A NATIONAL VETERINARY INSTITUTE. 395 



will take place for years to come, unless our own poor endeavors, 

 unaided as they have yet been, succeed in leading the way to a re- 

 form which shall extend to the medical schools, by the establishment 

 of a veterinary institute upon purely scientific principles. 



It may be axiomatically asserted that it is as much the duty of 

 the State to protect its people against incompetently educated men 

 and impostors in medicine as it is to protect them against frauds in 

 other departments of life. This can only be attained by the State's 

 regulating and controlling the entire system of education, and the 

 terms of graduation of the medical school or schools within its terri- 

 tory. While most parents display a creditable degree of anxiety 

 with reference to the education which a son is to acquire when fit- 

 ting for a mercantile position in life, it is only too true that many 

 parents look upon a medical education as a sort of luxury, and, ut- 

 terly regardless of the welfare of their fellow-men, desire their son 

 put through the medical school in the shortest time and at the 

 least expense possible. "While there is a certain degree of uniform- 

 ity in the printed catalogues issued by the fifty-nine medical schools 

 in this country, yet it is very doubtful if the conditions upon which 

 diplomas are conferred are held up to by all the schools. In fact, 

 experience goes to prove the latter to be the case. In most of them 

 the conditions necessary to obtaining the diploma read three years 

 of study, two full courses (one year) at some medical school, one of 

 which must be at the institution in question. In reality, we have 

 here a demand for but three sessions' study in a medical school. As 

 these three sessions are supposed to extend over a year and a half, 

 one is somewhat at a loss to know what the regulation three years' 

 study means. The regulations frequently say " three years' study 

 with some regular practitioner," which, if insisted upon, would 

 make the full term of study four and a half years ; and, as students 

 may graduate at twenty-one years of age, many students would be 

 but sixteen and a half years old when beginning the study of medi- 

 cine — too young by far for most youths to have acquired that edu- 

 cation and drilling in the natural sciences by which alone the study 

 of the professional branches can be followed with any profit. The 

 " three years with any regular practitioner," whether he be of good 

 or irregular standing, may have been a necessity in the early days 

 of our history, but is to be looked upon now as a disgrace to any 

 civilized nation. It is injurious to the young man, injurious to the 

 people, degrading to the profession, and puts incumbrances in the 

 way of the scientific advancement of the profession, which will only 

 be overcome with immense difficulty, and at the cost of much ill- 



