58 ESSENTIALS OF VETERINARY LAW 



such rights and privileges as its wording shows. 

 A license to practice veterinary medicine would 

 give no right to prescribe for a human being. 

 Whenever the existence of a license is lawfully 

 questioned, it is not sufficient to prove its posses- 

 sion by parol evidence, nor is it sufficient to pro- 

 duce a certificate that one is licensed.^ ^ The license 

 may be a forgery, or it may have been canceled, or 

 the certificate may be wholly false. By the gen- 

 eral rules of evidence, when the existence of a 

 document is asserted, the document itself should 

 be produced.'"^"' The same statements are true as 

 to the possession of a diploma. The diploma itself 

 should be produced. It may be possible that the 

 lawfully issued diploma might have been de- 

 stroyed, and that a duplicate diploma could not 

 possibly be procured. It would, under such condi- 

 tions, be an injustice to the victim of misfortune 

 to enforce this rule; but the greatest caution is 

 needed in accepting proofs in such a case. This 

 was illustrated in a case which came under the 

 writer's personal obsei-vation. A physician 

 claimed to have been graduated from an institu- 

 tion which ceased to exist during the Civil War. 

 He claimed that many years afterward his office 

 was burned and that his diploma was destroyed. 

 He made affidavit of these facts, or asserted facts. 

 Owing to the writer's official relation with a medi- 

 cal society the applicant was referred to him for 

 recognition. In spite of recommendations from 

 physicians and clergjTuen, a cross examination, 



34 Commonwealth v. Spring, s^ Greenleaf, Evidence, 79; 



19 Pick. 396. Wharton, Criminal Law, 2434. 



