollars per month salary and in addition, to make 
 it a little more interesting, five per cent on all 
 work done. If I accepted he would wire me 
 transportation and I might consider myself en- 
 gaged if the proposition suited me. 
 
 Well, it did not take me very long to decide. 
 I believe within an hour after I received the let- 
 ter, I had sent him a telegram, accepting the of- 
 fer and asking him to forward the transportation. 
 The latter was of some moment; from Houston 
 to El Paso is eight hundred and twenty-five 
 miles. At three cents a mile this made twenty- 
 four dollars and seventy-five cents, and I could 
 well make use of so much money in those days. 
 
 Within a couple of days I had collected a few 
 bills that I had outstanding, sold my few pieces 
 of office furniture and said good-bye to Hous- 
 ton and my friends there for the last time. This 
 was on the Fourth of July, 1906, and I have not 
 been there since. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 EL PASO 
 
 With my removal to El Paso began an era of 
 prosperity for me which lasted for two or three 
 years. 
 
 I had "made good" in Houston during the 
 short time I was in business for myself there. 
 That is, I had laid the foundation for a good 
 practice there, but I had not made any money. 
 I just about made ends meet and that was all. 
 I had demonstrated to my own satisfaction, how- 
 ever, that I had the stuff in me to work up and 
 hold a good practice if I could only overcome my 
 wanderlust. 
 
 As I sat in the train speeding towards El Paso 
 I took an inventory of my various maneuvers up 
 to that period and I somewhat reluctantly put 
 Houston, along with the rest of my flings at 
 "Miss Opportunity," into the scrap heap of my 
 career. 
 
 With all my roaming about and my numerous 
 flings at chance I had one thing of which I was 
 justly proud. This was the fact that, although 
 I had led a sort of adventurous, free-lance exist- 
 ence up to this time, I had not wandered from the 
 path of gentlemanly conduct. Although I had 
 come in contact with many breeds and types of 
 men I remained true to my father's teachings. 
 Although I was a great part of the time sur- 
 rounded by gamblers and in contact with gam- 
 
 53 
 
54 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 bling, I never gambled. In like manner, with 
 every opportunity and every inducement to 
 become a drinking man, I was always temperate. 
 I drank a glass of beer when I thought it would 
 do me good, and at times I drank whiskey; but 
 not at any time enough to get under its influence. 
 The only reason I did not have a bank account 
 and a good practice was because I let wanderlust 
 get the best of me. 
 
 I had a good name, professionally, and outside 
 of the fact that I was beginning to get the repu- 
 tation of being a rover, I had nothing to be 
 ashamed of. With a thorough realization of my 
 status quo and a firm resolve to become anchored, 
 I arrived in El Paso. 
 
 My friend, Doctor Thacher, was happy to see 
 me and I was very happy to see that he had 
 equipped a neat veterinary infirmary during my 
 absence, operating tables, sterilizers, electric den- 
 tal machines and other modern appliances not 
 omitted. At this point I may remark that many 
 of our eastern colleagues would be surprised if 
 they could see the numbers of modern, fully 
 equipped veterinary hospitals throughout the 
 west. Even in many of the small towns one will 
 find such institutions frequently. 
 
 My work was cut out for me and began the 
 moment I arrived. The practice was a mixed 
 practice, horses, mules, cattle and dogs. The lat- 
 ter constituted nearly fifty per cent of our 
 patients. 
 
 Like many other people in the north I had the 
 impression that mules were practically immune to 
 
EL PASO 55 
 
 most diseases and conditions which affect the 
 horse. This error was soon corrected. I do not 
 know of a single condition for which I was ever 
 employed to treat horses which I have not also 
 found in mules; excepting, of course, conditions 
 confined to and resulting from pregnancy in the 
 female. Mules with their mammary glands con- 
 gested and containing lacteal secretion I saw 
 frequently. Cases of pregnancy have been re- 
 ported in mules ; I never saw one. 
 
 While I knew our practice here was very large 
 and realized that I was working quite hard, I 
 did not realize the real worth of the business un- 
 til I figured up the day-book at the end of the 
 first month. To my great astonishment I found 
 that we had done nearly eight hundred dollars 
 in total that month. 
 
 Right here I want to bring out a point or 
 two: The fees obtained at that time were not 
 much short of exorbitant and, thinking back, I 
 sometimes wonder how we could get them. Ordi- 
 nary dentistry, floating, was regularly three dol- 
 lars. If we had to cut off a long enamel point 
 with the cutters, we charged a dollar extra. 
 "Wolf teeth" were half a dollar each, extra. It 
 was nothing unusual to have a total charge of 
 five dollars for "fixing" a mouth. Night calls 
 had a fixed fee of five dollars, even if only a 
 few blocks from the office. In a case of flatulent 
 colic, tapping was counted as an operation and 
 five dollars was added to the service for this per- 
 formance. 
 
 A big revenue was derived at that time from 
 
56 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 the inspection of horses which were shipped 
 through El Paso en route to California and Ari- 
 zona. These states required veterinary health 
 certificates for all horses and mules entering 
 there. The charge we made for such inspections 
 was ten dollars per car load. For just three or 
 four head we charged five dollars. It was a 
 rough inspection, all that was required, and usu- 
 ally could be done in a few minutes' time. 
 
 For the removal of retained secundines in cows 
 the charge was ten dollars. Roaring operations 
 were fifty dollars. Country calls were one dol- 
 lar per mile. With such fees it was a real pleas- 
 ure to work, and I wish I could get them today. 
 
 However, I found that the actual net profit in 
 a practice here running seven or eight hundred 
 dollars a month, would not be much more than in 
 a practice in the old states running three or four 
 hundred dollars. Rent and living were very high. 
 Drugs cost us big money. Help, feed, bedding, 
 everything was high. We had to get big fees to 
 make it go. 
 
 We used much printers' ink to get the business 
 there in those days. I remember a time when we 
 carried a full page advertisement in one of the 
 daily papers. This advertisement contained cuts 
 of views of our hospital and appeared every Sat- 
 urday. 
 
 The only competition we had here was during 
 the winter months when the "lungers" came to 
 El Paso. El Paso has quite a reputation as a 
 resort for consumptives, the high altitude and dry 
 air making it ideal. Usually there was a veteri- 
 
EL PASO 57 
 
 narian or two among these health-seekers, who 
 would do a little light practice. Our only objec- 
 tion to that was the fact that they were mostly 
 from states where veterinarians worked cheap and 
 they interfered with our regular rate of charges, 
 working too cheap. 
 
 We frequently were called to Jaurez, on the 
 Mexican side of the river, where there was a 
 Mexican practitioner. He did very little work, 
 however, and did not give us any trouble. Things 
 were running along smoothly for me and I soon 
 had things well in hand. 
 
 Doctor Thatcher had been giving me practice 
 but little attention, being kept busy at his post 
 as city bacteriologist. When this did not occupy 
 his time he worked at a process for making alcohol 
 from a cactus plant which grows thickly in that 
 region. By fall of the same year he had per- 
 fected a process which was satisfactory and he 
 proceeded to organize a company for the purpose 
 of erecting a distillery. 
 
 This he carried out successfully and as his time 
 was now entirely taken up he wanted to dispose 
 of the veterinary practice and he gave me the 
 first chance to buy it. This was in November. 
 I had now been with him about five months and 
 although I had been earning a good salary, I had 
 not saved a cent, having used the money as fast 
 as I got it to pay some of my debts. 
 
 So, here I was with an opportunity to become 
 the owner of a practice which I knew fully and 
 which I had handled successfully, but without a 
 cent of money to pay for it with. 
 
58 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 After some casting about I was lucky enough 
 to find an "angel," as theatrical folks say. He 
 was a mining man who frequently spent a few 
 hours at our infirmary as a spectator at oper- 
 ations. 
 
 He found the work interesting and when I 
 informed him one day that the place was for sale 
 he wanted to know why I did not buy it. I told 
 him I had no money and why I had none. He 
 knew me as a sober, hustling young fellow and 
 he also knew the practice was a paying propo- 
 sition. After some talk he promised to put his 
 money against my work, on the basis of an equal 
 interest for each of us. 
 
 This looked good enough to me, at that time, 
 and I agreed. We bought the business next day 
 for two thousand dollars, my partner paying 
 $500 cash, the balance to be paid off at the rate 
 of one hundred dollars per month. 
 
 Now I had a half interest in the business, with 
 "strings" to it. Today I can see that I did not 
 make a good bargain, but at the time I felt pretty 
 good over it. 
 
 In the first place, our expense of running this 
 place was just about three hundred dollars per 
 month. We had to make ten dollars every day 
 for the expenses before we had anything for our- 
 selves. The way the practice had been running 
 this was all right, but I neglected to figure the 
 influence which the Doctor's political position 
 had given the practice. As soon as we bought 
 him out, much of this business fell away, not from 
 lack of help on his part, either. 
 
EL PASO 59 
 
 In the second place, we bought no accounts 
 collectible. Literally, we were starting from the 
 ground up. It takes some time to get enough 
 money on the books to insure a steady inflow of 
 cash. 
 
 Luckily, we had dated the first hundred dollar 
 note three months ahead. This gave us a chance 
 to get our breath, anyhow. 
 
 The only good stroke I did in this deal was 
 shortly before this first note came due. I went to 
 the Doctor and asked him how much he would 
 take for the fifteen notes in a lump sum. He 
 agreed to take twelve hundred and fifty dollars. 
 I saw my partner and got him to borrow the 
 money, giving in return for it twenty-five fifty 
 dollar notes signed by us conjointly and due one 
 each month. By doing this I made two hundred 
 and fifty dollars for us and at the same time I cut 
 the payments in half. We could not have paid 
 the hundred dollar notes. Fifty dollars per month 
 was bad enough. 
 
 I failed to see at that time that I was really 
 working out three-fourths of the price we were to 
 pay. My partner paid in five hundred dollars. 
 I had to do the work to pay off fifteen hundred. 
 
 At no time after we bought the place did the 
 practice run over four hundred and fifty dollars 
 a month. One month it was only three hundred. 
 My partner was not getting much interest on his 
 five hundred dollars and he soon became dis- 
 gusted. He even suspected me of juggling the 
 accounts. 
 
 I might have remained and fought the thing 
 
60 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 out but my efforts were cut short early the fol- 
 lowing spring. In treating a case of puerperal 
 infection in a cow I became virulently infected 
 and was put out of the running. After several 
 months' treatment my physician advised a course 
 of water treatment at Hot Springs. I collected 
 what bills I could, paid what we owed and sold 
 my half interest for two hundred and fifty dol- 
 lars, leaving for Hot Springs, Arkansas, the 
 same day. 
 
 I had not made any money on this venture but 
 I did not lose any, either. I at least paid off a 
 few of my debts with my earnings of the first few 
 months. When I left El Paso this time I had 
 about a hundred and seventy-five dollars in my 
 pocket. I bought a ticket to Hot Springs, via 
 Fort Worth and Dallas. 
 
 I arrived in Dallas in the evening of the next 
 day and could have made immediate connections 
 and gone right through to Hot Springs. I 
 wanted to see the country, however, and so 
 decided to stay in Dallas over night and take an 
 early morning train. I left Dallas the next 
 morning at half past seven on the "St. Louis 
 Cannon Ball," a fast train. 
 
 About ninety miles east of Dallas, just after 
 we had passed through a small station called 
 Edge wood, the rails spread as we rounded a curve 
 heading into a bridge and we had a real wreck. 
 I came out with a few scratches and torn clothes, 
 for which I collected seventy-five dollars from the 
 railroad company when I reached Hot Springs. 
 I made myself useful at the scene of the wreck 
 
EL PASO 61 
 
 by giving first aid to the injured. I was the 
 nearest approach to a physician on the train and 
 I used up a small supply of emergency hypoder- 
 mics which I carried in my grip. 
 
 When I had been at Hot Springs about three 
 weeks and had just about spent my few dollars 
 for doctor bills and board, I decided to leave and 
 take a chance on my recovery. The treatments 
 there did not do much for me; they may be all 
 right for specific blood poison but my case was 
 different. My infection was undoubtedly due to 
 streptococci or staphylococci. 
 
 From Hot Springs I went to Little Rock, in 
 the same state, and I found it one of the most 
 ambitious towns I ever saw. There I met a fine 
 veterinarian in the person of a Doctor Merchant 
 with whom I became very well acquainted a year 
 or two later. I tried to get a position as assistant 
 there but could not, and as I saw no other open- 
 ing, I left in a day or two for Fort Smith, also in 
 Arkansas. 
 
 Here I met what, to my mind, was one of the 
 best all-round practitioners I ever encountered. 
 Doctor May was then a young man, but he had 
 the delivery of a veteran. And in later years he 
 has made good there. 
 
 My money was now all gone and I borrowed 
 twenty-five dollars from the Doctor. With this 
 I set out for Oklahoma City, where I looked 
 around for a day and then took train for El Reno, 
 Olahoma. I had a trunk full of books and instru- 
 ments with me, and as I only had a few dollars 
 
62 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 left when I got to El Reno, I had to open my 
 trunk and look for something to do. 
 
 I got permission to "hang out" at a stable 
 called the "Red Barn" and began to look around 
 for veterinary work. There was only one veteri- 
 narian there and it looked as though I could do a 
 little, anyhow. But in two weeks I got only one 
 case, and that case I remember well. 
 
 Next to the stable where I "hung out" was 
 another stable called the "Blue Barn." In this 
 "Blue Barn" a quack "hung out." (Hang out 
 and hung out are the only appropriate terms for 
 veterinary offices in livery stables.) This quack 
 was a good old soul, and he later loaned me some 
 money to get out of town. At any rate, he had a 
 case which he wanted me to handle for him, and 
 that is the one case I got in the two weeks I was 
 there. It was a case of necrosis of the tail in 
 a fine mare, said to have resulted from keeping 
 the tail tied up with a tight leather shoe-lace for 
 two or three days during a rainy spell. I ampu- 
 tated the tail with a pocket-knife, charged him 
 five dollars, and the result was good. 
 
 I left El Reno, leaving my trunk with a few 
 books and a dental halter as security for the loan. 
 I have never redeemed them. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 MEXICAN PRACTICE 
 
 During the time that I was engaged in prac- 
 tice in El Paso probably twenty-five per cent of 
 my work was among the Mexican inhabitants of 
 El Paso and the Mexican town of Juarez across 
 the river from El Paso. 
 
 While most of the live-stock owned by them 
 was an inferior grade of stuff they were not back- 
 ward about employing a doctor for them. 
 
 I found the Mexicans very desirable clients. 
 They have great faith in medicine and will faith- 
 fully follow the doctor's instructions if they have 
 confidence in him. 
 
 They pay especial attention to details smack- 
 ing of "hocus-pocus" methods; such items, for 
 instance, as giving a certain medicine seven times 
 a day, or just at a certain hour. Once a doctor 
 gets into their favor his success among the lot 
 of them is assured; they are lavish and free in 
 their praise of him. 
 
 Only in one regard must they be kept in line, 
 and that is along money matters. Once they 
 understand that you expect your pay promptly 
 they will not ask for credit. My rule, except in 
 the case of the more well-to-do families, was to 
 work for cash only. I never hesitated to inform 
 them in advance what the fee would be. In the 
 three or four years that I practiced among them 
 I lost only a few dollars in bad accounts. 
 
 63 
 
64 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 One had to admire their grit and optimism in 
 the face of grave cases of sickness or accident 
 among their animals. The most lowly and poor 
 among them would not be deterred from sub- 
 mitting the case to the doctor even if the fee 
 incurred was much beyond their means. If the 
 doctor could give them reasonable assurance that 
 the result would be good they would invariably 
 say, "go to it." 
 
 Among the upper class of Mexicans it was the 
 custom of all American practitioners to charge 
 excessively high fees; it was not only a custom, 
 but a necessity in a way. In fact, should you do 
 your work for an ordinary fee the chances are 
 they would not employ you again, no matter 
 how successful you were. It seems that they 
 rated the practitioner's worth according to his 
 fee — within sane bounds, of course. 
 
 Say you are called to treat a horse belonging to 
 an upper class Mexican — a case of acute indiges- 
 tion, for instance, requiring your constant attend- 
 ance for four or five hours of the night. If you 
 are not a tender-foot, and if you ever expect to 
 stand "ace-high" with that "grandee" you will 
 send your bill the next morning for one hundred 
 dollars. 
 
 I made a trip to Torreon, Mexico, which is 
 518 miles below the border, one winter. I had 
 been given some inducement by a drug house 
 there to locate there for practice. There was no 
 veterinarian there and, in all, it was a good prop- 
 osition. I was doing fairly well in El Paso, how- 
 ever, and after I had gone down and looked the 
 
MEXICAN PRACTICE 65 
 
 field over I decided in favor of El Paso and the 
 good old U. S. A. 
 
 Anyhow, while I was down there looking the 
 field over I was introduced to a Mexican who 
 was conducting a large dairy in a neighboring 
 town called Gomez Palacio. When he was 
 informed that I was a veterinarian he would not 
 leave me until I had promised to come to his town 
 to examine one of his cows. He was a fine, gen- 
 tlemanly fellow; Jose Sanchez Alvarez was his 
 name, and you have since seen his name in news 
 items about the Mexican revolution. 
 
 His town was connected to Torreon by an 
 electric street car line and I went over early the 
 next morning. 
 
 His dairy was a fine establishment, milking 
 around 75 cows, and every cow in the place was 
 a Holstein. He told me that all his cows were 
 bought in the States and that he frequently paid 
 $300 to $450 gold for a cow. I knew this before 
 he told me, because I had inspected one ship- 
 ment that came through El Paso and the owner 
 of the shipment informed me that every cow in 
 the lot would bring between $300 and $500 in 
 gold. This means from $600 to $1,000 Mexican 
 money, which will give you a fair idea of how 
 they spend their money down there. These cows 
 were no purebreds, just good cows. 
 
 When I had been shown all over the establish- 
 ment he brought out the cow that I was to exam- 
 ine. There was some impediment to respiration 
 — a solid enlargement the size of a goose egg in 
 the upper tracheal region. Apparently it was a 
 
66 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 fibrous growth, producing the dyspnea by direct 
 pressure. As I remember it now, I recommended 
 its enucleation. But I did not want the job, 
 because the day before I had met a friend in Tor- 
 reon who "stood in" with the railroad men; he 
 was leaving for El Paso on this day and he 
 thought he could work it so that I would get free 
 passage home if I went with him. 
 
 So, when Senor Alvarez wanted to know what 
 my fee would be for the operation I thought I 
 would name a figure so exorbitant that he would 
 back down. I told him the operation itself would 
 cost him $100, and the after treatment would cost 
 him probably another hundred. Without hes- 
 itating two seconds he bade me proceed to work 
 at once. Here I was "in a pickle"; sure, $200 
 was no small sum; but I would have to hang 
 around a week or ten days to earn it all. I 
 wanted to go home that night with my friend; I 
 had decided not to locate in Torreon anyhow, 
 and I wanted to get back on the job in El Paso. 
 That was always my style : — now or never, whole 
 loaf or none. I was like a mule in that respect; 
 you might have offered me the governorship of 
 the state of Coahuila, if I had to stay there longer 
 than the hour for that night train I would have 
 refused the job and all the graft that went with it. 
 
 But here I stood ; Alvarez had taken me up on 
 my own figures. And, by George, he was so nice 
 and gentlemanly about it ! But I had made up 
 my mind to hike for home that night, and there 
 was some mule in me, you know. I fixed it up 
 like this : 
 
MEXICAN PRACTICE 67 
 
 "All right, sir; but, in order to be able to make 
 the dissection without endangering the life of the 
 cow by death from hemorrhage, we must use 
 chloroform anesthesia. The danger of accident- 
 ally wounding either the carotid artery or the 
 jugular vein is exceedingly great in the region in 
 which the tumor lies; to reduce this danger to a 
 minimum we will resort to the chloroform 
 anesthesia with the object of making sudden 
 jerky head movements impossible. 
 
