316 THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE VETERINARY SCHOOLS. 



manner in which the school was conducted, and after it had re- 

 peatedly heard the grumblings of the agriculturists that mere em- 

 pirics were viseless, a reform was decided upon, which, however, 

 failed of a scientific basis. The germ of the failure was that the 

 school still remained patterned after those of France, and was left 

 free from every connection with the medical faculty. It was as- 

 sumed that all scientific foundation in the preliminary education 

 was unnecessary, save what little was gained by students in a low 

 class of a " real " school, and the two lowest classes in Latin. The 

 teachers were too few, and, taken mostly from the old empirical 

 school, were not adequate to the education of veterinarians suitable 

 to the purposes of the state. They were so poorly paid that they 

 were obliged to have outside occupations in order to live, so that 

 teaching and self-improvement became a matter of secondary im- 

 portance. 



" I myself had the misfortune to study three years (1857-60) un- 

 der this regime. The conditions at the school then were sad indeed, 

 for I will describe to you a time when we should have seen some- 

 thing of the development of the scientific spirit. The school did 

 not then have the least scientific character ; even the good of the 

 old school, the instruction in anatomy and dissection, was neglected. 

 The physiology which we heard was nothing else than what Schwab 

 had written many years before for the instruction of empirics. Not 

 a single experiment illustrated the lectures. There was no practice 

 in the use of the microscope. The instruction in natural science, 

 over which so much talk was made, consisted in nothing else than 

 in learning by rote a few pages of poorly compiled chemical analyses 

 from Gorup-Besanez's work upon that subject. There was a chemi- 

 cal laboratory which had just been erected, but only for the agri- 

 cultural experiment station, and exclusively for the use of students 

 of agriculture and forestry from the university. The instruction in 

 botany was very poor. Physics was not taught. The formulas for 

 the preparation of medicines passed as traditions from student to 

 student, and I do not say too much in stating that not a single one 

 was correct. Pharmaceutical chemistry was lectured upon by an as- 

 sistant, but a second one coming after one lecture had been deliv- 

 ered, we did not attend them further, for we knew more chemistry 

 than he did. The pharmacognostical collection was poor, old, moldy, 

 and unsuitable for study or demonstration. The teaching upon the 

 action of medicines was nothing more than a mere phraseology, 

 which served to hide the ignorance of the teacher, but did not help 

 to instruct the students. The balance of the instruction bore the 



