328 THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE VETERINARY SCHOOLS. 



leagues ; then they should deliver a lecture before the class as to the 

 operation, its history, and ways of performing it, the reasons for its 

 performance in practice, the teacher correcting or suggesting as the 

 student proceeds. One such operation, and sometimes more, should 

 be done daily throughout the year. The cutting exercise can be 

 under the guidance of an anatomical assistant on the cadaver. These 

 operations should be performed according to the strictest rules of 

 surgery, and the different forms of treatment experimented with ; 

 the student operating should receive the animal operated upon as a 

 patient, and treat hira in the hospital as such ; the wounds should 

 be bound uj), the same as in practice, and every endeavor should be 

 made to improve the methods. All other operative surgery, either 

 as jDracticed at Berlin or in France, is a " botch" and humbug, cruel 

 to animals and degrading to the profession ; but the above plan is 

 dignified with a scientific purpose ; it may serve two ends at the 

 same time — properly exercise the student, and serve as an experi- 

 ment by which general surgery may be benefited, and some new 

 method find proof or contradiction. It is in unison with the true 

 purpose of a school, the perfect union of theory and practice, which 

 makes up the science of medicine. 



Were this the only error of the Government in the management 

 of this school, it would be fortunate indeed. But, not satisfied with 

 making an error in one direction, they must equal it in another. At 

 the school was a young man of marked genius, of genuine scientific 

 spirit, who was ranked as prosector in anatomy, the only trouble 

 being that he knew too much, and was not to be brought into the 

 scholastic-empiric leading-strings. The non-progressive tricksters, 

 unable to control, resolved to get rid of him. As in England in- 

 cumbrancers have often been confined in lunatic asylums, or great 

 men banished by imbecile governments, so they sought to send him 

 to the Russian frontier to watch the rinderpest. A man of science 

 to act as an ordinary policeman ! was ever anything more ridiculous ? 

 Fortunately, other powers existed. Instead of banishment to the 

 Russian frontier, our young assistant received government aid to pur- 

 sue the study of comparative anatomy under Gegenbauer and Wal- 

 deyer. He was the man above all others to take Gurlt's place in vet- 

 erinary anatomy ; ay, more ! he recognized the practical needs, and 

 his lectures were models of scientific foundation applied to practical 

 ends. One would think that such a man could not fail of apprecia- 

 tion ; but such was not the case. He received a call to Dresden, and 

 the Prussian Government, blind to its own interests, the direction of 

 the school false to its duties to the profession, quietly let him go. 