 "But, to obtain the best and most smooth 
 results with chloroform we must enforce a fast of 
 twenty-four hours on the patient. I will be here 
 tomorrow at this time to operate." 
 
 This looked O. K. to his highness, and we 
 parted. 
 
 If that cow gets nothing to eat until I arrive 
 to perform that operation she is pretty hollow by 
 this time. And really, it was a pretty low-down 
 trick on my part! But then, I wanted to get 
 back to the States, and there was some mule in 
 me, you know. 
 
 I left that night with my friend. And the joke 
 of it was that his "pull" was no good on the train; 
 we had to pay our fare just the same as the rest 
 of the passengers. But I didn't care; I was head- 
 ing for the good old U. S. A., and that was good 
 enough for me. 
 
 What I wanted to illustrate by this incident is 
 that you can't scare the "high-ups" in Mexico 
 with a $100 fee on a cow case. 
 
 In the interior of Mexico I saw a type of horse 
 quite frequently which I have never seen any- 
 
68 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 where else. These horses somewhat resemble the 
 English thoroughbred, but they are smaller and 
 have even finer bone. They are game to the core, 
 and no better saddle horses could be desired. 
 They are said to be the offspring of some of the 
 old Spanish breeds which were brought to Mexico 
 centuries ago. 
 
 The average Mexican horse is a small, 
 scrawny, nondescript sort of nag, always in poor 
 
 flesh and usually full of 
 spavines, ringbones and 
 other blemishes. 
 
 The common man's 
 horse in Mexico is not a 
 horse at all but the burro. 
 They sell for from five 
 dollars to thirty or forty 
 dollars, depending on 
 their size and work-abil- 
 ity. The ordinary burro 
 of about the size of the 
 average Shetland pony will carry a pack weigh- 
 ing around 250 pounds all day. They are used 
 mostly for packing; only occasionally are they 
 worked in harness. 
 
 The burro seems to be immune to all diseases ; 
 it is a rare thing to see a lame one, even. They 
 reach a great age and are part and parcel of 
 Mexico; I can not imagine Mexico without the 
 burro. 
 
 Another class of patronage that I enjoyed in 
 El Paso was that of the Chinese. El Paso har- 
 bors a Chinese quarter numbering around 500 
 
 They are said to be the off 
 
 spring of some of the old 
 
 Spanish breeds 
 
MEXICAN PRACTICE 69 
 
 souls, and the Rio Grande valley below El Paso 
 is populated by them in considerable numbers. 
 In the city they conduct mostly stores, restau- 
 rants, laundries, etc. In the valley they pursue 
 truck gardening, raising most of the vegetables 
 used in the city. Quite a number of them own a 
 few horses ; they are about the poorest horsemen 
 imaginable and employ veterinarians regularly. 
 Their faith in medicine and in the art of healing 
 is even greater than that of the Mexicans; they 
 obey the doctor's instructions implicitly and are 
 most appreciative of good service and attention. 
 On top of this they are absolutely honest, paying 
 their bills promptly and generously; white folks 
 can well afford to take lessons from John China- 
 man in this respect. The only bad part about 
 him is the fact that he is a prosperity killer; he 
 takes in more than he gives out. In fact, aside 
 from emergency expenses, he spends so little 
 money for his own subsistence, clothing, etc., that 
 white folks cannot compete with him in any line 
 of business he undertakes. 
 
 Only in one regard must I modify this state- 
 ment, and that is in regard to his gaming pro- 
 clivities. Most Chinamen of my acquaintance 
 were confirmed gamblers. However, as they 
 gamble chiefly among themselves, no one outside 
 of their clan profits by it. 
 
 I have seen one, now and then, take a whirl at 
 roulette during the big fiesta in Juarez, but 
 unless they make a lucky play to begin with they 
 don't stick long. And, come to think of it, the 
 one and only time that I can remember of a 
 
70 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 Chinaman trying a dishonest trick was at a rou- 
 lette table. He had placed a chip on a corner 
 and tried to shove it on the whole number when 
 the wheel stopped ; the caller caught him at it. 
 
 I remember a most amusing incident that hap- 
 pened in connection with my practice among the 
 Chinese in the Rio Grande Valley. 
 
 With all of them pulling on the rope we "flopped him over," and 
 
 up he jumped 
 
 A rich Chinese gardener there sent for me for 
 the purpose of having me treat a horse at his 
 farm, eight miles down the valley. When I 
 arrived at the place I found a pretty good look- 
 ing horse lying flat on his side and ten or twelve 
 Chinese lads standing in a circle around him. 
 The horse had been down flat since early morning 
 at least ; when one of the Chinks went to give him 
 
MEXICAN PRACTICE 71 
 
 his breakfast he found him down and they had 
 been unable to make him get up. They told me 
 he had not seemed sick in the evening before and, 
 while they only owned him a few days, he had 
 never given any trouble. One Chinese boy told 
 me, however, that he was quite lame on one hind 
 leg, but he could not say which one. I looked 
 him over a little closer then and I saw he had a 
 big spavin on the under leg. As the fellow says, 
 "I saw a light then." 
 
 Knowing the Chinese awe for "hocus-pocus 
 stuff" I thought I would have a little fun out of 
 this job. (Mind you, my charge for this eight 
 mile trip was eight dollars ; }^ou may be sure they 
 tried hard to get him up before calling me. ) 
 
 Taking my side-line I first laid it over him in 
 such a manner that it formed a circle over his 
 side, mumbling at the same time a few words like 
 "foramen lacerum basis cranii," and allowing the 
 rope to remain in the coiled position for a minute, 
 by the watch. Taking it off now I fastened one 
 end to a hind and a front leg and told the Chinese 
 boys "Now, alright," and with all of them pulling 
 on the rope we "flopped him over;" and up he 
 jumped! 
 
 The clash of Chinese tongues that followed 
 immediately was something great. The boss 
 Chinaman wanted me to tell him those words I 
 had to say to make it work and to show him just 
 how to coil the rope. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 A TOWN A DAY IN OKLAHOMA 
 
 As I have related previously, when a physician 
 advised me to go to Hot Springs, Ark., in the 
 spring of 1907, I sold my interest in the El Paso 
 Veterinary Hospital and went. The treat- 
 ments at Hot Springs did not benefit me a great 
 deal, and it is my opinion that the baths are not 
 indicated in such infections as the one I was suf- 
 fering from; they are too debilitating. With an 
 infection of the pus producing organisms, such as 
 I had, this debilitating effect of the baths is really 
 detrimental ; at least, it was in my case. 
 
 However, I continued to take the baths as pre- 
 scribed by the physician until I was sure that my 
 condition was not improving; and at about the 
 same time my money sack was getting rather flat. 
 I concluded then that I was losing at both ends 
 and decided to move on. 
 
 This decision, to move on, was easily arrived 
 at; but where to move on to was not so easy to 
 decide. 
 
 I had sold my practice and had spent the few 
 dollars I got for it. I was now over a thousand 
 miles from home, among strangers, and with not 
 enough money left to pay for painting a good 
 "shingle," not to mention equipping an office. 
 
 So there was nothing left for me to do but to 
 "hit the road." As I have previously related; 
 from Hot Springs I went to Little Rock, 
 
 73 
 
74 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 where I tried to get on as assistant to some veteri- 
 narian, but was not successful. However, old 
 Dr. Merchant advised me to go to Fort Smith, 
 where he was quite sure I would find an opening 
 with Dr. May. 
 
 Arrived at Fort Smith I immediately applied 
 to that gentleman for a position. While he had 
 no opening for me just then he was good enough 
 to give me permission to do a little work for him, 
 enough to enable me to get a few dollars ahead. 
 I did not care to do this, upon which the doctor 
 made me a loan of $25.00, saying I could pay him 
 back when I could do so conveniently. 
 
 He sure was a regular good fellow. 
 
 With this money I left for Oklahoma City, 
 thinking that I might find something to do there, 
 but the town already had more veterinarians than 
 it required and none of them cared to hire me. 
 The town was too large to "work," and so I 
 decided to go to El Reno. 
 
 My experiences in El Reno I have told in a 
 previous article. Up until this time I had trod 
 a tolerable straight and narrow path profession- 
 ally considering the time and the customs in 
 the Southwest, but now financial pressure due to 
 my illness and the resulting expensive treatment 
 at Hot Springs deflected me in not a few 
 instances from the paths of professional conduct 
 that I would have chosen under easier circum- 
 stances. 
 
 Leaving El Reno I travel south over the Rock 
 Island road, stopping off at every town along the 
 route and with one or two exceptions from twelve 
 
A TOWN A DAY IN OKLAHOMA 75 
 
 to twenty-four hours was the length of my stay 
 in any place. 
 
 When I could get absolutely no veterinary 
 work to do in a town I would sell the local black- 
 smith or horse-shber some of by "corn killer." 
 This corn killer stunt I learned from a veteri- 
 narian in Arkansas and it was a winner with the 
 blacksmiths. It consists of a few crystals of 
 iodin and a small vial of turpentine. When the 
 corn in the horse's foot has been thoroughly pared 
 out a few of the iodin crystals are placed in the 
 cavity and a few drops of the turpentine poured 
 on it. A miniature explosion occurs and the 
 entire area in the foot turns a dark brown color 
 at once. It really has value as a dessicant and 
 antiseptic, as the resulting chemical change forces 
 the iodin into every crevice of the horn. 
 
 The miniature explosion which occurs, border- 
 ing on the spectacular, makes it a good seller to 
 horse-shoers. I would sell them enough for about 
 three applications and then write down the ingre- 
 dients for them, charging whatever I thought the 
 fellow would stand for; if he looked like an "easy 
 mark" I might charge him a five spot, making 
 him promise on his honor never to divulge the 
 secret. Maybe in the next town, if I could do no 
 better, I would sell the same "secret" for one 
 dollar. 
 
 So if there are some practitioners in Oklahoma 
 now who are wondering where their blacksmiths 
 got this dope they may know that the Itinerant 
 Horse Physician "put them wise to it." 
 
 In many of these Oklahoma towns where no 
 veterinarians had located as yet I was asked to 
 
76 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 treat cases of exceptional interest, most of them 
 being chronic conditions requiring surgical inter- 
 ference. 
 
 One of the commonest abnormalities which I 
 was given an opportunity to treat was extreme 
 volar flexion of the fetlock joint in anterior 
 limbs. Why this condition came to my attention 
 so frequently I can not explain; however, in the 
 thirty-odd towns I stopped in on this route I was 
 shown at least fifteen or twenty such cases. 
 
 Some I endeavored to correct by performing 
 tenotomy; others were advised variously for 
 treatment or noninterference. What the result 
 was in any case I am, of course, unable to say as I 
 did not remain long enough in any particular 
 vicinity to witness the outcome. 
 
 Another condition which I met with excep- 
 tional frequency was fistula of the withers, and 
 some of the "rottenest" cases of this condition 
 in my whole experience as a veterinarian I saw in 
 that country. The regular treatment for this con- 
 dition among the quacks and horse- jockeys there 
 seemed to be a certain manner of filling the 
 horse's ears with ground glass. 
 
 When I was making this trip there seemed to 
 be a mania among the people down there for cut- 
 ting the membrana nictitans out of their horses' 
 eyes. I would feel safe to wager a good sum of 
 money that there are more horses in Oklahoma 
 and parts of Texas minus this part of their anat- 
 omy than there are in any other part of the world. 
 
 The condition for which they perform this 
 operation is called "hooks"; just what "hooks" 
 originally signified I have not been able to learn. 
 
A TOWN A DAY IN OKLAHOMA 77 
 
 At the time I was sojourning there "hooks" was 
 almost anything which defied the diagnostic skill 
 of the quack or the jockey. If a horse or a mule 
 was ailing for a time and the usual dosage with 
 Harlem oil or "punkin seed tea" did not fix him 
 up he was charged with having the "hooks," and 
 condemned to have his nictitating membrane cut 
 out or extracted. 
 
 Speaking of "punkin seed tea" reminds me 
 that in those parts this seemed to be the popular 
 colic remedy. When "punkin seed tea" failed 
 there was only one other hope for the patient. 
 This last hope was a dose of fresh chicken guts. 
 A chicken was hastily caught and killed and the 
 horse drenched with the "guts" while they were 
 yet warm. 
 
 To northern and eastern practitioners this 
 sounds like a regular "made-up" story, I know. 
 But Oklahoma and Texas practitioners will ver- 
 ify the truth of my statements. 
 
 In one of these towns I was requested to treat 
 two cases of open navicular or coffin joints. The 
 patients had picked up street nails and the local 
 quack had enlarged the openings, for drainage, 
 with a brace and bit. In both cases he bored a 
 half -inch hole directly into the joint. 
 
 In another chapter I submit evidence to prove 
 that half the quacks in practice should be hanged 
 and the other half put in jail. Do you wonder 
 that I believe it? 
 
 In one town a farmer took me out to his place 
 to show me a sick mare. He said his "veteri- 
 nary," who was a quack, had been treating the 
 mare for about a week without doing much good. 
 
78 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 He said he was mighty glad I just "happened" 
 in because he had heard that some of these col- 
 lege "veterinaries" was smart fellers in some 
 things. "Old Doc," as he called the quack, was 
 pretty good, he thought, seeing as how he just 
 picked "horse-docterin" up all by himself; but, 
 somehow, in this case he didn't think "old Doc" 
 was hardly smart enough. I asked him what sort 
 of diagnosis "old Doc" had made of the case. 
 
 "Well," said my 
 new-found friend, 
 "he says the colt is 
 foundered i n t h e 
 mare." I asked the 
 farmer whether 
 "old Doc" used an 
 x-ray outfit t o a r- 
 rive at his diagno- 
 sis; he said not so 
 far as he knew. 
 
 When we got to 
 the place I found a 
 pretty good sort of 
 a mare, heavy in 
 foal, with a rupture 
 of the prepubian 
 tendon ; her abdo- 
 men was on a level with her hocks. 
 
 I advised the farmer in regard to giving proper 
 assistance at time of foaling and described the 
 exact condition he would find in the event that 
 the mare should not survive the ordeal of parturi- 
 tion. I did the latter so that he might be able to 
 "show up" the quack, which I am sure he did, if 
 the mare died. He was one of those "long- 
 
 y/'TH a/ zee lf j Hls sre j HO , tfer 
 
 l£ 
 
 Oikh't i*s4m~_ 
 
A TOWN A DAY IN OKLAHOMA 79 
 
 horns," with fire in his eye, and I bet "old Doc" 
 got some information he didn't want. 
 
 In the same town, while I was at the depot 
 waiting for the train, another farmer told me 
 about a cow this same "old Doc" treated for him. 
 The cow died, after "old Doc" had "worked on 
 her" all day, from "Blue Fever" he said. The 
 farmer described the case to me in detail, and if 
 ever a description was given of a typical case of 
 parturient paresis he gave it. 
 
 In one town I visited in Oklahoma near the 
 Texas line I met an old quack who wanted to buy 
 my diploma. He said that he had all the knowl- 
 edge he or any horse doctor would ever require; 
 all he wanted now was a diploma. I asked him 
 how much he would be willing to pay for one. 
 "Oh," he says, "I wouldn't mind spending five 
 dollars on a thing like that." 
 
 I told him he could probably buy two or three 
 good ones for five dollars from some colleges I 
 knew and I gave him the names of a college for 
 tonsorial artists and a college of elocution. I 
 don't know how it ended. 
 
 An item of interest on this trip was the variety 
 of peculiar "hangouts" some of the practitioners 
 had. 
 
 In one town on inquiring the whereabouts of 
 the local veterinarian I was referred to a second- 
 hand store. There I found the honorable "Doc" 
 dealing in second-hand furniture and stoves 
 between calls. He had no sign displayed which 
 would attract attention to his "curing" ability, 
 other than a collection of extracted horse teeth 
 and bottles full of "bots" and other specimens. 
 
80 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 These were carefully arranged in one front win- 
 dow along with a large rectal syringe and a 
 mouth speculum. 
 
 In another town the local horse physician had 
 his "office" in a barber shop. 
 
 In still another a small cigar factory harbored 
 the "bot specialist." 
 
 But the fellow whom I located in a small 
 brewery had the best headquarters of all; and 
 from the beautiful mixture of scarlet and Yale 
 blue mingling in the epidermis of his nose I 
 judged that he wasn't letting any chance go by 
 to test the brew between calls. 
 
 One other odd headquarters for a "Doc" which 
 I remember seeing there was in a photographer's 
 place. 
 
 When I asked this quack why he had selected 
 a photograph gallery for his "hangout" he said, 
 "I done it to help elevate the perfession. It gives 
 a man more prestige." 
 
 I recommended a padded cell for him. 
 
 One other interesting feature in connection 
 with this part of my wanderings appertained to 
 the peculiar "side-lines" which some of these 
 practitioners had. 
 
 One of them sold sewing machines "on the 
 side." 
 
 Another was a loan-shark on a small scale. 
 He made a practice of loaning small sums to 
 niggers, charging in the neighborhood of ten per 
 cent a week interest. When a nigger came to 
 borrow ten dollars from him he gave him only 
 nine, holding out the $1.00 interest in advance. 
 At the time I met this quack he had around two 
 
A TOWN A DAY IN OKLAHOMA 81 
 
 hundred dollars loaned out in small sums in this 
 manner. He seemed to feel quite proud over his 
 financial engineering ability and although I was 
 practically a stranger to him he did not hesitate 
 to explain his scheme to me. Every dollar he 
 could squeeze out of his veterinary practice he 
 loaned out on this plan. 
 
 If he had been proportionately as successful in 
 the veterinary end as he was in his money loaning 
 scheme he would have had J. P. Morgan backed 
 off the board in a few years' time. 
 
 Still another of these quacks I met was a real 
 estate agent on the side, and another put in his 
 spare time as an insurance solicitor. 
 
 One quack I met was the king of quackdom; 
 he was not only a quack veterinarian, he was 
 also a quack druggist and a quack spectacle 
 fitter. 
 
 One little "sawed-off " quack I bumped into on 
 this trip made a side-line of supplying the wives 
 of his clients with a "female regulator." He put it 
 up in eight-ounce bottles selling for $1.00 and 
 confided to me that his profit per bottle was 
 around ninety-two cents. 
 
 One quack I met below the Texas line on this 
 trip was a professional gambler! He pursued 
 the veterinary game only when luck was against 
 him and then just long enough to get a stake to 
 begin to gamble on again. 
 
 In that day and time a remark that I once 
 heard a veterinarian make fitted Oklahoma to a 
 T : "Every darn fool that can't claim knowledge 
 of anything else claims to know all about sick 
 horses." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 HOW I BEGAN A REGULAR TRAMP EXISTENCE 
 
 I went from El Reno to Chickasha, then in 
 Indian Territory, and "worked" every town on 
 the Rock Island road from there to Henrietta, 
 Texas, and on the new railroad through Wichita 
 Falls to Abilene, Texas. 
 
