304 THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE VETERINARY SCHOOLS. 



The School at Hanover.* 



On the 15th of April, 1777, the first steps toward the erection of 

 a veterinary school were taken into consideration by the king, or 

 rather elector, who was at the same time George III of England, 

 and Kersting, the superior veterinarian of the court at Cassel, a 

 neighboring province, was invited to visit Hanover to advise about 

 the opening of the school, and take charge of it. Kersting' s popu- 

 larity was so great at the court of Cassel that he could not obtain 

 permission to leave for Hanover, and was obliged to run away. As 

 Kersting was by all means the most important German veterinarian 

 of his day, a short sketch of his life is not out of place here : 



" Johann Adam Kersting was the descendant of a Huguenot 

 family, and was born at Liebenau, in Lower Hesse, in 1726, and died 

 at Hanover, March 2, 1784, from the effects of a wound caused by the 

 kick of a horse, at a time when he could ill be spared, being but 

 fifty-eight years old, and full- of bodily vigor and mental activity. 

 His father was a farrier, wound-doctor, and veterinarian. At fifteen 

 years of age the son went into the forge of his father at Cassel, 

 where he soon displayed unusual abilities. Among others, he be- 

 came acquainted with a clock-maker, and took so much interest in 

 the work of the latter that he himself constructed a clock and hung 

 it up in his father's forge, which so incited the wrath of the latter 

 that he knocked it in pieces, declaring he would have no such non- 

 sense interfering with the proper work of his son. The son also 

 busied himself in studying the diseases of the horse, and practicing 

 their treatment ; and we find him, in 1745, as farrier accompanying 

 a squadron of Hessians into Scotland in favor of the Stuarts. He 

 accompanied the Hessian prince of the day during several wars as 

 farrier, and at the close of the Seven Years' War studied medicine 

 in Gottingen for a time. During the war in Silesia (1757) he was 

 thrown from a baggage-wagon, with such force as to lose both sight 

 and hearing, the former not returning for a period of two years. 

 During his blindness he attended to the publication of the first edi- 

 tion of his book, " Sicherer und wohlerfahrener Huf und Reit- 

 schmidt" (" Sure and Well-experienced Farrier and Rider"). Dur- 

 ing a winter's quarters at Brunswick he again studied medicine 

 diligently. At the end of the war he settled at Cassel, as farrier 

 veterinarian to the court, where he busily pursued his studies, espe- 



* These remarks are taken from " Die konigliche Thierarznei-Schule zu Hannover," 

 during the first hundred years of its existence, by K. Gunther, director and professor, to 

 which the reader is referred for all minute details. 



