A NATIONAL VETERINARY INSTITUTE. 391 



out a well-organized system of veterinary police, and a carefully 

 drafted code of laws and regulations. It should be evident to every 

 one that this much-desired prevention, and the collection of those 

 valuable statistics, in a trustworthy manner, by which the people 

 can alone determine as to the extension which the contagious and 

 infectious animal diseases acquire each year, do not come within the 

 province of the medical practitioner. We have shown that, in the 

 majority of the States, no laws exist for the suppression and preven- 

 tion of contagious animal diseases, and in no State are they what 

 they should be, or at all conformable to the latest results of scientific 

 research. This work can only be well performed by the veterinarian 

 who has been thoroughly schooled in the principles and methods 

 of scientific medicine at a well-regulated institution. It is the same 

 in medicine. The thirst for knowledge for itself is the sole incen- 

 tive to original research. Monetary rewards are not gained in the 

 medical laboratory which is devoted to the study of physiology and 

 pathology. The practitioner who is always boasting of his cures, 

 who prides himself in a knowledge of the by-gones, if not too lazy ; 

 who always treats the earnest endeavors and researches of some 

 brother practitioner with scorn ; who echoes the popular voice, by 

 speaking of him as a theorist, " a very learned man, but fails in 

 not having had my practical experience," is to be invariably put 

 down as a humbug and first-class ignoramus. The man of expe- 

 rience alone is always an ignorant man in the light of science. 

 How often do the boasted men " of great practical experience " 

 fail ! They sink into a well-deserved oblivion before the genius of 

 the first-class practitioner, who unites in himself the two elements, 

 theory and practice, the one inseparable union which shall endure 

 forever. Scientia est poteritia ("Science is power"). Without 

 science, i. e., without theory, where would the world be now ? Sci- 

 ence holds the keys to the money-vaults of the world. She opens 

 to our view the hidden treasures of the earth. She adapts to our 

 uses the raw materials which she teaches us to win from nature. 

 She has given us all the means of comfort and luxury which we 

 have ; but, greater than all these, she is the fair goddess whose rules 

 and teachings, faithfully applied, lead to health. Science alone can 

 discover the means of prevention — crude experience, empiricism, 

 never ! The workers in the many fields of science have been among 

 the noblest benefactors of the human race, and among these none 

 have excelled those of medicine for their untiring devotion and self- 

 sacrifice. These men constantly neglect the very laws which they 

 are begging humanity to follow ; no devotion is too great to dampen 