 And a great experience it was, indeed. Chick- 
 asha I found to be the toughest town I ever was 
 in excepting Pocatello, Idaho. I had not yet 
 seen Pocatello, Idaho, so Chickasha stood first in 
 the list of hard places with me then. Up to that 
 time I had never seen a greater aggregation of 
 "tough-mugs" than there in Chickasha. I 
 earned one dollar there between trains, a period 
 of a few hours. There was more work "in sight" 
 but I did not care to stay over night in a cheap 
 hotel in that town then. Apologies to Chickasha 
 if it has improved since that time, as it no doubt 
 has. In the other towns between there and the 
 Texas line, I picked up enough money to pay my 
 expenses. My first move in getting off the train 
 in these towns was to look up the livery stables. 
 Here I could usually get a mouth to fix or a case 
 of lameness to prescribe for. This done, I usually 
 looked up the horseshoers; these fellows could 
 usually put me on the trail of a cripple or two 
 and as soon as I had five or six dollars made, I 
 would make a move for the next town. In this 
 way, although I was a tramp veterinarian, I 
 
 83 
 
84 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 could always ride first-class trains. In all my 
 roving about, I always "rode the cushions." 
 
 Over the entire route from El Reno to the 
 Texas line, I did not find one graduate veteri- 
 narian. At one place in Indian Territory, called 
 Durant, I met a correspondence school chap who 
 was a pretty bright fellow and he had a nice little 
 practice. I stopped over night with him and 
 found him a good man. He was pretty well 
 informed and, I presume, made some money 
 there. 
 
 When I got as far as Wichita Falls, Texas, I 
 began to feel my health improving rapidly. I 
 stayed over night in Wichita Falls, intending to 
 leave on the first train next morning; but when 
 I got to the depot the next morning, the train 
 was marked several minutes late. Just across 
 from the depot I saw a livery stable and I went 
 in and told them who and what I was and that I 
 had just about twenty minutes in which to do a 
 little work for them. 
 
 Sure! I was just the fellow they were looking 
 for. In less than two minutes I was examining a 
 bad case of sweeney; in another two or three 
 minutes I had both shoulders injected with satu- 
 rated salt solution, was paid three dollars for my 
 trouble and had just time enough to walk back to 
 the depot, buy my ticket and board the train for 
 the next town. This was all I did in Wichita 
 Falls. The town was a little too large for my 
 kind of procedure, so I did not try for much. 
 The towns which are good soil for such fellows 
 
A REGULAR TRAMP EXISTENCE 85 
 
 as I was at that time are the real small towns of 
 a few hundred population. 
 
 One thing which I learned in the south and 
 southwest was that one could do almost any oper- 
 ation or give almost any treatment to a horse 
 without spending much time in tying them up or 
 throwing them. With a good twitch on the nose 
 I have performed in the standing position, oper- 
 ations which, on the vigorous horses of the north, 
 I would never attempt. The horses in the south 
 did not have the nerve that our northern horses 
 have. 
 
 My first stop south of Wichita Falls was a new 
 town named Monday. It was a nice little place 
 on the new railroad and should be quite a place by 
 this time. The day after I arrived there was the 
 monthly stock and cattle market, a regular 
 jockey day. Or rather, this came on Monday; I 
 arrived Saturday evening. 
 
 As soon as I got off the train I looked around 
 for a livery stable. I had not walked very far 
 when I noticed a bill stuck up on a telegraph post 
 stating that two veterinarians, whose names I do 
 not remember, would be on hand Monday to treat 
 all diseases of horses in a scientific manner, etc., 
 etc. I walked another block or so to the livery 
 stable, and there I saw another card tacked up. 
 Dr. So and So would also be there Monday to do 
 some scientific treating. 
 
 Counting myself, this made four of us; all, I 
 presume, ready to cut prices and each other's 
 throats, if necessary. I did not care much about 
 staying there after seeing those signs. I sup- 
 
86 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 posed, of course, that all of them were regular 
 callers there, and that they would probably get 
 all the business. 
 
 THE OTHER WAS A HARMLE55 OLD QUACK WHO „ 
 SOLD A BOOK HE HAD WRITTEN ON HORSE DOCTORING 
 
 But I could not get away very well. I came 
 in Saturday night with only three or four dollars 
 
A REGULAR TRAMP EXISTENCE 87 
 
 in my pocket. There were no trains running on 
 Sunday; I had to stay. When Monday morning 
 came, I just had to do some business. My bill 
 at the hotel was over two dollars, and the fare to 
 the next town amounted to more than I would 
 have left after paying the hotel bill. 
 
 So I stayed and faced the music. Two of the 
 advertising veterinarians were a couple of old 
 quacks whom I had heard of before. They trav- 
 eled about in a covered wagon and were genuine 
 fakers. The other was a harmless old quack who 
 sold a book he had written on "Horse Doctoring" 
 and confined his work to making a spiel while 
 standing on the seat of his buggy. 
 
 When I saw what my competitors for the day 
 were like, I felt better. I began to walk around 
 among the people, handing out my cards and say- 
 ing a good word for myself. There were quite a 
 few people on hand and more were constantly 
 coming in. The cards which I was passing 
 around had my name printed on them, giving my 
 address as El Reno, Oklahoma. Below my name 
 was the statement that I had formerly been 
 assistant to the State Veterinarian of Texas and 
 also veterinarian in the United States Bureau of 
 Animal Industry. 
 
 This was true, and it carried well. I am sure 
 that these cards saved the day for me. I was a 
 young, "kiddish" appearing fellow, and would 
 have had little chance against the grizzled, expe- 
 rienced looking quacks who were there. I knew 
 that if I got a chance at a single case I could 
 make them "go way back and sit down." But 
 
88 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 my immature appearance was against me; there- 
 fore, I will always believe that those cards opened 
 the way. 
 
 There was not much veterinary work done 
 there that day, but as near as I could tell, I got 
 all that was there. For three hours I fixed horses' 
 
 "I never use a mouth speculum, but pass one of my hands into the 
 mouth and feel of every tooth" 
 
 teeth; one horse after another, just as fast as I 
 could. I know that the greater part of that time 
 those quacks were standing around in the crowd, 
 looking at my performance. Dentistry was one 
 thing I could do at that time, and I had a few 
 knacks up my sleeve which always created aston- 
 
A REGULAR TRAMP EXISTENCE 89 
 
 ishment. I never use a mouth speculum, but pass 
 one of my hands into the mouth and feel of every 
 tooth. Most wolf-teeth I can extract with my 
 fingers and frequently do the same with split or 
 broken teeth which have become loosened. 
 
 On this day, the first horse that was brought to 
 me had a long shell of a molar which had been 
 split through the middle and which stood out 
 against the cheek. I could see that it was quite 
 loose and could be snapped out with the fingers, 
 I opened the horse's mouth so that the ten or 
 twenty spectators could see the tooth and I took 
 the time to give each of them a good look at it ; it 
 really looked quite formidable. When all had 
 seen it, I reached in with my bare hand and 
 yanked the thing out. That was enough for 
 them; for three hours I fixed horse after horse. 
 And the quacks looked on. 
 
 Towards noon it got extremely hot, about the 
 hottest day I ever experienced. I had earned 
 enough money for one day; I bought myself a 
 big, juicy watermelon and sat down in the shade 
 of a big wagon and ate the whole melon. Next I 
 paid my hotel bill, and then I bought a ticket 
 right through to Abilene, on the main line of the 
 Texas & Pacific Railway and at the end of a new 
 railroad I had been following. 
 
 Abilene was then a town of about eight thou- 
 sand people; and a real good town, too. I had 
 three or four dollars left when I got there and 
 my first move was to inquire whether there were 
 any veterinarians in practice there. At a drug 
 
90 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 store I was informed that there was one "hanging 
 out" at Holme's stable, and thither I went. 
 
 Arriving at the stable, I was directed to a 
 blacksmith shop in the rear; there I found my 
 man. He was under a horse, tacking on a shoe. 
 
A REGULAR TRAMP EXISTENCE 91 
 
 To my question about the whereabouts of the vet- 
 erinary surgeon, he answered that he was the 
 party. He was very glad to meet me, as he had 
 often heard about me, he said, while I was located 
 in El Paso. 
 
 He stated that he was helping out the black- 
 smith, who was sick, and that he had intended to 
 take the shop off his hands as his practice was not 
 paying. He told me he was a graduate of a 
 Michigan school. I knew at once that this was 
 not true. He was a quack; one of those quacks 
 who imagine themselves at the head of the veter- 
 inary profession and constantly rave about 
 quacks and quackery. I have met two or three 
 of this kind, and they are usually pretty foxy 
 fellows. Just the same, he was a good sort. 
 When I told him I might stay in his town a while 
 he became interested. He suggested that we 
 form a partnership and gather up some "quick 
 money," as he called it. He said there were lots 
 of cases of "heavy surgery" about the country, 
 cases which he had not had the time to fix up. 
 
 Well, I was down and out; and as I had 
 decided to remain in Abilene a while, anyhow, I 
 thought I might just as well have the fellow with 
 me as against me. I agreed to go in with him; 
 and he was the happiest fellow you ever saw. We 
 rented an office before night, had cards printed 
 and began business. We divided everything 
 equally and at the end of two months I had saved 
 about seventy-five dollars out of my share. 
 
 Those two months were the most interesting, 
 and at the same time the most care-free, I ever 
 
92 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 spent in my life. My partner was a most inter- 
 esting character, and between him and the people 
 we worked for I had a real circus. 
 
 When a fellow came along with a horse to be 
 "worked on," as they call it down there, my part- 
 ner always took him in hand first. When he 
 could not convince the fellow that his horse 
 needed some "heavy surgery," to cost maybe 
 twenty dollars, he would call to me, "Here, Doc; 
 talk scientific to this fellow." Then I would 
 tackle him ; and usually we landed him. 
 
 This quack was a remarkable man in more 
 ways than one. Though nearly sixty years old, 
 he was as spry as I at that time, and he had the 
 record of being a real terror in a fight. He was a 
 "handy guy" at any fighting game and, even at 
 his age, would rather fight than anything else. 
 When dressed up, he was a fine looking man. He 
 really had the stuff in him to do something worth 
 while. At the forge he was a wonder. I have in 
 my possession today a molar extractor which he 
 forged by hand in the blacksmith shop, and it is 
 my best instrument. But the discription of my 
 practice with "Doc" Asa, for that was his name, 
 is worthy of a chapter in itself. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 IN THE ABILENE COUNTRY 
 
 Whoa ! Hold on there with that mule ! Ain't 
 you got sense enough to see we're doing some 
 
 heavy surgery 
 here ? Some 
 of you gosh 
 danged farm- 
 ers don't know 
 nothin'." 
 
 This out- 
 burst of right- 
 eous wrath 
 came from my 
 partner, D r. 
 Asa, and the 
 object o f h i s 
 wrath was a 
 long, gauky, 
 cotton farmer 
 who had the in- 
 tention of hav- 
 ing a "sween- 
 eyed" mule 
 "worked o n," 
 being in the act 
 of leading the 
 mule into our 
 unpretenti o u s 
 infirmary when 
 m y partner's 
 
 93 
 
94 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 wrath burst out. My partner called the infirm- 
 ary the infirmatory ; he, my partner I mean, had 
 not had a very generous education, either gen- 
 eral or veterinary; so please be easy on his "tech- 
 nical terms." 
 
 When Dr. Asa was doing "heavy" surgery 
 which was his term for major surgery, he would 
 insult his best friend if he so much as ventured a 
 suggestion of any sort. If no one made any sort 
 of suggestions bearing on the operation he would 
 invariably vent his spleen on the first party to 
 intrude on the field of maneuvering. If it hap- 
 pened to be a long horn farmer, or a "hill-billie," 
 as Dr. Asa called them, he would continue his 
 first outburst with a running talk somewhat as 
 follows : 
 
 "Gosh darned funny some people can't learn 
 nothin'; seems to me everybody ought to know 
 that by their gosh darned movin' around they stir 
 up enough micromes to put the tetanic disease in 
 a surgery case. Especially these gosh darned 
 rubes with their heavy walkin'; they jar the 
 buildin' enough so as to kill any surgery case 
 with the shock. And then the darn fool has a 
 notion to drag a mule in yit; never see no such 
 gosh darned fools as growed up around here." 
 And so he kept on until something else switched 
 his wrath onto some other object or person. 
 
 To me these wrathful broadsides of the old 
 quack were worth a circus; I was only a few 
 years out of college at the time and I could 
 always get a good "inside" laugh on these occa- 
 sions. 
 
IN THE "ABILENE" COUNTRY 95 
 
 The "heavy" surgery case off his hands, Dr. 
 Asa proceeded to "work on" the sweeneyed mule. 
 But not before an argument with the farmer on 
 the name "sweeney" had been gone through. The 
 farmer wanted to know why the condition was 
 called sweeney. Dr. Asa informed him that it 
 was not called "sweeney" where he came from 
 (Michigan) ; there in Michigan they called it 
 shoulder aterphy, he said. How anybody could 
 call the condition "sweeney" was more than he 
 could understand, he said; why, what was 
 "sweeney" but an Irishman's name anyhow, and 
 couldn't the farmer see that he was entirely 
 wrong? This was old Dr. Asa every time; no 
 matter how plain the case, or how right the 
 farmer, Dr. Asa always attempted to show him 
 that he was "way off" before he did anything for 
 the animal. Sometimes the argument got so hot 
 that the owner of the animal left in disgust; at 
 other times Dr. Asa would chase him away for 
 being "too smart." "If you know so gosh darned 
 much about it," he would say, "what the dickens 
 you coming around here for to have me fix your 
 horse up?" 
 
 At the time of which I write there were not 
 over twenty-five graduate veterinarians in prac- 
 tice in the whole state of Texas, and some of the 
 "stunts" enacted in the name of veterinary 
 science were well worth seeing. 
 
 But let us return to the cotton- farmer with the 
 "sweeneyed" mule. Dr. Asa apparently con- 
 vinced him that sweeney was a name to be men- 
 
96 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 tioned only in the dark, and that a rowel must be 
 inserted to cure the "aterphy." 
 
 When the seton was in place the farmer wanted 
 to know how much his bill came to. "Five dol- 
 lars," said Dr. Asa. 
 
 "Five dollars!" yelled the farmer. "Smoking 
 cat-fish, five dollars for a little job like that? 
 Why, man, I could done that just as well myself 
 if I only had the tools." 
 
 "Look a here, Mister," says Dr. Asa, "Don't 
 you start no rough talk around here, 'cause I'm 
 perfessional, and I won't stand for it. My part- 
 ner here (meaning me) is a scientific graduate, 
 and he can tell you that I done you a scientific 
 piece of work. Your bill is five dollars and you 
 got to pay it. And what's more, you got to pay 
 it right now" 
 
 I began to look around for a place to duck 
 under ; in those days, in that country, arguments 
 of that sort usually were dangerous for the "inno- 
 cent bystander." 
 
 "I'll be hung before I pay you five dollars for 
 that job," says the farmer. 'You can sue me for 
 it, and see if you get it." With that he began 
 to walk away with the mule. 
 
 "Hold on there, you skinner," yells old Doc 
 Asa, and at the same time he makes a jump for 
 the mule's head. He had a knife in his hand and 
 I feared I was going to witness a cutting match. 
 But I was wrong; the old fellow's program was 
 entirely different. With a quick slash he had cut 
 through the seton and with the same movement 
 jerked it out. 
 
IN THE "ABILENE" COUNTRY 
 
 97 
 
 "There," he says, "now take your darned mule 
 away from here before I start something." 
 The farmer lost no time in getting away with 
 
 NO ING AWAY * 
 
 his mule, either. Old Dr. Asa, though in his 
 fifties, had a reputation as a scrapper in any 
 form, shape or manner. Knives, guns, fists or 
 
98 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 feet, the old fellow was any younger man's equal. 
 It has always been a wonder to me that he could 
 live in that country as long as he did. He had 
 been there six years when I went into partner- 
 ship with him. 
 
 ****** 
 
 I had been with Dr. Asa a couple of weeks and 
 aside from a few little "misunderstandings" we 
 were getting along fine. These little "misunder- 
 standings" arose from the fact that Asa would 
 never make a call alone ; he always insisted on my 
 accompanying him. I tried to argue with him 
 that there was no advantage in a partnership 
 conducted on those lines, because the two of us 
 could do no more than one man alone. Nearly 
 every time we made a call together we lost money 
 by missing a job or two that came to the office 
 while we were gone. I tried to show him that if 
 one of us would "hang around" the office we 
 could get all the business. But he would not see 
 it my way. The only reason for his attitude on 
 this point that I could ever figure out was that 
 the old scoundrel feared I might "double-cross" 
 him in some way. 
 
 We kept no books on the partnership and 
 "squared up" after every job we did, each 
 receiving half of all money taken in. When rent 
 was due, or a drug bill had to be paid, each of us 
 reached in our pocket for half the amount. 
 
 One reason for this way of keeping our 
 finances straight was that both of us were "hard 
 up." The other reason was that we did not trust 
 each other; that's a fact. Asa feared I was too 
 
IN THE "ABILENE" COUNTRY 99 
 
 smooth for him because I was a college graduate, 
 and I feared Asa was too cunning for me because 
 he was a foxy old quack. 
 
 Anyhow, Asa kept on dragging me around on 
 his calls, and after a time he got so that he 
 depended on me a great deal. He got so that he 
 would depend on me to carry thermometers, 
 trocars, hypos and other utilities; he knew I 
 usually kept these in my pockets and he soon 
 acquired the habit of leaving his things in the 
 office. 
 
 When we arrived on the scene of trouble he 
 would say to me, "Doc, take his fever with that 
 there thermometry of yourn." 
 
 When he had diagnosed the case and received 
 my confirmation of the findings he would say, 
 "Well, Doc, shoot the hypo to him;" which meant 
 for me to do whatever I thought ought to be 
 done. 
 
 One night after I had gone to bed a call came 
 from a rancher about eight miles north of town. 
 Dr. Asa wanted me to accompany him on the 
 trip as usual, but I played sick and refused to 
 go. He stuck around for at least a quarter of an 
 hour trying to induce me to go with him, but I 
 remained firm and refused to be induced. Fin- 
 ally he left, and I went back to sleep. It seemed 
 to me that I had been sleeping only a short time 
 when I was awakened by Dr. Asa calling my 
 name. When I looked up I saw him feeling 
 through my vest pockets, cussing a string of 
 cuss-words the while. " You're a fine graduate, 
 you are," he yells at me, "let a feller drive eight 
 
100 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 miles to a colic with no trocar. And when I gets 
 there the gosh-darned plug is bloated like a circus 
 balloon. Had she been a cow I might a knived 
 her, but you know we can't do no such surgery 
 on the equi specials. Come on out of that there 
 bed now and go along back with me; we got to 
 hurry." 
 
 Well, I looked at my watch and saw that it 
 would soon be daylight anyhow, so I jumped 
 into my clothes and rode along back to the poor 
 nag waiting to be stabbed with the trocar, eight 
 miles away. 
 
 From the description Dr. Asa gave me of the 
 case as it was when he left it I judged that the 
 rancher would probably be digging the grave 
 when we arrived. Dr. Asa did not think so, 
 because he had given the horse a big dose of 
 peppermint and belladonna, his favorite colic 
 cure; he was sure this would keep him going 
 until the trocar could be gotten. 
 
 When we were getting close to the ranch house 
 Asa began to run the horse he was driving and 
 we flew into that yard like a Chicago fire depart- 
 ment, taking off a rod or two of poultry wire 
 from the hen yard before Asa got the control of 
 the fifth wheel after making the turn into the 
 gate. 
 
 I could see no one anywhere about when we 
 made our flying entrance and I was sure the 
 patient had died. To one side of the barn there 
 was a small mesquite grove and toward this grove 
 Asa now steered our horse. As we got up close 
 
IN THE "ABILENE" COUNTRY 101 
 
 I saw the rancher sitting on the ground and the 
 sick horse lay a few yards farther in the grove. 
 
 Jumping out of the buggy, trocar in hand, Asa 
 yells at the rancher, "Didn't I tell you to keep 
 him up ? What in blazes you want to let him lay 
 around like that for?" The rancher answered 
 not a word but he appeared to be very much 
 amused about something or other. 
 
