Secretary, had a meeting at the Royal College of Surgeons to ascertain the plan there acted on, and to decide how far it was applicable to our own Board: the Report was favourable, and the Secretary was requested to make himself master of the system there adopted, which was declared both by Mr. Stanley, one of their Examiners and Chairman of our Board, and Mr. Belfour, their Secretary, to work most admirably, and to be very superior to any before had recourse to. It was accordingly brought under the notice of our Board, at its meeting on the 15th of May, and is as follows :— Instead of each pupil appearing before the whole Board at once, the Board is distributed at four tables, one devoted to chemistry, a second to anatomy and physiology, a third to the pathology of the horse, and the fourth to cattle pathology. Each pupil is examined for a quarter of an hour at each table, thus having to appear in rotation before the whole of the Examiners, and to go through a well-divided examination of one hour. Owing, however, to some opposition from the Professors and Teachers of the Royal Veterinary College of St. Pancras, this plan was only partially carried out, three tables being substituted for four, and three quarters of an hour for the hour's examination. So well, however, did even this defective adoption of the plan work, that both the Examiners and the examined declared it a very great improvement on the old system; and, as a consequence, the entire plan was brought into operation at the meeting of the Board on the 21st of May, after some further slight attempts at opposition from the Lecturers at the Veterinary College of St. Pancras, and the result was most happy. Every pupil underwent an equal and searching examination on every branch of his education: chemistry and cattle pathology received their due share of consideration, and must, consequently, in future be considered important parts of the curriculum of education. Every member of the Board engaged was satisfied and delighted with the result, and every pupil who appeared before it acknowledged its efficiency and entire freedom from restraint or annoyance. The number of students already examined this year is forty-one; of whom thirty-three were passed and eight rejected. The examinations at Edinburgh of this year, although not brought to the same degree of systematic regularity, were very considerably improved. The same principle was acted on as in London, one Examiner taking each candidate on one of the before named branches of education. The number examined was twenty; of these, seventeen were passed and three rejected. This difference, however, in the proportion to last year was not owing to any falling off in the qualifications of the pupils, who, as a body, were very superior to their predecessors, but to the much more stringent and extensive course of examination they had to undergo. Your Council, therefore, rely with the greatest confidence on the Board of Examiners, well knowing that their best exertions and undivided attention will be given to the ascertaining the qualifications of the student, thereby rendering your diploma a valuable and efficient guarantee for the capability of its holder; to the cautious but firm rejection of the candidate who from carelessness, inattention, or incapacity, shall not have acquired those attainments they consider so essential to his future well-doing; and to the keeping pace in their examinations with the onward progress of science and practical information. In conclusion, the Council beg to express to the members generally their satisfaction at the results already derived from the Charter they feel it their duty to endeavour, by every means at their disposal, to render its benefits of greater utility to the profession; and, while they are determined to maintain the charter inviolate, it is their wish to listen to any suggestion, to consider any project, to adopt any plans that may be thought desirable for the interest of veterinary science; and they will at all times be ready to receive the co-operation of those influential Institutions, already alluded to, that so kindly take an interest in their proceedings for this purpose; in the firm conviction that they, the Royal Agricultural Society of England and the Highland Agricultural Society of Scotland, will thus be materially assisted in carrying out their own enlarged and important intentions; while the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons will receive an impress from their support and co-operation that will go far to sustain it in that independent, but, at the same time, efficient and useful position, in which it will always be its proudest boast to be placed, but which education and science alone can enable it permanently and honourably to retain. London, June 6th, 1845. E. N. GABRIEL, Secretary. Minute of Council, June 