THE VETERINARY INSTITUTIONS OF PRUSSIA. 305 



necessary to support life; but he had attained his end, and acquired 

 the necessary kno\vledy;e fur admittance to a veterinary school.'' 

 He gained this knowledge at great cost, and therefore highly ap- 

 preciated diligence in others, lie was ever an advocate of higher 

 education for veterinarians ; ever on the side which tended to the 

 advancement of his profession ; from first to last he was a scientist 

 and a student. He graduated from Berlin in 1S33, and until lS-1-4 

 practiced his profession at the i)lace of his nativity in Saxony, lie 

 there published a pamphlet upon " Anthrax in Sheep," which soon 

 attracted the attention of the Government, and led to his being 

 called to Berlin, first as assistant and then as teacher. In lb5*J he 

 received the honorable appointment of Director of the Veterinary 

 School at Hanover, which he came near losing, however, as he 

 placed as absolute condition to his acceptance that he should have 

 the title of " professor,'' which had never before been given to a 

 veterinarian, and which in Xorth Germany does not mean, as it does 

 in these glorious and free United States of America, anything 

 from a genuine man of genius at a university down to a shoeblack, 

 dealer in old clothes, or vender of (|uack medicines. Ilis promotion 

 to professor was soon followed by that to privy medical councilor. 

 " He was in Prussia not alone the first veterinarian who received 

 the direction of the veterinary school (previously it had always been 

 given to medical men of note), but also the first veterinarian who, 

 without being also an M. D., received the titles ' medical ' and 

 * privy medical councilor,' " Between 1859 and ISTO were made the 

 greater part of those original researches, which have gained accept- 

 ance not only in veterinary but human medicine. He was the first 

 to obstinately deny the abiogenesis (self-develojnnent) of glanders. 

 To his investigations is also owing the excitement with reference 

 to the transmissibility to human beings of the tuberculosis of cattle. 

 To the extreme obstinacy with which he defended these opinions 

 is due much of the opposition which he received from the profes- 

 sion. In 1870 he became director of the school at Berlin, and began, 

 or rather went on, developing the work of his life — the further intro- 

 duction of the scientific method into veterinary instruction. So far 

 as the future of the profession in Germany is concenied, I think that 

 Gerlach's last act was l>y far his greatest — that is, the introduction 

 of a specialist as physiologist to the school, and the erection of a 

 proper laboratory and experiment station. I myself lived through 

 this, and no one better knows the bitter opposition which conserva- 

 tism and selfishness put in the way of the purposes of this man, whose 

 only desire was to improve the school and serve well his country. 