 When Asa got close to the patient he says: 
 "There now, you see, you went and let him die. 
 I told you to keep him up. But we'll tap him 
 anyhow." With that he shoved the instrument 
 into the dead horse's flank and began a lecture on 
 the operation of tapping. When no more gas 
 came through the canula he pulled it out and told 
 the rancher he owed us ten dollars. 
 
 I began to move over to the place where our 
 horse was tied and untied him ; I feared we might 
 have to make a fire-run out of that yard and I 
 wanted to be ready. 
 
 But in a few minutes Asa and the rancher 
 came out of the grove and Asa handed me five 
 silver dollars, my share of the fee. 
 
 As far as I could see everybody thought every- 
 thing was O. K. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 UNFAIR COMPETITION 
 
 One day as I was returning from a visit to a 
 neighboring town my partner, Dr. Asa, met me 
 at the depot. He appeared considerably wrought 
 up about something and the way he welcomed me 
 back would have given one the impression that I 
 had been away for several months instead of a 
 day. 
 
 "Gee whiskers, Doc," he says, "glad you came 
 back so quick; there is big competition in town! 
 A guy blowed in this morning and he is throwing 
 bills around which says he is here to stay. We 
 got to get busy an' scare him out." In our walk 
 from the depot to the office, I got a look at the 
 "big competition," and the description suited him 
 all right. He was one of the biggest men I have 
 ever seen, and if size made competition, he was 
 the whole thing, without question. I tried to 
 calm Dr. Asa's fears by various remarks about 
 size from all unfavorable points of view but he 
 would not be calmed; he said he was somewhat 
 acquainted with the big fellow and knew him to 
 be the most unscrupulous competitor imaginable. 
 Later I found this to be true, and in all my 
 travels I met only one quack who was this big 
 fellow's equal in all the tricks of quackery. On 
 this occasion he began his campaign with an 
 indirect personal attack on Dr. Asa by passing 
 out cards which read: 
 
 103 
 
104 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 Dr. C. W. Neok 
 Veterinary Surgeon and Dentist. 
 
 This was on the face of the card; on the back 
 of the card were the words : 
 
 "Tell the truth and stay sober; 
 It will win!" 
 
 This was the "slam" at Asa, who violated the 
 above named virtues with considerable regularity, 
 and his weakness for drink was especially well 
 known. 
 
 Now began a campaign of price-cutting and 
 mud-slinging, the like of which I had not seen 
 before nor have I seen its equal since. Den- 
 tistry, which was regularly done at three dollars, 
 was shoved down to one dollar, and I have seen 
 Dr. Asa float a mouth for fifty cents rather than 
 let the job go to Neok. It got so that the farmers 
 took advantage of this state of war among the 
 veterinary fraternity and they would "get prices" 
 from each of us before they hired one of us. It 
 was the most exciting time I ever went through 
 in practice, but it was great fun for a youngster 
 such as I was at the time. 
 
 About three weeks after "the big competition" 
 located, things were getting to a dangerous pitch 
 between my partner, Dr. Asa, and the big quack, 
 Dr. Neok. They did not confine their energies to 
 drawing trade; they made slanderous remarks 
 about each other and even threatened one another 
 with physical punishment. 
 
 It was quite a difficult matter for me to main- 
 tain a neutral attitude because of my association 
 
UNFAIR COMPETITION 105 
 
 with Dr. Asa, but I succeeded in keeping out of 
 the mix-up so far as real action went. 
 
 Asa now absolutely refused to go on a call by 
 himself, and even on a short call in town he would 
 take me along with him. Neok had threatened 
 bodily violence should they ever meet face to face, 
 and Asa was taking no chances. In that country, 
 in those days, bodily violence meant a shooting 
 affair, and I did not relish the part I had to play. 
 However, I could not very well forsake my 
 legitimate partner at so critical a time. 
 
 The office which we occupied at that time was 
 a small, wooden affair, probably ten by twelve 
 feet floor space and one story high. On top of 
 the roof, just on the edge of front peak, Asa had 
 mounted the bleached skull of a horse, with an 
 electric light globe in each orbital fossa. At night 
 we would switch on these lights; it made some 
 sign, believe me. 
 
 Dr. Asa claimed that the skull was that of a 
 running horse by the name of Major Dangerfield 
 who had died while in his care. Whenever any- 
 one remarked about the peculiar method of 
 advertising, Asa would say, "Yep ; proud to say 
 that's old Major Dangerfleld's cranium. I had 
 to do some heavy surgery on him, but he couldn't 
 live." 
 
 As I sat in the office one night reading, I was 
 nearly scared out of my wits by what seemed to 
 be a loud explosion on our roof. I jumped out 
 through the front door and, looking up, I failed 
 to see the lights in the eye-sockets of "Major 
 Dangerfield's cranium;" neither could I distin- 
 
106 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 guish the skull itself. When I investigated early 
 the next morning, I found that only a few pieces 
 of the skull remained on the roof, the greater 
 
 -AT-IH1MX-WL-W0ULD SWITCH ON THESE LIGHTS; 
 IT MADE^OriE StGN?Bm£VC^ME=g >= ^S 
 
 portion being scattered about on the ground; 
 near the edge of the gable the shingles had been 
 bored through by a high-power rifle ball. Asa 
 
UNFAIR COMPETITION 107 
 
 blamed Neok for this trick, without hesitation. 
 To me it made no difference who had done the 
 shooting; it was getting altogether too warlike 
 for my comfort, and I told Asa that I was going 
 to leave for more peaceful fields. He begged me 
 to remain; he even cried, but I went. 
 
 The finish of this veterinary war in Abilene I 
 can only tell from hearsay. It seems that after 
 I left Neok sent for reinforcements in the form 
 of another quack by the name of Stables. The 
 two of them finally harassed Asa into open war- 
 fare. For a number of days Neok and Asa 
 endeavored to ambush one another with sawed-off 
 shotguns. Some friends on both sides were suc- 
 cessful in preventing bloodshed by negotiating a 
 meeting between Neok, Stables and Asa, at 
 which meeting Asa sold his practice and office to 
 Neok for the sum of eighty-five dollars. 
 
 So ended Dr. Asa's career as a veterinary 
 practitioner in Texas. 
 
 I heard of many instances which were as bad, 
 if not worse, as the competition between Asa and 
 Neok. Texas was a great state from a veteri- 
 nary standpoint in those days. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 FAREWELL TO ABILENE 
 
 Of Abilene and the country around it, I have 
 many pleasant memories. That year, when I 
 was there, the prospects for a cotton crop were 
 exceptionally good and the farmers were spend- 
 ing their money freely. Abilene had outgrown 
 the cattle business and cotton was king. West of 
 Abilene there was some cotton, but more cattle. 
 A few years later, though, I saw a cotton gin at 
 Monahans, which is about two hundred miles west 
 of Abilene. 
 
 At the time of which I write, Texas had no 
 laws regulating the practice of veterinary medi- 
 cine and surgery, and the state was swarming 
 with quacks. 
 
 When I recall to mind some of the work I have 
 seen done in the name of veterinary science, I can 
 almost bring tears to my eyes. I have seen 
 animals submitted to the most cruel tortures by 
 some of these quacks for the most simple and 
 benign conditions or diseases. 
 
 The greatest harm, however, which follows on 
 the trail of one of these defamers of a worthy 
 profession is the seeds of ignorance which they 
 sow and cultivate among farmers. Besides this 
 they are, as a rule, dishonest. 
 
 I have personally known of several instances in 
 which a certain quack wilfully infected horses 
 promiscuously in a certain small town by smear- 
 
 109 
 
110 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 ing water troughs and hitching posts with the 
 nasal discharges from cases of strangles. Through 
 their ignorance, I have known two quacks to 
 
 HAVE PER50NALU 
 IN5TANCES IN WHICH A CERTAIN QUACK WILEULLY 
 INFECTED HORSES BY SMEARING WATER TR0UGH5 §S§t 
 WITH DISCHARGES FROM CASES OF STRANGLES " 
 
 ''W- 
 
 trephine a case of glanders, thinking it a catar- 
 rhal condition, and thus exposing hundreds of 
 horses, as well as people, to infection. 
 
FAREWELL TO ABILENE 111 
 
 Likewise, I have known, personally, of several 
 cases of catarrh of the facial sinuses produced by 
 a decayed tooth in which a quack ordered the 
 horses killed, thinking them glandered. I know 
 of a case where a quack was called to assist a 
 mare in foaling. After he arrived and examined 
 the mare he decided that he could not get the 
 colt away. Instead of telling the farmer that 
 the case was too much for him and requesting a 
 consultation or other veterinary assistance, he 
 sent the farmer into the house after some soap; 
 while the farmer was in the house he gave the 
 mare a large dose of strychnine, from which she 
 died within an hour. I know of cases, to which I 
 was called later, which in the start were simple 
 conditions, but which had been converted into 
 very grave affections by improper treatment. 
 Right here, where I am practicing today, there 
 are quacks who treat other people's animals and 
 charge them for it, but when their own animals 
 or some of their relatives' animals get sick they 
 call me in. 
 
 One thing I know, and that is this : A grad- 
 uate, if he does not benefit a case, will certainly 
 not do it any harm. He knows his anatomy and 
 physiology; these two alone will keep him from 
 harming the patient. From lack of anatomical 
 knowledge I knew a quack to cut out, in its 
 entirety, the patella of a horse, presuming thereby 
 to correct a claudication. From the same lack 
 of knowledge I knew a quack to tap a cow for 
 bloat, through the lateral processes of the lumbar 
 vertebrae. 
 
112 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 If there is a quack in practice who, when he 
 gets a case which he cannot diagnose, will frankly 
 tell the owner so, I have not yet seen or heard of 
 him. Every one of them whom I came in con- 
 tact with will treat any case you bring them, and 
 will continue to treat the case as long as you 
 allow them to do 30, or until the patient dies. 
 Cases which get well under their treatment, get 
 well, with few exceptions, in spite of their treat- 
 ment and not because of it. 
 
 I may seem a trifle too severe on quacks and 
 quackery, but I tell you that half the quacks in 
 practice today should be in jail. The other half 
 should be hung. I can prove it. I call to 
 mind an instance which gives a fair illustration 
 of the integrity of some of these fellows. On a 
 certain day a cotton farmer brought a mule to a 
 certain quack in Abilene for the purpose of 
 having his teeth floated. After examining the 
 mouth this horse-doctor gave it as his opinion 
 that the teeth were not much out of order, but 
 that he would float them anyhow, and then give 
 the mule a pill. He thought the pill would do 
 the work alone, but to make sure he would float 
 the teeth a little. 
 
 The farmer took his mule home after this had 
 been done, and as he did not seem to improve a 
 particle, he sent the mule in again with a neigh- 
 bor, a week later. The quack having forgotten 
 what he told the farmer the first time, now told 
 his neighbor that the mule had the worst set of 
 teeth he ever saw, and then he floated them again. 
 When the neighbor got the mule home and told 
 
FAREWELL TO ABILENE 113 
 
 the owner all about it, he got mad and threat- 
 ened to shoot the first horse-doctor he should 
 ever happen to see. 
 
 He cooled down in a few days and brought 
 the mule to me. One of the upper molars had 
 decayed and the opposing tooth in the lower jaw 
 had grown until it was about an inch too long. 
 It took only a minute to cut this off and enable 
 the mule to eat properly. Now, this quack had 
 "fixed" this same mouth twice within a week and 
 had done absolutely nothing toward correcting 
 the condition. Well, this will do for the quacks. 
 
 Now, let me see ; where was I ? Oh, yes ; I was 
 in the act of leaving my quack partner at Abi- 
 lene. About two months I had been there. I 
 could see that our bubble was getting ready to 
 burst; we had to charge exorbitant fees to make 
 any money, and we were being shunned by the 
 farmers. They were almost afraid to look at the 
 sign on our door for fear we might charge them 
 for the looking. Before the bottom dropped out 
 from under us I packed my trunk and bade my 
 partner farewell. 
 
 I had about seventy-five dollars saved up, and 
 I bought a ticket right through to El Paso, four 
 hundred and fifty miles west. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 DR. ASA TURNS UP 
 
 I buckled right down to business in El Paso 
 and soon had things going nicely when, without a 
 word of notice, Dr. Asa dropped in on me one 
 day. 
 
 He said he was on his way to California and 
 his wife and his two children accompanied him. 
 As he seemed somewhat poorly rigged out, I 
 asked him where his wife and the youngsters 
 were staying, upon which he said that they were 
 comfortably fixed in a hotel. He did not know 
 the name of the hotel but said he knew where it 
 was located and could find the place without 
 trouble. He finally admitted that he had only a 
 few dollars left and thought he would stick 
 around a few days and make enough money to 
 pay their way to the coast. 
 
 While I was somewhat short on change 
 myself, I wanted to help him all I could and 
 suggested that he run up to Las Cruses, New 
 Mexico, for a few days. Las Cruses was a fine 
 little town in the Mesilla valley about forty miles 
 from El Paso, and not even a quack there. I 
 knew Asa could clean up a nice little sum of 
 money there in a few days because I had been 
 called there frequently and knew just what the 
 possibilities were for such an attempt as Asa 
 would make. 
 
 He agreed at once that it was exactly the sort 
 
 115 
 
116 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 of a proposition he was looking for and he could 
 hardly wait for the train to start, which would 
 be at seven in the evening. As it was early in 
 
 WE WALKECflFOR OVER AN HOUR,FRON ONE HOTEL TO 
 ANOTHER, BUT WE COULD NOT FIND-THE RIGHT ONE " 
 
 the morning when we mapped out this program, 
 he decided to spend the day seeing the sights, and 
 forth he went, in good humor. 
 
DR. ASA TURNS UP 117 
 
 A few hours later, I happened on him a few 
 blocks from my office "gloriously betanked;" he 
 could barely follow the sidewalk. 
 
 "Hello Doc," he yelled at me; "say, this is 
 some burg all right, all right. Say, Doc, I'm 
 going to stay right here; put up a big inflrma- 
 tory here, Doc; be rich in two years. Fine 
 people; got the money too." He ran off a couple 
 of yards of this line of talk and I had some dif- 
 ficulty changing the subject. 
 
 I reminded him of the trip to Las Cruces and 
 suggested that we look up his wife and kids. 
 "By George," he says, "that's right, Doc; say, I 
 forgot all about them." He was sure he knew 
 exactly where the hotel was and started right out 
 to go there. We walked for over an hour, from 
 one hotel to another, but we could not find the 
 right one. Asa would stand in front of each 
 place, swaying about and "sizing it up ;" then he 
 would look in the door, come out again, "size" 
 the building up some more, and then he would 
 say, "Nope; that ain't quite the place. Looks 
 pretty near like it though." Then we would 
 go on to the next one. Finally we came to a 
 boarding house, quite a piece away from the 
 downtown hotels. "Here she is, Doc," Asa 
 yelled; "now we got her. I told you I knew 
 where it was; come on in." 
 
 Arrived inside, we found the wife and 
 "kiddos" howling; they feared Asa had gone and 
 left them. Also, they had not had a bite to eat 
 since the supper on the evening before. This 
 "got my goat" and I gave him the benefit of a 
 
118 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 w 
 
 piece of my mind. He showed fight, and I had 
 to threaten him with a heavy molar cutter which 
 I spied in an open suit case in a corner of the 
 room. 
 
 When he got somewhat more tame again, he 
 threw himself on the bed and fell asleep. After 
 making arrangements for something to eat for 
 the madam and youngsters, I left, with instruc- 
 tions to the madam to telephone me as soon as 
 Asa woke up. 
 
 As I received no message by two in the after- 
 noon I thought I would go over and see how 
 things were. Asa had just come alive when I 
 entered and he was the sickest, most dejected 
 man I ever saw. He obeyed my every com- 
 mand, and promised to stay in the room until I 
 should call for him in time for the train to 
 Las Cruces. And he did. 
 
 We left on the Santa Fe that evening, having 
 made arrangements for Mrs. Asa and the chil- 
 dren to remain at the boarding house in El Paso. 
 
 We arrived at Las Cruces about nine o'clock 
 and spent an hour or two getting "the lay of the 
 land" before we went to bed. 
 
 Arising early the next morning, we had a good 
 breakfast and then we went to work. The fact 
 that I was acquainted with a few people in the 
 town made it easy to get started. By noon we 
 had about a hundred dollars worth of work "in 
 sight" and old Dr. Asa felt pretty good about it. 
 He decided that Las Cruces just about suited 
 him and that he would locate there permanently ; 
 I was to return to El Paso and ship his family to 
 
DR. ASA TURNS UP 119 
 
 Las Cruces at once. I was only too glad to find 
 him so easily pleased and I returned to El Paso 
 and sent, his family on their way to Las Cruces. 
 
 A few weeks later I heard he was in jail at 
 Albuquerque, New Mexico. He had only been 
 in Las Cruces a few days when he went on 
 another "tear," spending every dollar he had 
 earned. To go the limit he had "soaked'' his 
 instruments to a liveryman and, then, still drunk, 
 he had stolen them from the fellow before night. 
 
 His wife and the children "went back to her 
 folks." 
 
 Later I heard that Asa finally reached Cali- 
 fornia. 
 
 Note: "Doc" Asa is still in his old ways; re- 
 cently he was telling a friend of the publisher 
 that on his return from California to Abilene that 
 they met him with four brass bands and that 
 about 2000 people marched with him to his hotel. 
 Quite a cordial reception for old "Doc." 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 I GET THE GOLD FEVER 
 
 I worked up a fair practice in El Paso ; and at 
 the end of three years I went away and left it; 
 left it to go on a gold prospecting trip in old 
 Mexico. It happened in this way: 
 
 Shortly after I had again located in El Paso I 
 made the acquaintance of an old prospector by 
 the name of Lister. This old fellow would come 
 down to my office nearly every night and sit 
 around smoking his pipe and telling me stories 
 of adventure on his numerous trips on the hunt 
 for gold. 
 
 Let one of these old-timers, who knows how 
 to tell what he has gone through, talk to a young 
 fellow who has the fire of youth in his blood; I 
 say, let such an old-timer talk to a live, young 
 fellow night after night for several months. If 
 you can keep that young fellow where he hap- 
 pens to be located at the time you can class your- 
 self as a real man-handler. 
 
 The case is even worse if, like this old-timer 
 told me, he knows where there are some excep- 
 tionally rich placer grounds ; grounds where a few 
 months' work will make you independent; if he 
 could only get a grub-stake. I listened to these 
 talks for many nights. First I decided to put up 
 the money to let the old sodger make a trip down 
 to these grounds. They were supposed to be in 
 the state of Sonora, on the edge of the Yaquin 
 
 121 
 
122 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 country. After a few more weeks I decided to 
 go with him if we could get another man to go 
 with us. 
 
 Within a few days we found one who was not 
 only willing to go, but was looking for just such 
 an opportunity. He and I put up two hundred 
 and fifty dollars for our outfit, and the old pros- 
 pector was to take us to the place, and bring us 
 back. We left El Paso on September twenty- 
 eight for Casas Grandes, where we bought jack 
 mules and everything we were told to buy. After 
 five weeks of hard knocks, securing only a good 
 knowledge of how to pack a burro, we came 
 back. Our man could not find the place he had 
 talked so much about. When we got into the 
 mountains he knew no more about the country 
 than we did. We kept pushing on over range 
 after range of hills, until we were a hundred and 
 fifty miles from the railroad; and then we came 
 back. 
 
 We left the old prospector in a Mormon 
 colony on top of the continental divide. He 
 swore he would yet find the place, if we would 
 have patience. 
 
 We left him with enough grub for three or 
 four weeks, and then we hiked it along to Casas 
 Grandes. There we sold our burros and trap- 
 pings and came back to El Paso, nearly broke 
 again. 
 