6th, 1845. "That the Report now read be adopted, and that the Editors of THE VETERINARIAN and THE VETERINARY RECORD be requested to insert the same in their respective Journals." E. N. GABRIEL, Secretary. NAMES of those who have obtained their DIPLOMAS from the ROYAL COLLEGE OF VETERINARY SURGEONE, late Pupils of the Royal Veterinary College, London. May 16, 1845. Mr. William Cox, Ellastone, Staffordshire. Mr. James Broad, Winsley, near Bath. Mr. George Robb, Glasgow. Mr. A. Burke, Cahir, county Tipperary. Mr. H. J. Cartwright, Liverpool. Mr. E. C. Crowly, Cork. Mr. Henry King, Morpeth. Mr. J. J. Hazell, Great Bromley. May 21. Mr. Thomas Overton, Harboro' Parva. Mr. William Shirley, Staines. Mr. Abraham Fowler, Shrivenham, Berks. Mr. Alexander B. Henderson, London. Mr. Thomas Wright, Brighton. Mr. T. D. Gregory, Chard. Mr. John Jekyll, Lincoln. Mr. Anthony E. B. Green, March, Cambridgeshire. Mr. Alfred Williams, Bristol. Mr. Augustus Crook, Eaton, near Norwich. June 4. Mr William Johnson, Lincoln. Mr. Matthew B. Brake, London. Mr. George Stowe, Warwick. Mr. Charles Edward Short, Blandford. Mr. Brand Garner, Foxton, Cambridge. June 11. Mr. James Fenner, Clare. VOL. I.] THE VETERINARY RECORD, &c. OCTOBER 1845. [No. 4. ON THE USE OF THE CHIOCOCCA RACEMOSA, THE CAINCA OF BRAZIL, FOR "CHARBON" IN THE HORSE. By RICARDO DE GUMBLETON DAUNT, M.D. Edinburgh, and L.M. Rio de Janeiro. To the Editors of THE VETERINARY RECORD. Gentlemen,-ALTHOUGH entirely unacquainted with comparative pathology and therapeutics, yet the importance, in a politicoeconomical sense, of the multiplication and conservation of the domestic animals has caused me often to notice any thing peculiar respecting them wherever offering itself. In this way I became acquainted with the fact I now make known to you, in the belief that it will prove of use. During a residence, in the latter part of the past year, in the district of San John de Macahé in this empire, I found that the "Pustule Maligne," or "Charbon," was a frequent disease among the under-bred and poorly kept horses of that district, and that the peasantry combated it with general success by the internal administration of the shrub known here as the Caïnca, the " Chiococca Racemosa" of naturalists. Knowing the fatality of this disease among cattle in many European countries, and its fearfully contagious nature, it being most commonly fatal to those employed about such animals, it has appeared to me that the Caïnca (which may be procured in the European drug-market, and which, as the chiococca racemosa of the family of the Rubiaceæ, is described in the Histoire Naturelle Medicale of Professor Richard, and in the Materia Medica of Messrs. Merat and Delens) deserves a fair trial. I could not learn whether this drug was likewise applied to cases of this disease occurring in the human subject in this country. In giving it to animals, the dose must be apportioned in the first trials by an approximative relation founded on the statements given by the two French authors named of its dose for the human subject. That the caïnca possesses most powerful properties is not to be doubted, it being most popular among the natives in all cases where a general corruption of the circulating fluids exists, as in all diffuse cellular inflammations, &c.; and probably it might not be without action in equinia. It decidedly merits a more extended trial in Europe than the efforts of M. de Langsdorff obtained for it about sixteen years ago, when his attention was called to it during his travels in the interior of Brazil. I have the honour to be, Gentlemen, Your most obedient servant. Campinas, Interior of the Province of San Paulo, Sir W. Hooker, in his Exotic Flora, tab. 93, says, "The Chiococcum racemosum is a moderate sized shrub, growing, according to Browne, in Jamaica, St. Domingo, and Barbadoes; also at Carthagena, and, according to Michaux and Pursh, in Georgia and Florida. It attains the height of seven or eight feet; is much branched, and the branches are opposite, round, smooth, and so slender as to require support. Leaves one or two inches long, ovate, tapering at each end, with a short footstalk; shining, subcoriaceous, waved and entire at their margins, with a distinct central rib, but very obscure lateral veins. "The flowers are produced from the axilæe of the upper leaves, in small but graceful drooping racemes: they are secund. The calyx of five brown erect teeth; the corolla infundibuliform, pale yellow; its tube somewhat angular, and the limb of five spreading ovate segments; stamens, five united at their bases, shorter than the corolla; anthers pale yellow; germen compressed, roundishovate, obscurely two-lobed, two-celled inferior. Style filiform, longer than the tube of the calyx. Stigma clavate, bifid. Berry snow-white, roundish, slightly compressed, pulpy, crowned with |