PROGRESS IN AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE. 337 



Yes, there are plenty of men who are ready for any emergency, 

 and they gather at taverns and country stores, and discuss in the 

 most learned way, their theories of cholera and dysentery, and 

 typhoid fcYcr ; they know all about diseases, and a physician 

 would be perfectly useless to them. I must object to intelligent 

 farmers proceeding in the same way ; for they all laugh at their 

 friends who, when they are sick, take this course. 



Now let us see how the case stands with us as farmers. We 

 have the soil to deal with ; we have plants to deal with, and they 

 are very complicated things ; we have animals to deal with, as 

 complicated in structure, nearly, as we ourselves are. If we do 

 not trust our own knowledge when we are out of order, but send 

 for a physician who is supposed to understand our case, why 

 should we any more trust ourselves, without making some careful 

 and thorough study, in dealing with the nice organism of plants 

 and animals? I take it for granted that there is not a gentleman 

 present, who reasons like these men of whom I have been speaking. 

 You are men accustomed to think — the very fact that you are at 

 this Convention evinces that — and you will not reason in that way; 

 but if 3'-our soil is out of order, you will want to send for the soil 

 doctor. But where is he to be found ? Where is the physician 

 who understands this diagnosis ? We have not seen him in these 

 parts, at any rate. And here let me say, gentlemen, is a point to 

 which I wish careful attention to be given. It is the function of 

 our medical schools to train up men whose business it is to look 

 carefully into anatomy and physiology, the general workings of 

 the human system, and its relations to nature about us. And it is 

 not enough to understand man alone ; they must understand every 

 thing about him ; they must understand all the climatic and other 

 influences that are brought to bear upon him. It is the aim of our 

 medical schools to give this knowledge, but they do it as I well 

 understand, very imperfectly. It should be the aim of our Agri- 

 cultural College to do better the same thing for the farmer. 



But, you say, the whole community does not go to a medical 

 college to be educated. Very true; we do not want all to go. The 

 whole community will not go to the agricultural college to be 

 educated. Very true; it it not necessary. If the whole community 

 had to go to medical colleges in order to be instructed in the secrets 

 of life, that its members might live, the community would have 

 perished long ago. But a kind Father has so ordered the whole 

 matter, that much as we abuse these systems, widely as we may 

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