 Two days later my prospecting partner left 
 for California, while I took the train for Abilene. 
 I never saw either of these men again; nor have 
 I heard from them. About two weeks later the 
 
I GET THE GOLD FEVER 123 
 
 Mexican revolution broke out, and I was glad we 
 were back in the good old United States of 
 America. 
 
 I remained in Abilene only a few days and 
 then journeyed on to Little Rock, Arkansas, 
 once more. There I remained about two weeks, 
 including four or five days I spent at a lumber 
 camp in the Fourche Mountains there. I made 
 this trip to the lumber camp for Doctor Merch- 
 ant, who had some patients there, receiving for 
 it five dollars per day. 
 
 When I returned to Little Rock from this 
 lumber camp, I bought a ticket to Milwaukee, 
 arriving there on December 15, 1910, after an 
 absence of just about five years. And I was 
 broke again! 
 
 This time I was pretty well disgusted with 
 myself and my condition. Here I was, a 
 grown-up man, twenty-eight years old, with not 
 a dollar of my own nor a place to lay my head. I 
 had made a failure of everything so far. But 
 just the same, I had hopes; I never gave up. I 
 knew that I could make good anywhere, if I 
 could settle down. My predicament now was 
 that I had quite a bit of settling up to do, also. 
 And then I found out that while a young lad is 
 given every opportunity and encouragement to 
 help him, when a fellow gets up near thirty and 
 cannot show anything for his efforts, people 
 fight shy of him ; they size him up as a no-account. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 "pastures new" 
 
 A brother of mine was practicing veterinary 
 medicine and surgery in the Missouri river 
 country in South Dakota. He had written to 
 me a number of times saying that his state had 
 some fine openings for practitioners and that he 
 would at least like to have me come up and spend 
 a few weeks with him. 
 
 So up I went. 
 
 I found him located in a fine little town, Cham- 
 berlain; and he was doing well. The only 
 trouble he had was a mania for fishing in the 
 Missouri when he ought to be cutting out shoe- 
 boils and filing teeth. So well were his clients 
 acquainted with his weakness for this pastime 
 that they first walked down to the river when 
 they came to consult him; if they did not find 
 him there they knew there was no use looking in 
 the office for him, because he was either out of 
 town or fishing. 
 
 When I arrived, he had a number of odd cases 
 sticking around the country waiting to be oper- 
 ated upon and I induced him, with some diffi- 
 culty, to give the fish a rest until we could clean 
 up some of this work. I was anxious to get on 
 some of the Dakota farms and ranches ; I wanted 
 to handle some of their stock and their diseases, 
 for the purpose of comparing them with methods 
 and conditions in Texas and the Southwest. 
 
 125 
 
126 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 We drove about the country for several days 
 treating various chronic maladies and doing a lot 
 of dentistry. I found that the fees there were 
 fully as high as in Texas, but that the horses 
 were harder to handle; they had more life than 
 the "dunghills" we treated in the Southwest. We 
 had to cast some patients for simple operations, 
 which we invariably could perform with the horse 
 in the standing position down in the Texas 
 country. 
 
 One day as we were driving near the village 
 of White Lake, about 35 miles east of Chamber- 
 lain, we came to a fine looking farm. My brother 
 informed me that the owner was a cranky old 
 German and that he had had some disagreement 
 with him on account of a prescription. Never- 
 theless, he said he knew the old fellow had sev- 
 eral animals requiring veterinary attention and 
 he suggested that we drive in to see him. While 
 my brother doubted whether the old fellow 
 would allow him to treat any of the animals he 
 thought that I might be able to do something. 
 It was none of my trouble, I thought, and so we 
 drove into the yard. 
 
 A boy came out of the house, and my brother 
 asked him to please tell his father to come out. 
 
 When the old man saw who it was that wanted 
 to speak with him he bristled up immediately, 
 saying, "No, no, I got no sick stock." My 
 brother ignored this and told him he wanted to 
 introduce me, his brother from Texas and also a 
 veterinarian. "Oh, so is dat," says the old 
 codger. "Oh, hu, hu; two in vun fambly! Veil, 
 
"PASTURES NEW" 127 
 
 I tell you," addressing me now, "your brudder 
 here he nearly done me someding. I had here a 
 sick colt, und he given me a scription for him. I 
 tooken the scription to the druggist store und 
 dey told me dere vas enough arsenic in that 
 scription to kill all the horses in South Dakota. 
 Now, vat is dot for a business from a man vot 
 claims he is a vertnery? It vas nice yet of the 
 druggist store to told me in time." Here my 
 brother tried to explain to him that he had 
 merely prescribed tablespoonful doses of Fow- 
 ler's solution of arsenic, which would give the 
 colt not quite three grains at a dose, and as the 
 colt was a big, husky three-year-old, the dose 
 was more than safe. 
 
 "Veil," the old fellow says, "maybe you 
 vanted to make it like dat ; but the vay the feller 
 in the druggist store told me if I give one dose 
 my colt is a gone goose. No, no, ve can't do 
 such tings." 
 
 I took him in hand then and knocked the drug- 
 gist into a cocked hat by telling him a few of my 
 own experiences. When I got through talking 
 to him he felt like killing the fatted calf for us 
 and he wanted to know whether I was prepared 
 to do some work. Well, I told him, of course, I 
 was only out here on a vacation and so on, but if 
 he had some work he wanted done up in first- 
 class shape, why, I could change my program. 
 
 "All right," he says, "come in the barn; I 
 show you someding right avay." 
 
 We left him after a couple of hours with a 
 nice roll of his coin in our pockets. I charged 
 
128 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 him so much that I surely thought he would 
 squeal; but he paid us with a smile and said he 
 hoped we would both stay in that country. A 
 whole year later I came through that part of the 
 country again and he was friendly yet; every- 
 thing we did for him on that first meeting came 
 out fine. 
 
 4i& 3& 3& 3fe 3& & 
 
 One day, when I had been in South Dakota 
 two or three weeks, a client of mv brother re- 
 quested him to make a visit to his ranch forty- 
 five miles north of town. He said he had a 
 young horse on this ranch that had a swelling 
 under one eye and a discharge from the nostril 
 on the same side. He stated that he had not 
 seen the horse for three or four months, but the 
 last time he saw him, he said, he seemed to be in 
 a serious condition and he thought he would have 
 us treat him. The reason that he had not seen 
 the animal for such a long time was that he lived 
 in town, and only visited the ranch a few times 
 each year. 
 
 As he owned a car he offered to take us to the 
 ranch and bring us back to town the same day. 
 He did not inquire what our charge would be 
 for the trip, and as he was quite wealthy, we 
 presumed that he would be prepared to pay what 
 was right. 
 
 We started out early in the morning and 
 arrived at the ranch about noon. The greater 
 portion of the time was spent in crossing the 
 Missouri river in a rowboat and walking from 
 the west shore to the ranch, a distance of a mile 
 
"PASTURES NEW" 129 
 
 and a half, the car being left in the care of some 
 boys on the east side of the river. 
 
 When we arrived at the place and got a look 
 at the horse we found him as sound as a dollar. 
 Every trace of the condition which had troubled 
 him had disappeared. Besides, there was not 
 another animal on the place in need of veteri- 
 nary services; the superintendent tried hard to 
 give us something to do, but he could not find a 
 mouth to fix. So, back to town we went. 
 
 As the ranch owner deposited us in front of 
 our hotel he remarked to mv brother that we 
 might present our bill any time we cared to do 
 so. After a consultation with me my brother 
 decided that, as the customary fee for such trips 
 was at the rate of a dollar per mile, forty dollars 
 would be reasonable; this was an allowance of 
 five dollars for the use of the rancher's car. 
 
 The next day we presented the bill; but we 
 didn't get the money. The fellow made "such a 
 holler" that we felt like we had committed a mur- 
 der; we reallv did feel that way anyhow. Fin- 
 ally, we made a satisfactory adjustment by 
 cutting the bill in two, drawing twenty dollars 
 from him. This was even more than the trip was 
 worth, and I feel like a robber to this day on that 
 score. It was really nothing more than a pleas- 
 ure trip for my brother and me, and we must have 
 been hard-hearted scoundrels in those days to 
 make a charge of this kind. 
 
 Strange to say, the fellow remained friendly 
 towards us even after this hold-up game. He 
 must have been a big-hearted fellow, truly. 
 
130 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 One of the most common diseases which I 
 encountered while in South Dakota with my 
 brother was actinomycosis. In the region where 
 my brother was located the disease seemed to be 
 present in some form on almost every farm. 
 
 The form known as "lumpy jaw" was the most 
 common, but it seemed to be present always in a 
 mild form and was very amenable to ordinary 
 treatment. Nearly all the cattle affected were 
 young cattle. 
 
 Conditions simulating cancerous processes are 
 also seen quite frequently there. 
 
 My brother and I term South Dakota the "fly 
 state ;" and it is a good name for it. 
 
 There seem to be more flies in South Dakota 
 than anything else. I have gone into restaurants 
 in South Dakota and, after having a nice dinner 
 served, walked out and left most of it untouched 
 because the flies bothered me so that I couldn't 
 eat. 
 
 In all my travels I never encountered so many 
 flies as there were in South Dakota. I have 
 mentioned this to other travelers and they have 
 had the same experience. 
 
 A few counties near the Missouri river have 
 had a good taste of the ravages of hog cholera, 
 but there did not seem to be any good estimate 
 of the importance of stamping out the disease. 
 Instead of disposing of carcasses so as to prevent 
 the propagation of the scourge, most of the 
 farmers took no such steps at all ; they seemed to 
 look upon the loss of forty or fifty hogs from 
 cholera as a matter of fact, as something which 
 
"PASTURES NEW" 131 
 
 belonged to the hog industry and had to be 
 endured. 
 
 Probably one reason for this was the scarcity 
 of graduate veterinary practitioners. This 
 makes the employment of veterinary services an 
 expensive matter and both the hogs and the 
 farmers suffer in consequence thereof. 
 
 I spoke to one farmer about this when he was 
 telling me of the loss of sixty hogs from cholera. 
 I asked him why he didn't get a veterinarian to 
 treat his hogs with serum. He said he would if 
 there were any veterinarians close enough to 
 make it a reasonable proposition. The nearest 
 practitioner to his farm was about forty miles 
 away; he was usually too busy to attend to calls 
 at such a distance, and even if he could be 
 induced to come, his charge for one trip would 
 cost as much as two or three hogs. 
 
 The country in this region is just on the line 
 between a farming country and a ranching 
 country; a veterinarian there must have an 
 immense area to work over in order to be able to 
 exist and it will be many years until the country 
 can support more practitioners there. 
 
 There are many towns in which there are 
 apparently good openings for a veterinarian; 
 when one comes to look the field over, however, 
 he usually finds that if he could get all the work 
 for twenty miles in every direction he would be 
 barely able to make ends meet on expenses. 
 
 As is usually the case where the farmers have 
 not come in contact very much with graduate 
 veterinarians, so it is there also, namely, the 
 
132 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 request for a guarantee on what you do for 
 them. 
 
 After you have examined a case of lameness 
 and decided that the cause is a ringbone or a 
 spavin that must be fired and you tell the farmer 
 the fee will be ten dollars, he usually says, "Well, 
 I will give you ten dollars for the job if you will 
 guarantee it." And to some of them you can 
 talk for an hour, using up your best arguments 
 on the point, but you won't get the job except 
 "no cure no pay" fashion. This state of affairs 
 is the direct result of quackery and the farmer 
 must not be blamed for it entirely. 
 
 A veterinarian in such localities must combine 
 the selling qualities of a sewing machine agent 
 with his professional ability as a practitioner if 
 he expects to do any business; and it is mighty 
 discouraging work until you get a good start. I 
 know what it is from personal experience. One 
 or two jobs of "hard luck" in such localities 
 "cooks your goose;" you might just as well begin 
 to look around for a new location at once then. 
 
 In such localities as these the young practi- 
 tioner must resort to his knowledge of "handling 
 trade" in the beginning more than to his ability 
 as a practitioner. Until he has made a name for 
 himself Jie will get no credit for being ever so 
 conscientious or painstaking. Although he may 
 spend half an hour carefully examining a case 
 and using every known scientific means to arrive 
 at a diagnosis, he won't get the credit for it that 
 "old Doc so and so" gets who drives into the yard 
 and "can see what is the matter before he gets 
 
"PASTURES NEW" 133 
 
 out of his buggy." If the young graduate hap- 
 pens to have "good luck" and succeeds in saving 
 a few grave cases right from the jump, his suc- 
 cess is assured; just as they are slow in acclaim- 
 ing a new beginner's work in these localities, just 
 so ready are they to proclaim him a wonder once 
 he demonstrates that he is worth anything. And 
 if he treats them half "white" they will stick to 
 him against all comers, too, ever after. 
 
 Many a worthy young graduate has gone 
 down to defeat in such localities before some 
 ignorant, crooked old quack; not because the 
 young fellow couldn't deliver the goods, but 
 because he relied solely on his ability as a vet- 
 erinarian and ignored the art of "handling 
 trade." 
 
 I have known of places in such localities where 
 an old quack would successfully hold out against 
 graduate after graduate; every little while one 
 would quit and a new one come in again. The 
 old quack eventually got the name of being a 
 wonderful doctor who was "too much" for all 
 the graduates ; five or six had tried it against him 
 but he "drove 'em all out." 
 
 The next year you come through that town 
 again and you find that another young grad- 
 uate has located there and he is doing a "land- 
 office" business, "going day and night" as they 
 say. You ask for the old quack and are 
 informed that he spends most of his time cussing 
 the young fellow who was "too much" for him. 
 
 Now, usually, this young fellow who is "too 
 much" for the quack is no better practitioner 
 
134. THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 than the five or six who were there before him; 
 maybe not so good, because some of the five or 
 six whom the quack bluffed out are making a 
 mark for themselves in localities where nothing 
 but real ability counts. 
 
 But this particular young fellow was not only 
 the quack's master in veterinary science, but he 
 also had him bested in the art of "handling 
 trade;" and in two or three years the quack was 
 a dead letter in veterinary matters in the region. 
 
 These things occur not only in South Dakota, 
 but in all states where the graduate veterinarians 
 are now doing pioneer work. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 IDAHO 
 
 The year I went to South Dakota for the 
 first time to visit my brother proved to be an 
 "off year" in crops. Small grain was very poor 
 and west of the Missouri river, conditions were 
 even worse. 
 
 I saw train after train of settlers driving across 
 the prairie, leaving their claims and going back 
 east. It looked like a bad year all around and 
 my brother decided to quit Chamberlain and look 
 for a new location. 
 
 Both my brother and I had often talked about 
 taking a trip into the northwestern part of the 
 United States, and we decided now to tramp 
 through as veterinarians. 
 
 We wanted most particularly to see the state 
 of Idaho and that was our ultimate goal. While 
 we wound up in Idaho all right, we changed our 
 program to a certain extent, in so far as we did 
 no veterinary work until we ran out of cash and 
 had to work in order to be able to eat. 
 
 We left Chamberlain, S. D., on the one train 
 which ran daily to Rapid City, arriving there the 
 next morning. Rapid City we found to be a fine 
 little town and the country around it looked 
 prosperous in comparison to the "Bad Lands" 
 that one sees before reaching there. 
 
 From Rapid City we went to Edgemont, over 
 a jerk- water road that runs through the Black 
 
 135 
 
136 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 Hills to a place called Mystic, and then over the 
 Burlington road. 
 
 The mountain scenery along that little jerk- 
 
 MAKING OUR FIRST 
 
 water road from Rapid City to Mystic is the 
 finest to be seen in this country. I have crossed 
 
IDAHO 137 
 
 the Rockies in several places, have been in the 
 Sierra Madres in Mexico and the Sierra Nevadas 
 in this country, and none have any grander sights 
 than can be seen along this little railroad through 
 the Black Hills. My brother has the same opin- 
 ion, and he has traveled even more than I have. 
 
 From Edgemont we went direct to Billings, 
 Mont., then to Butte, and from Butte into Idaho, 
 making our first stop at Idaho Falls. 
 
 While our cash was not yet all gone it was 
 getting low, and we were beginning to think 
 about doing a little dentistry or something. We 
 had already covered around two thousand miles 
 since leaving Chamberlain and had paid first- 
 class fare for every mile, to say nothing of eating 
 expenses and other items. Besides, we had 
 stopped for a little recreation in Rapid City and 
 in Butte and that cost something too. 
 
 We got into Idaho Falls at 2 o'clock in the 
 morning and left before noon the same day. We 
 discovered that there was a graduate practicing 
 there and we did nothing further than to visit 
 with him a few hours. 
 
 Our next stop was McCammon, where we 
 floated a few mouths an hour or so after we 
 landed. 
 
 We had an interesting experience on getting 
 off the train at McCammon. We carried a large 
 grip full of dental instruments, two surgical kits, 
 and a couple of "Nancy Hanks" medicine cases. 
 When we walked away from the depot towards 
 the town, we noticed a man following us; when 
 we got to the main section of the burg, we 
 
138 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 deposited our grips on the sidewalk and held a 
 meeting on the state of our finances. While we 
 were counting our change, this man who had 
 been following us walked up to us and said, 
 "You fellers will have to pay a license in this 
 town." 
 
 "By George," says my brother, "this state 
 must have some State Board of Veterinary 
 Examiners ; they tackle the vets the minute they 
 get off the train." 
 
 When we asked the fellow how much the 
 license fee was, he asked, "What do you peddle?" 
 
 Then we discovered that he had taken us for a 
 couple of peddlers and wanted to collect a ped- 
 dler's license from us. When explanations had 
 been made we had a good laugh all around. 
 (That was the best we could have; the burg is 
 dry.) 
 
 We remained in McCammon that day and 
 until evening of the next day, "fixing a few 
 mouths" and writing a few prescriptions for vari- 
 ous disorders. 
 
 There was not much work "in sight," and so 
 we left for the next town south on the Oregon 
 Short line. 
 
 Our finances were now in a very bad way, and 
 we just had to do some work. The next town 
 south for which we were now heading was a very 
 small place of not more than one hundred and 
 fifty people, and we probably would not have 
 stopped off there at all except for the fact that 
 we had been informed that a short distance from 
 there a large dam was under construction for 
 
IDAHO 139 
 
 irrigation purposes. The builders of this dam 
 employed around three hundred horses and 
 mules, and we thought we might find a lot of 
 work to do among them. 
 
 When we got off the train we walked to the 
 end of the one street in the town and sat down on 
 the stoop in front of a hardware store. We took 
 an inventory of our cash and there were just two 
 dollars and ninety-five cents all told. We were 
 now about three thousand miles from home, 
 among total strangers, and a rather dubious out- 
 look for improvement. We were in a deuce of a 
 hole ; if we were not successful in landing a good 
 bit of work at the dam, we would most surely 
 have to ride out of town on the bumpers or walk. 
 The town was too small, we thought, to keep one 
 veterinarian in cigar money, let alone support 
 two in grub. 
 
 It was about three o'clock in the afternoon 
 when we got through counting our cash, and in 
 view of the standing of our money bag, we 
 decided to make an attempt to get out to the 
 dam-site at once. 
 
 I walked over to the livery stable and asked 
 how far it was to the place, and was told it was a 
 good fifteen miles out and that the charge for 
 hauling us out there would be three dollars. 
 Here was some regular tough luck! Fifteen 
 miles to the dam ; we had been told it was two or 
 three miles from town. And three dollars for a 
 livery rig to the place ; and we had only $2.95 ! 
 
 I went back to the hardware store where my 
 brother was sitting on the stoop waiting for me, 
 
140 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 and asked him to search his pockets once more to 
 see if he couldn't locate another nickel. 
 
