VETERINARY COLLEGE. 261 



inquiry into the causes and means of prevention of such direful 

 calamities. The epidemic still prevails in England and on the 

 Continent ; and application has been made to the government to 

 check the importation of foreign cattle, lest they should assist 

 in the spread of the disease. Indeed, numbers of cattle are 

 almost every week, as I have reason to believe, brought to 

 Smithfield in such a state of disease as to be fit for no other 

 purpose and for this they are actually bought but to make 

 sausages for the poor Londoners. I hardly dare say that this is 

 not to be complained of; but when one sees the extreme and 

 indescribable misery and destitution of many of these poor 

 wretches, apparently irremediable and hopeless, one almost 

 hesitates, in sad desperation, to lament a mode of disposing 

 of them after the Napoleon example of the treatment of his 

 sick prisoners at Jaffa. I almost tremble while I write upon 

 such a subject as this. It is indispensable to see, in order to 

 believe. I have had the painful, I hope not improper, curiosity 

 to penetrate many of these subterranean hiding-places and dens 

 of misery; and it is my sober conviction that the human imagi 

 nation cannot exaggerate the physical suffering, and, too com 

 monly consequent upon that, the moral degradation in which 

 many thousands, in this glorious arid prosperous country, drag 

 out their wretched existence. But I advocate the establishment 

 of veterinary institutions, and the cultivation of veterinary med 

 icine, on the broad ground of humanity ; and I hope many such 

 institutions will grow up in America, and that speedily. It is 

 remarkable that, in the disease of one of our domestic animals, 

 medical science has discovered the only effectual preventive for 

 one of the most dreadful scourges which, in the form of disease, 

 ever afflicted mankind. I refer, of course, to vaccination. 



But these animals have bones to ache, and nerves to feel, as 

 well as ourselves. They furnish our support ; they perform our 

 labors ; they promote our pleasures ; they are patient, enduring, 

 and indefatigable, in our service. Has not God cast them upon 

 our care, and put them under our protection ? What a respon 

 sibility ! Shall it be said that those who have no voice to speak 

 for themselves, shall find no one to speak for them ? What if 

 they have no moral nature ? Then they have not the vices of 

 animals of a superior class, who, dishonoring, perverting, and 

 outraging, that moral nature, degrade themselves far below the 