 "Ain't no use," he says to me; "and besides 
 we're a dime shy now; I went and bought a 
 
IDAHO 141 
 
 nickel's worth of plug while you were down to 
 the stable." 
 
 For this I had to give him "a calling down," 
 because we had agreed to cut out all smoking and 
 chewing until we got hold of some more money. 
 We were both inveterate users of plug tobacco, 
 but I could quit when I had to, while my brother 
 couldn't. To square himself, he gave me half of 
 the plug he bought, and then we both sat down 
 to ruminate over our situation. 
 
 Just when we had about found a solution to 
 our predicament, the hardware man came out 
 and chased us off the stoop for spitting tobacco 
 juice all over it. "What do you think this is; a 
 cow stable?" he asked us. 
 
 We sat down on some farm implements that 
 were piled to one side of the stoop, and my 
 brother said to me, "Hell of a guy; won't even 
 let a feller spit. Let's walk out of their darn old 
 town; its only twelve miles to the next burg." 
 
 "Not me," says I, "I'm going to ride out of 
 this place first-class if I have to swipe a dog to 
 do it." 
 
 And for a while we sat there, trying to think 
 up some scheme, anything to get out of town 
 gracefully. 
 
 I began to walk around a bit, and as I passed 
 a store I heard a man talking about a wagon 
 having come in town for provisions for the crew 
 at the dam. I located the wagon, and when the 
 driver came out of the place I asked him whether 
 he thought a good veterinary surgeon could get 
 anything to do at the dam. He said he didn't 
 
142 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 know, but if I would go over to the town restau- 
 rant I would find one of the bosses, who was eat- 
 ing there and who could give me the information 
 I wanted. This looked like genuine good luck 
 for us after all, and I immediately went in search 
 of the boss, finding him in the restaurant, just as 
 the driver of the wagon had described him. He 
 was a good-natured looking chap, and I did not 
 hesitate to approach. I told him who and what 
 I was and suggested that possibly some of the 
 horses at the dam might require veterinary atten- 
 tion. "Well, I'll tell you," he said, "I don't 
 think we can use you ; we had all their teeth fixed 
 about a month ago, and I don't know of a single 
 horse out there requiring anything in your line." 
 
 All my hopes smashed to smithereens! 
 
 Here we had steered for this one-man town 
 solely because we figured on getting a bunch of 
 work out of those three hundred horses at the 
 dam-site; and now we find that every one of 
 them is sound as a dollar! 
 
 I walked back to where my brother was wait- 
 ing for me and broke the sad news to him gently. 
 
 While we stood there bemoaning our hard luck, 
 a team of mules was driven up to the little drug- 
 store across the street from where we stood. One 
 of the mules looked very thin and in extremely 
 poor condition; the man driving them tied them 
 to a post and went into the drug store. 
 
 My brother, who is good at "getting 
 acquainted" followed him into the drug store. 
 He told the druggist he was a veterinarian, that 
 he intended to remain in town a few days and 
 
IDAHO 143 
 
 that he would consider it a favor if the druggist 
 would allow him to make his headquarters in his 
 store. 
 
 The druggist, of course, immediately had 
 visions of stacks of money coming in from large 
 veterinary prescriptions and welcomed my 
 brother with open arms. "Sure," he said, "make 
 this your hangout. I will do all I can for you." 
 The man who had driven the team of mules up to 
 the store stood by listening, and the druggist lost 
 no time in introducing my brother to him. 
 
 My brother remarked about the poor condition 
 of one of the mules and suggested that possibly 
 he had "a bad mouth." The man said he was 
 sure there was something wrong with him because 
 he got as much feed as the other mule and yet he 
 would not pick up. My brother suggested that 
 an examination be made and the fellow agreed; 
 in fact, he said he was very glad that he had met a 
 "veterinary" who could do something for the 
 mule. 
 
 When I, standing on the other side of the 
 street, saw my brother come out of the store with 
 the fellow and walk over to the skinny mule and 
 examine his teeth, I felt like dancing a Highland 
 fling right there. I knew my brother well enough 
 to know that if there was any money in that 
 man's pocket my brother could induce him to pay 
 out some of it. 
 
 Pretty soon the fellow untied the team, got 
 into his wagon and drove away. My brother came 
 over to where I stood, and from the way he 
 worked his jaws over the plug in his mouth, I 
 
144 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 could see that he felt pretty good about some- 
 thing. 
 
 "Well," I asked him, "what's on the pro- 
 gram?" 
 
 "Easy pickings," he says, "tonight when the 
 fellow comes in we are to fix that mule's teeth, 
 and examine the mouths of four more." 
 
 There is no use trying to write down how good 
 we felt then. 
 
 Just about sun-down they came in with his 
 team and two more teams. We floated all their 
 mouths, six of them ; and the last two by lantern 
 light! When we finished up, the fellow paid us 
 twelve dollars, and I don't remember any time in 
 my life when I felt as rich as I did with my half 
 of that twelve dollars that night. 
 
 We were in a new world once more, and we 
 slept a good sleep in the hotel that night. 
 
 It wasn't such a bad little town after all and 
 we decided to "stick around" a while. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 WE MAKE A HIT 
 
 We got out early the next morning and began 
 to "mix" a bit with the natives. We learned that 
 this little one-horse town was the supply center 
 for an immense territory surrounding it, and that 
 the farmers in the region were prosperous, owned 
 much stock and had good crops year after year 
 as a result of intelligent application of dry- 
 farming methods. A few had installed private 
 irrigating systems. We also learned that there 
 was a quack living in a town about twenty-five 
 miles away who made regular trips through this 
 region, and from all reports he was "coining 
 money." 
 
 The result of this state of affairs was that we 
 stayed in that little town for ten straight weeks, 
 during which we did around six hundred dollars 
 worth of work. Besides this, we enjoyed every 
 minute of our stay ; the climate there at that time 
 of the year is one of the most healthful and invig- 
 orating in the United States. When you wake 
 up in the morning, you feel like challenging the 
 winner of the last Marathon for the world's 
 championship. 
 
 My brother and I soon felt as though we 
 "belonged;" we joined the local commercial 
 club, and were active members in the community. 
 
 The little burg could boast of a regular base- 
 ball team, and when they discovered that my 
 
 145 
 
146 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 brother was a capable "south-paw" twirler, they 
 drafted him for service at once. In less than 
 two weeks we were influential townsmen ! 
 
 Of course, we didn't advertise the fact that we 
 blew into town on "rusty runners," not far from 
 being down and out. And no one ever even had 
 any suspicions that we were ever short on money, 
 for after we earned that first twelve dollars, we 
 kept on gathering in the cash, and as both of us 
 were more than free spenders, we made the 
 impression of having more than enough money. 
 
 About a week after we arrived in town a local 
 contingent staged a prize fight. The opposing 
 scrappers were a young cow puncher of consider- 
 able scrappability and a Frenchman who was a 
 helper on an engine crew engaged in the neigh- 
 borhood. The Frenchman weighed at least forty 
 pounds more than the cow puncher, but the cow 
 puncher's reputation seemed to offset that. 
 
 The conditions of the scrap were that the big 
 Frenchman must knock out the little cow puncher 
 in five rounds ; if the cow puncher was on his feet 
 at the end of the fifth round, the Frenchman was 
 to be declared the loser. 
 
 All arrangements had been made for the fight, 
 which was to be staged on the floor of an imple- 
 ment warehouse where a "squared circle" had 
 already been fixed up. At the last moment it 
 was discovered that the fight had aroused such 
 enthusiasm among the natives that it was an 
 impossibility to select a referee from among them 
 who would be agreeable to all parties ; every man 
 had bet to the limit of his means. 
 
WE MAKE A HIT 147 
 
 A conference was hurriedly held and a com- 
 mittee sent in search of my brother and myself. 
 They stated that they had been sent to find out 
 whether either of us had any knowledge of ring 
 rules; that, being strangers in town and not 
 biased on the issue, they thought that one of us 
 would make a satisfactory referee if we thought 
 we could handle the situation. My brother turned 
 them over to me. While I had never acted in the 
 capacity of a referee, I had had considerable ring 
 experience, having on one occasion trained 
 Johnnie Madden (one time bantam weight cham- 
 pion of the world), against big odds in his fight 
 with Kid Mitchell of Mexico City. Besides this, 
 I had faced a few battlers myself, and I felt that 
 I could handle a match between a couple of "bush 
 leaguers" like these all right. 
 
 When I informed them of all this, they literally 
 dragged me over to the scene of action, where I 
 found a mob of fans squatted on the rafters, on 
 binders, hay-loaders, windmills, and every other 
 kind of equipment with which the warehouse was 
 filled. In the center of the floor a make-shift ring 
 had been set, and everything was ready for the 
 bell. 
 
 I pulled off my coat, rolled up my sleeves, and 
 called the participants into one corner to get the 
 conditions of the scrap and agree on rules. We 
 then discovered that the cow puncher needed a 
 "second," and my brother was selected to act in 
 that capacity at my request. I wanted him handy 
 in case it ended in a rough-house, and this was 
 about as handy as I could wish. 
 
148 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 Now everything is set ; the contestants agree to 
 fight clean, no hitting in the clinches. I impress 
 on them the fact that I am not going in there to 
 wrestle with them in the clinches, that when I call 
 4 'break" they are to turn loose their hold; that I 
 am going to referee this little tilt as though it 
 were for the championship of the world and that 
 I won't stand for any foolishness. 
 
 I then introduced them in the ring, and stated 
 "officially" to the audience what the terms were, 
 that if the cowpuncher was on his feet at the end 
 of the fifth the Frenchy was the loser. The only 
 chance the Frenchman had to win was to knock 
 the cowpuncher cold. 
 
 I then made them shake hands, and "turned 
 them loose." 
 
 And of all the fights I ever saw, that was the 
 cleanest, fairest exhibition of skill and hard- 
 hitting I ever saw ! 
 
 The cowpuncher was speed personified ; and he 
 could take more punishment than a mule. And he 
 made the Frenchman grunt every time he landed 
 on him. The Frenchy was a cool, methodical 
 slugger, and I am sure was a very dangerous 
 opponent over a longer route. In less than three 
 rounds, however, the cowpuncher had him looking 
 like a steam roller had dragged him over a rail- 
 road bridge ; he could not bend him though. Once 
 he was down on one knee, but he covered up and 
 came back strong. 
 
 At no time was the cowpuncher in danger of 
 being knocked out, although I don't believe that 
 any other small man could stand up under some 
 
WE MAKE A HIT 149 
 
 of the body blows that big Frenchman landed on 
 him, like he did. 
 
 I had no trouble with them whatever; they 
 obeyed my calls promptly in the clinches and hit 
 clean. In the fifth round a half-breed Indian, 
 who had bet heavily on the cowpuncher, yelled at 
 me because the Frenchman was holding the cow- 
 puncher's arms ; I didn't happen to see it at once, 
 being somewhat enthused over the exhibition and 
 forgetting my executive office for the moment. 
 
 Aside from this there was no chance for a kick 
 of any kind. 
 
 The end of the fifth round found the cow- 
 puncher just getting good, while the Frenchman 
 showed plainly that the speed was too much for 
 him. According to the terms of the match, he 
 had lost, and I raised the cowpuncher's hand, pro- 
 claiming him the winner. While considerable 
 money changed hands after the fight, there was 
 no disorder. I was the recipient of many flatter- 
 ing thanks for the manner in which I staged the 
 affair ; and it was really a fine little scrap. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 OUR PRACTICE PROSPERS 
 
 When we had thoroughly investigated the 
 chances for doing business in this little town we 
 decided to "stick around" for awhile; and, as I 
 have already stated, we "stuck around" for ten 
 solid weeks. 
 
 The way we went after the business there was 
 not in accord with the general conception of how 
 to conduct an ethical veterinary practice. We did 
 not sit down and wait for calls ; we went right out 
 after them. 
 
 Every morning about seven o'clock we would 
 hire a team from the livery stable and drive in a 
 certain direction until noon, stopping at every 
 farm and ranch to solicit work. We would then 
 cut across country a short distance and work 
 along another road, which would bring us back 
 to town by night. 
 
 We did this every day in the week except on 
 Sunday and on certain days when the town was 
 full of farmers, when we would usually do a nice 
 day's work in town. 
 
 Our livery bill did not cut into our income very 
 much because the liveryman made us special rates 
 and then took it all out in veterinary services ; we 
 did nearly as much work for him as our livery 
 cost. He had all his horses' teeth fixed, about 
 twenty head; had a number of ringbones and 
 splints to fire, colic cases, coughs, accidents, and 
 
 151 
 
152 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 other odd troubles. As the quack who formerly 
 did his work was in the habit of charging him out- 
 rageous fees, we had no trouble in making his bill 
 equal ours for livery hire. 
 
 I remember that for one period of about three 
 or four weeks our livery bill was around seventy 
 dollars, every bit of which he took out in veteri- 
 nary services during the same period of time. 
 
 After we got a good start, we would cover a 
 certain territory every week, and we soon had 
 cases under treatment in all parts of that district. 
 The farmers seemed to take it as a regular cus- 
 tom; they were accustomed to such veterinary 
 visits, which had been made in this manner by 
 quacks for many years. Before we left, we knew 
 every road for fifteen miles in all directions and 
 knew nearly every farmer living around there. In 
 a few directions we worked as far as twenty miles 
 from town. 
 
 We also got a chance at those horses working 
 on the dam; but we were "double-crossed" on the 
 job, as I will explain later. 
 
 We encountered a few conditions in this part of 
 Idaho which were entirely new to us. The most 
 common, and yet the most interesting of these, 
 was lupinosis among horses. 
 
 Almost without exception these cases occurred 
 in young horses that had been pastured on alfalfa 
 for a few weeks. It begins with a very severe 
 form of scours; the evacuations are very watery 
 and occur frequently. Within a few days the 
 horse, although he keeps on eating as a rule, is 
 wasted away to a skeleton. He gets "wabbly," 
 
OUR PRACTICE PROSPERS 153 
 
 and appears bright-eyed as a horse starving to 
 death. 
 
 About the third or fourth day, the mucous 
 membrane lining the mouth is the seat of ulcers, 
 varying in size from a pea to the circumference 
 of a quarter; they have irregular and ragged 
 edges and stubbornly resist ordinary treatment. 
 They emit a very foul odor and slowly increase 
 in size. They are most marked around the mar- 
 gin of the gums and on the sides of the tongue. 
 
 Later edematous swellings appear in the extre- 
 mities and abdomen. Death results, apparently 
 from cachexia, in ten days to two weeks, when the 
 horse gets down and remains in the recumbent 
 state for a day or two before the end. 
 
 In one case we saw the ulcerations involve the 
 skin also. 
 
 At first these cases gave us much worry, but 
 we found later that we could handle them satis- 
 factorily with large doses of oil of eucalyptus. 
 The ulcerative stomatitis was treated locally, 
 with Friars' balsam. 
 
 The first few doses of eucalyptus were given 
 with a full dose of opium, until the scours were 
 improved. The usual treatments for scours were 
 of no avail in this disease. 
 
 Convalesence is very tardy following an attack 
 of lupinosis; the horse is slow to regain his 
 former vigor and powers of endurance. In some 
 cases a persistent polyuria supervenes, which 
 resists all treatment. 
 
 The only time I ever got an abscess from a 
 subcutaneous injection was in a case of this kind. 
 
154 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 Thinking that possibly the ulcerations in the 
 mouth might yield to poly-bacterins, I gave the 
 horse a full dose hypodermically. The result 
 was no effect on the ulcerations but a large slough 
 at the point of injection, which was difficult to 
 heal up. Of course, I blamed the bacterins. But 
 later, when I gave this same horse a hypodermic 
 injection of strychnin as a stimulant I got 
 another slough. I have never been able to explain 
 this to my own satisfaction. It was not due to 
 careless injection or dirty needle or syringe, 
 because I had no trouble in other diseases, for 
 which I gave injections with the same syringe 
 and needle during that period. 
 
 The only half-plausible explanation is that 
 there is a tendency in this disease towards the 
 formation of ulcers as a result of which the capil- 
 lary circulation is so subdued that anything 
 injected subcutaneously remains at the site and, 
 acting as a foreign body, produces the slough by 
 pressure and decomposition of the agent injected. 
 I have already mentioned that in one case we 
 noted ulcerations on the skin. 
 
 One disease was conspicuous in this region 
 only through its absence. During the entire ten 
 weeks that we were there, handling fully around 
 four hundred patients, we saw not one single case 
 of pulmonary emphysema. This we attribute to 
 the dry air and high altitude; the altitude here 
 was around six thousand feet above sea level. 
 
 A very interesting condition which we encoun- 
 tered in a mare here was a cancerous condition of 
 the mammary gland. Resection was followed 
 
OUR PRACTICE PROSPERS 155 
 
 rapidly by a new invasion of the remaining por- 
 tion of the gland. 
 
 Because of the manner in which we drove out 
 to get our business, we were compelled to carry 
 drugs and dispense. Only when doing business 
 in town could we write prescriptions for the edi- 
 fication and benefit of our friend, the druggist. 
 
 When he discovered that our prescriptions 
 were not coming in as fast as he expected and 
 that we were dispensing, he began to "rob" us on 
 drugs. We had to buy everything from him 
 because we were too far from any other place 
 where we could get drugs. 
 
 We stood for his "robbery" a while, and then 
 we induced a storekeeper, who was selling patent 
 medicines and crude drugs, to put in a line of 
 drugs for our benefit. The fellow was willing, 
 and we made an agreement whereby my brother 
 and I were to get our drugs for cost plus the 
 freight, and half the profit on all prescriptions, 
 which, of course, we had to compound ourselves 
 as the fellow was not a druggist. 
 
 This was an incentive, to be sure, for us to 
 write all the prescriptions we could and cut down 
 our dispensing as much as possible. Within a 
 few weeks we had a nice share of profit coming 
 on prescriptions, but — the fellow wouldn't pay 
 up! 
 
 I will go into this fully farther on in my story. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 WE GET A RAW DEAL 
 
 About four or five weeks after we located in 
 this little town a man came to see us from the 
 dam-site with the request that we call at the dam 
 for the purpose of investigating some trouble 
 they were having among their horses. 
 
 I questioned him thoroughly in regard to the 
 nature of the trouble and was informed that they 
 had been losing two or three horses a week. I 
 told him that we would go out and locate the 
 trouble and put a stop to the losses for one hun- 
 dred dollars a day. If it could be accomplished 
 in one day that would be their good fortune ; if it 
 took a week it would be our good fortune. I gave 
 them reasonable assurance that we could prob- 
 ably complete the job in three days without much 
 doubt. 
 
 The man returned to the dam to report to the 
 superintendent, who was to call us if our propo- 
 sition was satisfactory. He called up the same 
 evening, saying that we could start in the 
 morning. 
 
 The next morning my brother and I drove out, 
 arriving at the dam about nine o'clock. 
 
 Two horses were sick when we got there ; both 
 had typical attacks of acute indigestion. 
 
 One of the men in charge told us that the seven 
 or eight horses that had died had acted exactly 
 
 157 
 
158 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 the same as these two, and he was sure these 
 would die also. 
 
 We took them in hand and in an hour or two 
 both of them were entirely well. We gave them 
 ordinary treatment for acute indigestion. 
 
 When we began looking into the feed supply, 
 we discovered that there was not a sprig of hay 
 on the place. There had been some hitch in the 
 proceedings, as a result of which the outfit was 
 unable to obtain sufficient hay at any time. For 
 two straight weeks, all the horses got nothing 
 but oats, aside from a few handfuls of oat- straw 
 for roughness now and then. 
 
 We learned that nearly all the horses that had 
 died were taken sick immediately after the noon 
 feed, for the eating of which they were allowed a 
 half hour. 
 
 We took our time in arriving at a verdict, but 
 the evidence pointed plainly and unmistakeably 
 to the unbalanced ration, all oats and no rough- 
 ness. We were positive that this alone was the 
 cause of all the trouble, and that same afternoon 
 we reported so to the superintendent. 
 
 And he laughed at us! He said that he had 
 expected we would find the fault with the feed 
 and that he had made up his mind not to pay us 
 if we could find nothing else. 
 
 Of course, he was crooked; we discovered later 
 that this was what ailed him. But we couldn't 
 talk him into coming across with the hundred 
 dollars ; fifteen dollars is all we got. 
 
 We kept track of them and found out that 
 they immediately got busy buying hay; also that 
 
WE GET A RAW DEAL 159 
 
 they cut out the noon feed as we had suggested. 
 And the trouble stopjied immediately, only one 
 or two very mild cases appearing after this. 
 
 It was the rawest deal we ever got and it made 
 us pretty "sore"; we had absolutely no chance to 
 get a square deal and we had to be satisfied with 
 the fifteen dollars. We did not even get the 
 satisfaction of speaking our mind ; the camp was 
 an aggregation of "touch-mugs," and while my 
 brother and I had faced some pretty tough 
 gangs, we knew too much about "safety first" to 
 show fight here; we could "feel it in the 
 atmosphere" that this game had been deliberately 
 framed up on us. 
 
 I don't doubt but what we would have been 
 "man-handled" had we so much as "peeped." 
 However, we let them know later that had we 
 had any premonition that such a deal was to be 
 pulled on us, we would have gotten our hundred 
 dollars! For in that day and age my brother 
 and I were mighty handy fellows with a shooting 
 iron, and our view of life in those davs was such 
 that our nerve was mighty good, and we didn't 
 "scare worth a darn." 
 
 Although we sent them this information as a 
 sort of challenge, none of them ever "called our 
 hand." They were nothing but a gang of bluf- 
 fers, and only pulled off their dirty work where 
 they knew they could get away with it. 
 
 One satisfaction we derived later, though; it 
 was when a horse was seriously injured a few 
 weeks later by falling off the dump. Of course, 
 they could not send for my brother or me, and 
 
160 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 in consequence were compelled to employ a 
 quack who lived some thirty miles away. He 
 charged them $45.00 for the trip; and the horse 
 died. 
 
 The fees we charged for our work while we 
 were in this locality were reasonable, all things 
 considered. The people in this region are nearly 
 all Mormons, and while we found them a bit clan- 
 nish, they were good people; most of them paid 
 cash and we lost only a few dollars, which we 
 could have collected also had we made the 
 attempt. 
 
 There is an item which must be considered in 
 doing work as we did here, and that is that the 
 relation between the veterinarian and the client is 
 not the same. It is probably only a psychological 
 difference; but there is a difference in doing 
 work for a man that you have asked for or solic- 
 ited, and in doing work that a man has called 
 you to do. 
 
 The veterinarian's demeanor towards the client 
 must be most reserved in the first instance, and he 
 must be more conservative throughout than he 
 usually is in the latter instance. In this connec- 
 tion the itinerant practitioner must resort to his 
 salesmanship ability to the limit, for it is often a 
 difficult matter to obtain a certain piece of work 
 without exceeding the bounds of conservatism. 
 If he fails to impress on the prospective client the 
 fact that he can treat the case in question success- 
 fully, he is usually not successful in getting the 
 job. On the other hand, if his assertions in 
 regard to his ability are too rash and his promises 
 
WE GET A RAW DEAL 161 
 
 of results too broad, he may involve himself in a 
 "guarantee" proposition, which makes it difficult 
 for him to collect his fee. 
 
 This form of practice is good schooling for the 
 diplomatic service; the veterinarian must avoid 
 the issue as much as possible in his arguments 
 and yet gain his point. 
 
 I have known some capable and well-schooled 
 veterinarians who, possessed of a wandering 
 spirit, spent the greater part of their lives as itin- 
 erant practitioners, and who were diplomacy per- 
 sonified. Some of these men are most interesting 
 characters and a recital of their experiences is 
 always instructive in every regard. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 A SUDDEN DEPARTURE 
 
 Towards the end of our stay in this little town, 
 I met a cattle-buyer who had lived in the south- 
 west for some time and who knew a good many 
 of my old friends along the Mexican border. He 
 was now in Idaho buying beef cattle for a firm 
 in Reno, ' Nevada, and he suggested that I ride 
 around the country with him in his search for a 
 train-load of steers. 
 
 My brother was willing that I should go, and 
 so I went. 
 
 The best we could do was the purchase of about 
 nine carloads of two and three-year-old steers 
 near Oxford, Idaho. 
 
 My new-found friend prevailed on me to 
 accompany the shipment to Reno, which was 
 made through Ogden, Utah, and then across Salt 
 Lake over the Union Pacific. 
 
 We turned the cattle over in Reno and then 
 came back to Ogden, from which point I 
 returned to again take up the work with my 
 brother. While in Reno I was given an oppor- 
 tunity to go to San Francisco with another ship- 
 ment of cattle, but I was "travel- worn" to such 
 an extent that the trip had no allurements for me. 
 I was anxious to get back to Idaho, and I refused 
 the offer. 
 
 When I returned to the little burg, my brother 
 informed me that he had endeavored to collect 
 
 163 
 
164 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 our share of the profits on prescriptions accord- 
 ing to the agreement we had made with the store- 
 keeper, but that the storekeeper had refused to 
 settle. 
 
 We took the matter up with him again then, 
 and he told us that he would share no profits 
 until enough money had come in from prescrip- 
 tions to cover his entire investment on the propo- 
 sition. The entire outlay had been for a full sup- 
 ply of drugs, scales, mortars, graduates, bottles, 
 ointment jars, labels, etc., and it amounted to 
 considerable; if we had to wait until he had his 
 money back for the whole outfit, we would be 
 waiting yet. 
 
 Of course, he was figuring all right for him- 
 self, but the point to which we objected was that 
 our agreement made no such stipulation; it was 
 clearly agreed that we were to get a dividend 
 every few weeks. The reader will readily under- 
 that my brother and I would not enter into a 
 proposition from which we could draw no profit 
 for a year when we knew we would not remain in 
 town that long. The fellow was "trying to put 
 one over" on us. 
 
 But the poor fellow made a mistake in addition 
 while he was doing all this figuring for himself. 
 
 My brother and I had about exhausted the 
 veterinary possibilities in the region just then; 
 the harvest had been made and we could see a 
 slackening in work. We had seen every inch of 
 their country and were just about ready to "fly 
 the coop" anyhow. 
 
 But it wasn't so easy to get away now ; we had 
 
A SUDDEN DEPARTURE 165 
 
 this storekeeper to look out for. He was loaded 
 down with this drug supply and other items 
 depending wholly on us, and we feared he would 
 create a disturbance if the two of us made a 
 move to quit. 
 
 So we framed up a one-act drama for him. It 
 worked like this : 
 
 A few days after he refused to give us our 
 share of the profits I informed him that my 
 brother and I had decided to dissolve partnership 
 and that I would move to a town about fifty 
 miles below, while my brother would remain to 
 continue the practice that we had established 
 here. I then left, taking along both my brother's 
 trunk and mine. 
 
 A couple of days later I sent my brother a 
 telegram stating that I had an operation to per- 
 form that required his assistance and requesting 
 him to come to my town, fifty miles south, at 
 once. 
 
 He showed the telegram to everybody in town, 
 I guess, as he told me afterward, and nobody 
 "smelled a mice." 
 
 In the meantime I purchased two tickets 
 straight through to Cheyenne, Wyoming, 
 checked out the trunks and when the train on 
 which my brother was coming arrived in my town 
 I joined him; and straight to Cheyenne we went. 
 
 We were sincerely sorry that we had to pull off 
 this stunt on the storekeeper, but he was at fault. 
 Had he been on the square with us we would 
 have remained at least a while longer and would 
 then have made him an offer which would at least 
 
166 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 have gotten him his money back. I have often 
 wondered what he did with that drug outfit after 
 we left. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 MY BROTHER FILES A CLAIM 
 
 Before I close the account of our experiences in 
 Idaho I want to mention a little experience my 
 brother had there. 
 
 After we had been in the state four or five 
 weeks he became so enamoured of the beautiful 
 climate and the success of dry-farming that he 
 decided to take up a claim and make Idaho his 
 permanent abode. 
 
 He made inquiries among the natives regard- 
 ing the location of land still open to settlement 
 and after looking over a number of tracts he 
 decided on a quarter section of plateau land 
 located near a place called Pebble. It was a 
 most beautiful piece of land, and a small stream 
 bounded it on one side. 
 
 The government land office was located in 
 Blackfoot, and to that place my brother went to 
 file' on the land. When he got to Blackfoot and 
 pointed out the location on the land-map, he dis- 
 covered that the piece was in the forest reserve 
 and not subject to claim. 
 
 He then picked out a quarter section near what 
 is known as Ten Mile Pass ; both of us had driven 
 over every foot of the country around Ten Mile 
 Pass and we were acquainted with the nature of 
 the land there. Some of it was ideally situated. 
 
 So my brother filed on a quarter section, 
 pocketed the papers, and came back. The next 
 
 167 
 
168 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 morning we hired a team and drove out to look 
 at his "claim." 
 
 When we got our bearings and measured off 
 the tract by counting the revolutions of a wheel 
 on our buggy, it turned out to be a tract of solid 
 rock, resembling asphalt; not over ten acres was 
 tillable land. A few miles from Ten Miles Pass 
 there is an extinct volcano, which in past ages 
 paved a great section of the country with lava, 
 resembling now a solid covering of asphalt. 
 
 Taking it all in all, we got considerably the 
 worst of it in Idaho. First, the "double-cross" at 
 the dam-site; second, the filing on 160 acres of 
 stone; third, the "double-cross" bv the store- 
 keeper. But, — we got a nice wad of their cash, 
 more than we could have gotten for the same 
 amount of work in any other part of the United 
 States. 
 
 We carry no grudge against the region or its 
 people ; we got good pay for what we did. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 WE GO ON A LOAFING TOUR 
 
 When my brother and I made up our minds to 
 leave Idaho, we had no particular goal in view; 
 we were still tramps. 
 
 Arriving in Cheyenne we decided to take things 
 a bit easy again for a time ; we had a few dollars 
 in our pockets now and we had just enough 
 "hook-worm disease" to keep from exerting our- 
 selves as long as our money lasted. 
 
 We took in the sights around the neighborhood 
 of Cheyenne, and then we took a run down to 
 Denver. In Denver we spent nearly a week, 
 living a life of ease and contentment on the 
 mony we had made in Idaho. 
 
 We had a few hundred dollars left when we 
 finished our stay in Denver, which we exchanged 
 for Travelers' Cheques before leaving. These 
 checks are as acceptable as cash in most places 
 and they are safer than cash because the owner 
 must endorse them properly before negotiating 
 them. 
 
 When we had seen all there was to be seen in 
 and around Denver, we bought tickets for 
 Omaha, Nebraska, where we put in another week 
 or so of easy life. 
 
 Towards the end of our stay in Omaha we had 
 to go a little easy on our expense account because 
 it was about used up. Not until we had only 
 about thirty dollars left did we begin to give con- 
 
 169 
 
170 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 sideration to what we would do to get some more 
 money. After several days of argument on the 
 question, we decided to take a run home to see 
 the folks in Wisconsin and then decide on a 
 definite program. We had just about enough 
 money left to get home in first-class fashion now, 
 and we lost no time in buying railroad tickets. 
 
 We spent a week or so of good times among 
 our people and then my brother went to Minne- 
 sota to seek his fortune while I obtained a place 
 as assistant to the State Veterinarian in our 
 home state. 
 
 And for six months both of us gave not a 
 minute to play. Then, by a strange coincidence 
 both of us quit our jobs at the same time and 
 arrived home among the folks on the same day. 
 
 Of course, the folks are of the opinion to this 
 day that this joint home-coming on our part was 
 pre-arranged ; but my brother and I give you our 
 word of honor as good fellows that neither of us 
 knew anything about the other's program until 
 we met there at home. 
 
 However, before night of our first day at home, 
 we had arranged to take another trip into South 
 Dakota as tramp veterinarians, and the end of 
 another week found us once more in Chamber- 
 lain, doing business at my brother's old stand. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 SOUTH DAKOTA AGAIN 
 
 This second trip of ours into South Dakota 
 did not turn out to be a very successful venture 
 from a financial standpoint. In fact it was so 
 unsuccessful that it just about cured both of us 
 of our failing for an itinerant practice. 
 
 We arrived during the first week in July, and 
 business was so slow in starting that we had to 
 resort to the method pursued by us in Idaho. 
 We would hire a rig every morning and drive 
 over a certain section of road soliciting work. 
 
 We got a few calls, but most of the work we 
 did there on this trip we obtained by driving 
 about and asking for it. 
 
 On one of these drives, we came to a farmer for 
 whom we had treated a colt a year previously, 
 just before we left for Idaho. 
 
 The colt had fallen into a water trough and 
 had fractured the metatarsus of one hind leg. 
 The colt was six or eight months old at the time, 
 and the fracture was a complete, oblique break 
 with considerable displacement. We had treated 
 it ordinarily, with wood splits held in place by 
 plaster of paris bandages. 
 
 When we saw the colt now, a full year later, 
 the result had been so perfect that it was not easy 
 to pick out the leg that had been broken. There 
 was a smooth fullness on the shin resembling a 
 
 171 
 
172 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 "buck shin," but otherwise there was no objective 
 evidence of a healed fracture. 
 
 We also saw a case of sweeney that we had 
 treated a year before by injecting sodium bicar- 
 bonate solution subcutaneously in the atrophied 
 area. The muscle had filled in beautifully, but 
 at each point of injection there was a "button" of 
 fibrous tissue. 
 
 Another case we had treated the year before, 
 again came to our attention this year in a very 
 aggravated form. It was a case that had once 
 been treated by a quack for a necrosed tooth; the 
 quack had trephined the superior maxilla for the 
 purpose of repulsing the tooth. In the act of 
 repulsing, the punch slipped off the fang and 
 crashed through the hard palate, coming out just 
 inside the dental arcade and leaving an ugly hole 
 on its withdrawal. 
 
 When the case came into our hands the first 
 time, there was the beginning of a cauliflower- 
 like growth at the opening made by the punch in 
 the roof of the mouth ; it had attained the size of 
 a billiard ball then. 
 
 The horse also exhibited a severe grade of 
 dyspnea, which we attributed to a similar growth 
 or an extension of the same growth, in the maxil- 
 lary and nasal chambers. On the strength of 
 this, we trephined him again and removed an 
 immense mass of new growths resembling "proud 
 flesh." The removal was accomplished through 
 the trephine opening, taking the growth away in 
 sections with a large curette. A very profuse 
 hemorrhage ensued. 
 
SOUTH DAKOTA AGAIN 173 
 
 The portion protruding through the opening 
 made by the quack's punch in the roof of the 
 mouth we removed with a wire ecraseur and then 
 cauterized the base. 
 
 The hemorrhage occurring in the sinus was 
 controlled with packing. 
 
 We did not see the horse again until now, a 
 year later, when we were driving in the neigh- 
 borhood soliciting work. 
 
 The condition had now progressed to a stage 
 where the horse was a pitiable sight. The growth 
 within the mouth had formed anew and had 
 attained such dimensions that it was impossible 
 for the horse to close his mouth entirely. Judg- 
 ing from the difficulty in breathing, we inferred 
 that the growth in the sinuses and nasal chamber 
 had increased proportionately. A stinking odor 
 was present and the horse had wasted to a 
 skeleton. 
 
 We recommended his destruction. 
 
 We had now been driving around the country 
 looking for work for about four weeks ; we did a 
 little work every day, but it was so little that we 
 could barely pay our board bill with the proceeds. 
 
 We had plenty of friends there and a good 
 string of satisfied clients for whom we had 
 worked the year previously, but we could not get 
 started this year ; somehow we couldn't land any 
 work to speak of. Whether it was because we 
 had lost the "hang" of talking the work into our 
 hands or whether it was just an "off" year for us, 
 I am not able to say. 
 
 Before long we found it so hard to make ends 
 
174 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 meet in town that we decided to "camp" a few 
 weeks with an old chum of my brother's who 
 lived about ten miles from town on a farm. We 
 
 figured that we could at least save our hotel 
 expenses for a couple of weeks, and we intended 
 to get a rig from my brother's chum to use in 
 
SOUTH DAKOTA AGAIN 175 
 
 driving about the region in search of veterinary 
 work. 
 
 The "chum" was glad to see us and invited us 
 to "hang around" as long as it suited us. He 
 said we could use one of his horses and his buggy 
 free of charge and that he hoped we would make 
 a barrel of money. 
 
 We felt as though somebody had made us a 
 present of a gold mine ! The next morning after 
 breakfast, he ordered his hired-man to put the 
 harness on "old chip" and hook him to "Lizzie's 
 buggy." We thought he was too good to us and 
 told him we could just as well do the "hitching 
 up" ourselves. He assured us that nothing was 
 too good for us. I asked my brother what made 
 the fellow so generous; I thought maybe my 
 brother had saved his life on some occasion or had 
 raised the mortgage on his farm. He was "too 
 nice for anything." 
 
 But when the hired-man led up "old chip" 
 hooked to "Lizzie's buggy" I changed my opin- 
 ion of the whole business; I thought then that 
 maybe my' brother had done him a dirty trick 
 once, and I have often wished since that I had 
 taken a picture of the outfit to keep as a 
 remembrance. 
 
 "Old Chip" looked to be about the oldest chip 
 off the block; he had every bump on him that a 
 horse can have and still retain enough flexibility 
 to be able to walk. He was so sore in front that 
 a person felt like hollering "Ouch!" for him every 
 time he put a foot down. And the buggy! Did 
 I say "buggy"? Well, anybody seen riding in a 
 
176 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 thing like that was would certainly be considered 
 "buggy" in any civilized country outside of South 
 Dakota ! Each wheel on it was different ; one of 
 the front wheels was as high as the two rear 
 wheels and the two rear wheels were not quite 
 mates either. The dashboard was gone, and the 
 thills were about as heavy as those they use on 
 brewery carts. And not a joint in the whole 
 machine but what was all bound 'round with hay 
 wire. 
 
 Then, to cap the grand climax, "old Chip" had 
 on a brand new Shears- Storebuck harness. 
 
 And I suppose you have got all your brain cells 
 busy trying to figure out whether my brother and 
 I drove that outfit around the country or not. 
 'You bet we did! We were glad to get it, too. 
 Our funds were exhausted and the only means 
 we had of replenishing them so that we could get 
 away was by driving around in search of any 
 work there might be for us to do. "Old Chip" 
 and "Lizzie's Buggy" didn't cost us a cent for 
 hire and we were too hard pressed to look a gift 
 horse in the mouth. 
 
 We drove "old Chip" around that part of the 
 country for about a week and during that week 
 my brother and I were the "joke" of the region; 
 every farmer we tackled for a job in the veteri- 
 nary line had some sort of remark to make about 
 why we didn't fix our own horse first, or some- 
 thing of a similar nature. At last it got on my 
 nerves and I made it a point to start the talk 
 about "old Chip" of my own accord; in that way 
 
SOUTH DAKOTA AGAIN 177 
 
 I would "beat them to it" and get it over with as 
 soon as possible. 
 
 Just the same we earned a few dollars during 
 that week, and as we had no livery or board bills 
 to pay it was all "velvet." Considering how hard 
 we "went after them" however, we did a very 
 poor business. 
 
 As an illustration of how hard we "went after 
 them" that week I will relate the following. One 
 morning as we stopped at about the fourth farm 
 without having done any work, we saw a farmer 
 in a field cultivating corn. We pulled up to the 
 fence and waited until he came down to our end 
 of the field. He was driving a team of pretty 
 good horses to the cultivator ; they were small but 
 good chunks, and one of them looked just a bit 
 thin. We told the farmer who we were and what 
 we did and suggested that he let us examine the 
 thin horse's teeth. He consented to have it done 
 after some argument, and the horse's mouth 
 really needed attention. He said we could come 
 around in the evening and fix them up; but we 
 were afraid he might change his mind by that 
 time, or possibly somebody might talk him out of 
 the notion. So we talked him into the notion of 
 having the job done right away, and we fixed 
 those teeth right there in the corn-field. He had 
 no money with him, so we got him to write a note 
 to his wife ordering her to pay us $2.50 ; we drove 
 to his house and collected the money. 
 
 On another occasion we wrote a prescription 
 for a farmer for use on a lame horse, charging 
 him one dollar for it. When we got ready to 
 
178 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 leave he said he had no money in the house; we 
 suggested that he give us a check for the dollar 
 but to this he said that his account at the bank 
 was drawing interest and not subject to check. 
 
 We handled the situation so delicately and so 
 tactfully that he finally gave us his note for one 
 dollar, which we collected too. 
 
 No doubt "old Chip" and "Lizzie's buggy" 
 were the cause of half the turn-downs we got ; if 
 our own appearance and our arguments instilled 
 a grain of confidence in our ability into a farmer 
 "old Chip" and "Lizzie's buggy" were enough to 
 jar it out of him again. But, they didn't cost us 
 anything, and it is a question whether we would 
 have done much better with a livery outfit, for 
 which we would have had to pay $3.00 a day. 
 
 At the end of a week, we were so disgusted 
 with the whole proposition that we decided to 
 quit and leave. My brother had saved most all 
 of his money and could buy a railroad ticket back 
 east ; he left for Tennessee a few days later, while 
 I remained in Chamberlain. I got a job packing 
 cigars in a cigar factory and earned enough 
 money to pay my way to Chicago. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 BACK TO GOVERNMENT SERVICE 
 
 In the fall of 1912 I was once more 
 appointed to a federal position, having taken 
 the Civil Service examination again. 
 
 This time I was put on post-morten work at 
 the Union Stock Yards, Chicago. 
 
 I found that a great change for the better 
 had been wrought in this work; in fact, post- 
 mortem work as performed in 1904 when I 
 was in the service the first time could not be 
 compared with the work as it now is. 
 
 The present-day inspection is real, and aside 
 from some local irregularities, for which the 
 inspector in charge was to blame, I could see 
 nothing but good in the work. I can not say too 
 much in praise of the work performed by the 
 veterinary inspector doing postmortem work 
 today ; in fact, some of the routine work done day 
 after day by these men is a most wonderful exhi- 
 bition of skill and expertness. 
 
 I remained in Chicago about four months at 
 this work, when I resigned and organized a pro- 
 prietary medicine company. 
 
 I operated this enterprise very successfully for 
 myself and stockholders, and sold my interest in 
 it the next spring at a good profit. 
 
 When I had disposed of my holdings in the 
 medicine company I made application for rein- 
 statement in the Bureau of Animal Industry, 
 
 179 
 
180 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 and received an appointment in the tick eradica- 
 tion division in Mississippi. This made my 
 fourth appointment to service in the Bureau, 
 and I must say it was about the worst. 
 
 My orders on this appointment were to report 
 to the inspector in charge at Nashville, Tenn. 
 When I got to Nashville I was given a few hours 
 to myself and then I was told to proceed at once 
 to Crystal Springs, Miss. There I reported to 
 the inspector in charge, and was then at once sent 
 to Hazelhurst, Miss., which was to be my official 
 station. 
 
 My conception of tick eradication was as yet 
 somewhat vague ; I knew what the principle was 
 but I had absolutely no knowledge of how it was 
 reached. Imagine my surprise, then, when my 
 superior informed me that my duty for the pres- 
 ent would be to supervise the construction of 
 dipping vats. These vats consist of trenches dug 
 in the ground and plastered with concrete. I 
 began to suspect that some mistake had been 
 made in my commission, or that my name and 
 appointment had been confused with that of 
 some brick layer or hod carrier, and I told the 
 inspector-in-charge so. 
 
 "No," he said, "your commission is all right 
 and regular. This work is part of the veterinary 
 inspector's duty." I had a notion to tell him 
 that the college I graduated from did not 
 include concrete construction work in its 
 curriculum. 
 
 Anyhow, it is one of the pieces of "judgment" 
 that is seen quite regularly in the government 
 
BACK TO GOVERNMENT SERVICE 181 
 
 service ; a man must be a graduate of a three-year 
 veterinary school and must pass the Civil Service 
 examination in all veterinary subjects so that he 
 may be shipped into the tick country to supervise 
 the digging and plastering of dipping vats. 
 Aside from watching one or two dipping opera- 
 tions and the cooking up of a few batches of dip- 
 ping fluid, I did nothing but "supervise" vat 
 building. 
 
 When I had been on the job about two weeks, 
 I was transferred to Liberty, Miss., which is near 
 the Louisiana line. Here I was to take up the 
 work of tick eradication with the county board 
 and to work out a plan of advance work. Before 
 I could get my bearings, I was again transferred, 
 this time to Quitman, Miss., near the Alabama 
 line. 
 
 In this latter district the tick eradication cam- 
 paign was meeting with considerable opposition 
 from the farmers and stock raisers; a few vats 
 had been blown up with dynamite and the 
 inspector threatened. 
 
 It may be that my superior officers figured 
 that, in view of my early experiences with 
 "rough-necks" in Texas, I should be just the 
 man for this job. Well, maybe so; but, nine or 
 ten years had passed since I last looked into the 
 front end of a "forty-five." What looks like fun 
 and enjoyment to the lad of twenty-two looks 
 like "bad business" to him at thirty-two; at least, 
 that was the way with me. Then, too, the 
 inspector whom I was to relieve and who was 
 "tickled to death to get away" was a pretty clear- 
 
182 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 eyed young lad from Kansas; no tenderfoot by 
 any means. That made some difference with me, 
 too; I sized the whole proposition up that way 
 and sent in my resignation, leaving for the north 
 the same day. 
 
 Had the inspector whom I was to relieve there 
 been a "tenderfoot" I might have given those 
 "hill-billies" down there a whirl for their money; 
 as I said, and as it was, he was a clear-eyed lad 
 from Kansas, and cold feet didn't trouble him 
 much. 
 
 An interesting state of affairs seems to exist in 
 the Bureau service as regards the value placed 
 upon their positions by the various grades of 
 employes. I found this state of affairs in exist- 
 ence among the inspectors every time I was in 
 the service, and that is that the young veteri- 
 narians are all waiting for an opportunity to get 
 "into something else," usually general practice or 
 the manufacture of anti-hog-cholera serum. 
 Only on very rare occasions did I meet young 
 inspectors who intended to remain in the service. 
 Practically the only ones possessed of the idea 
 that they are holding a life berth are the "old 
 timers" who have been given charge of some sta- 
 tion or are being paid more than the average 
 inspector. 
 
 One reason, and to my mind the chief reason, 
 for this state of affairs is the fact that the new 
 appointee or the inspector in the ranks receives 
 little or no consideration in matters that affect his 
 personal comfort, especially as regards his 
 geographical preferences. 
 
BACK TO GOVERNMENT SERVICE 183 
 
 While it is a practical impossibility to accede 
 to every demand made on the executive officers 
 in this regard, it appeared to be the practice to 
 ignore even most reasonable requests. It was no 
 uncommon occurrence for an appointee to be 
 ordered to report for duty in the extreme west, 
 when his home and preference for location lay in 
 the extreme east, at the same time that another 
 man was shipped from the extreme west to take 
 office in the east. A man had no chance to make 
 a permanent home for himself and his family 
 either; at any time he might be transferred from 
 one point to another a thousand miles away. I 
 remember the case of an inspector in the post- 
 mortem division at Chicago who made every 
 effort to obtain a transfer to a southern station; 
 no attention whatever was given to his requests 
 although a number of changes were made almost 
 every month to some of the points that would 
 have been agreeable to him. In several instances 
 the men ordered to make such changes were 
 northern men who preferred to remain in the 
 north, and, although this man and others were 
 anxious to take a southern station, no attention 
 was given their desires. 
 
 Again, I knew of many instances where 
 inspectors made requests for transfer to field 
 work, men who were exceptionally fitted for field 
 work because of their personality and their pre- 
 vious experience. Their requests were ignored, 
 while at the same time men entirely unfitted for 
 field work were constantly being sent out on 
 such work. 
 
184 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 Any inspector can tell you of dozens and 
 dozens of such occurrences, and it is one of the 
 "sore spots" in the service, no matter where it is. 
 
 Here is another case. A certain inspector had 
 been at one station continually for four or five 
 years, long enough for him to assume that he 
 could look upon it as his permanent abode. He 
 bought a lot and built himself a home. The house 
 was just about completed when he was ordered to 
 report for duty at a station several hundred miles 
 away. This happened to an inspector in Iowa. 
 
 Well, what could he do? 
 
 He could do one of two things ; either move or 
 quit the service. 
 
 And, after a fellow has been in the service for 
 five years, well — he sort of feels queer about 
 tackling practice; he is pretty rusty on every- 
 thing but pathology, and he thinks hard before 
 he quits. And usually, he moves. 
 
 No wonder some of the "old timers" in the 
 service are a narrow, grouchy, sour bunch of fel- 
 lows. The service has made them so. 
 
 Here, for instance, is a poor fellow on post- 
 mortem work in Chicago working from seven in 
 the morning to six in the evening among a mob 
 of foreigners, when his heart is really in Colorado 
 or California. He has filed a request to be 
 transferred to one of those points, and although 
 he hears of some of the boys being moved out 
 there, fellows who probably prefer Chicago, he is 
 kept plugging away here for months and months ; 
 yes, maybe years. 
 
 Enough to make a good fellow grouchy ! 
 
BACK TO GOVERNMENT SERVICE 185 
 
 Of course, there are some fellows who do not 
 feel settled anywhere, and they keep filing 
 request after request for transfer from one lo- 
 cality to another. I was one of this kind myself ; 
 I "always wanted to be where I wasn't." But 
 these fellows are the exception, not the rule. 
 
 Anyhow, to my mind, it is a pretty punk spec- 
 imen of the veterinary profession that can not 
 beat the Bureau salary and comforts to a frazzle 
 in practice! Any ordinary little practice will 
 net a fellow nearly as much as the Bureau salary 
 amounts to; and you can be a human being at 
 least, — which is something, too. 
 
186 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 
 EVERYTHING 15 ALL RIGHT ABOUT THIS 5TUNT 
 ONLY TtfE BUGGY 15 ' GRE ASED 'WlTH TAR 50AP 
 
 See page 190 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL 
 
 Our last experience in South Dakota just 
 about "cured" both my brother and me, and we 
 have now settled down, my brother in Iowa and 
 I in Wisconsin. 
 
 While we gained nothing from a financial 
 standpoint, we learned many lessons that are as 
 good as cash invested in substantial enterprises. 
 
 One of the big lessons we learned early in our 
 experience is the custom of "clique rule," which 
 exists in all small towns, and which is one of the 
 most important factors bearing on a practitioner's 
 popularity in a small town. Ninety per cent of 
 the inhabitants of all small towns are not con- 
 scious of the existence of "clique" influence al- 
 though they are active members of such cliques. 
 
 When a practitioner first locates in a small 
 town, and it makes absolutely no difference what 
 or where the town is, he must refrain from becom- 
 ing enmeshed in one or the other of these cliques, 
 and this he can do best by forming no fast or 
 particular friendships until he gets the lay of the 
 land. In a small town you are either a "friend of 
 mine" or an enemy; a "middle" existence is 
 almost impossible. If it is true that it is hard 
 for a practitioner to do well in his "home" town, 
 this is the chief reason; he belongs to a certain 
 clique and does not realize it. 
 
 187 
 
188 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 It is hard to make this plain in writing, but 
 here is the way to keep out of "cliques": 
 
 1. Refrain from discussing personalities. 
 
 2. If there are two barber shops in your town, 
 divide your patronage between them; a barber 
 can do more harm to you, if you are unpopular 
 with him, than any other man in town. 
 
 3. If your office is on the north side of town, 
 let yourself be seen on the south side occasion- 
 ally ; if you hang too close on the north side, you 
 will soon get into a little circle of acquaintances 
 who will dominate your every move; in other 
 words, you will drift into a "clique." "Big city 
 fellows" can't see the point here, but "small town 
 men" will know what I mean. 
 
 One reason for the existence of cliques in small 
 towns is the fact that nearly all small towns are 
 so full of competition in all lines of commercial 
 endeavor that business absolutely controls friend- 
 ship. You can theorize on this issue from now 
 until the day of judgment and I can knock all 
 your best arguments cold with wallops of actual 
 experience and observation in more than five 
 hundred small towns. 
 
 Another lesson we learned is that the small 
 town is just as rotten in morals as Chicago or any 
 big city. I don't care where your small burg is 
 situated or how well you think you know your 
 town; you don't know much about anybody out- 
 side of the clique you belong to. You stand for 
 hours talking over personalities about those out- 
 side your clique, but you don't say much worth 
 while listening to. A live tramp can show you 
 the black spots in your burg, black spots that are 
 
THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL 189 
 
 blacker than any you'll find in the big cities ; and 
 he does not have to be among you over forty- 
 eight hours either. 
 
 On this point I want to say that we found the 
 cleanest towns (small towns I mean), speaking 
 from the standpoint of morals, among the much 
 maligned Mormon inhabitants of the west; and 
 the rottenest small towns, morally, we found in 
 the middle west, from the Great Lakes to the 
 Missouri river. 
 
 Another thing we learned is that the average 
 farmer has less judgment in the handling of 
 horses than the city horseman. I do not hesitate 
 to say that seventy-five per cent of the trouble 
 farmers have with their stock is the result of poor 
 judgment displayed in feeding and working. 
 And fully half the losses they suffer from live 
 stock diseases are the result of poor nursing. If 
 I must treat a severe case of any disease, give me 
 anybody but a farmer to do the nursing. 
 
 We also learned that while the man who suc- 
 ceeds over a period of time must deal squarely and 
 "deliver the goods", ninety per cent of all farm- 
 ers we had anything to do with "want to be 
 humbugged by strangers"; "and the slicker you 
 do 'em the better they seem to like it." P. T. 
 Barnum meant the rural population when he re- 
 marked "thusly" years ago; and it holds good 
 today in spite of all this nonsense about the farm- 
 er not being a "rube" any more. Nine times out 
 of ten he is "easy picking" for a stranger and 
 "snap" for the traveling faker. 
 
 I have known the old "soap trick" to be 
 pulled off in one of the best dairy sections of Wis- 
 consin, where the farmers are supposed to be 
 
190 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 examples of wisdom and enlightenment. This 
 trick is "pulled off" about as follows, and has 
 been pulled off just that way for fifty years. 
 
 A good appearing fellow "blows into" a town 
 on County Fair day or some other big occasion; 
 he drives a fine horse and buggy and by giving a 
 talk gets a gathering of farmers. He tells them 
 he is selling the only soap on earth capable of re- 
 moving grease from clothes or hands by merely 
 washing with it in cold water. To prove it he 
 jumps out of his buggy, takes a wrench and 
 removes a wheel and with his nice, white pocket 
 handkerchief wipes the grease out of the box and 
 axle. He then rubs some of his soap on the hand- 
 kerchief, washes it in a basin of cold water and 
 the handkerchief comes out white as snow. 
 
 The farmers can't get their money out quick 
 enough, and the fellow sells a couple gross of 
 two-cent soap at ten cents a bar in a few minutes. 
 
 Everything is all right about this stunt; only 
 the buggy was "greased" with black tar soap. 
 
 I am just mentioning a few of these things, not 
 because I am down on the "poor" farmer; I do 
 business with the farmer every day, and I get 
 along fine with him; but, because this constant 
 noise about the farmer being so much brighter 
 and having better brains than he used to have is 
 sickening to a fellow who has seen them as I 
 have. Sure, some farmers are a little "smarter" 
 than their grandfathers were; but most of their 
 knowledge they got out of Spears- Sawbuck or 
 Jontmomery-Board's catalogues. 
 
 To the man who knows, the man who has seen 
 farmer after farmer and town after town with an 
 observing eye and an open mind, this talk of 
 
THE TEACHINGS OF TRAVEL 191 
 
 improved farmers is just as foolish as the talk 
 about the small-town girl going wrong in the big 
 city. Nine times out of ten the "going wrong" 
 took place in the small town before she ever saw 
 the bright lights. If I had a young daughter, I 
 would much rather see her grow up in the big city 
 than in a small burg. If you are a city fellow 
 with a growing daughter and want her to lose her 
 virtue quickly, let her visit some small burg a 
 few months with no more chaperoning than a 
 country girl gets in a big city ; if she succeeds in 
 going straight for more than two weeks after 
 she gets there, it will be because she has been 
 quarantined for small-pox or something of that 
 sort. I am merely stating a bold truth. Although 
 I was raised in the city I have lived off the 
 farmer, in small towns, for the last fifteen years 
 and I am anything but prejudiced against the 
 farmer. 
 
 Among the lessons we learned of a purely vet- 
 erinary nature, one sticks out most prominently, 
 and that is that most practitioners work too 
 cheaply; they don't get enough money for what 
 they do. 
 
 Another lesson we learned is that a large, 
 unopposed field for practice usually means a 
 poor field. For this reason so many locations 
 seem to be vacant in the west ; they will not sup- 
 port a veterinarian. In this we are reminded of 
 a remark an old practitioner was in the habit of 
 quoting: "Where you see the greatest number 
 of bees, you will find the most honey" — an argu- 
 ment he used against such locations. 
 
 There are in the west numberless towns of 
 from two thousand to four thousand population 
 
192 THE ITINERANT HORSE PHYSICIAN 
 
 without a veterinarian. The surrounding coun- 
 try is apparently well settled, but when you come 
 to investigate you find that the farmers are poor, 
 with not much prospect for ever getting rich or 
 even well off. On the other hand, there are 
 towns of around a thousand inhabitants a little 
 further east supporting two or three veterinari- 
 ans. We remember one town of ten thousand 
 people that could not support one practitioner 
 decently. 
 
 Were I to move into a new location today, I 
 should prefer a strenuous competitive practice in 
 the middle west to a large unopposed field in the 
 west. An itinerant practice I would have — 
 NEVER AGAIN! 
 
 I am not sorry one whit for the years I spent 
 "knocking around"; every day something turns 
 up which makes it possible for me to make good 
 use of the experience I got during that period. 
 This is especially true as regards the use of 
 money ; I can make a dollar go farther today than 
 any other man I know of ; and that is something. 
 
 Whether I will ever have a relapse of the wan- 
 derlust, I cannot tell; so far not a symptom 
 appears. In concluding I will say that I have 
 probably had a career as varied as ever a graduate 
 veterinarian had. I have seen and performed 
 every form of work along veterinary lines under 
 the most varied conditions. Country practice, 
 city practice, state work, government work in 
 both post-mortem and quarantine divisions, drug 
 salesman, manager of a pharmaceutical concern, 
 department editor of a veterinary magazine; 
 in fact, every line of veterinary work. And the 
 best is yet in me. 
 
Webster Family Library of Veterinary Medicine 
 
 Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at 
 
 Tufts University 
 
 200 Westboro Road y 
 
 North Grafton, MA 01536 ,^ 
 
/