408 THE MEANS OF PREVENTION. 



London school lias been to the British veterinary profession, but will 

 limit myself to some remarks from the most eminent veterinarian of 

 England. My esteemed friend and colleague, Mr. George Fleming, 

 expresses himself in the " Veterinary Journal," London, in an 

 editorial in the November number for 1879, vol. ix, p. 318, as fol- 

 lows: 



" Our readers will have observed that for some months an agi- 

 tation has been going on among the members of the veterinary pro- 

 fession, chiefly metropolitan practitioners, with reference to the un- 

 fair competition maintained toward them hy the Royal Veterinary 

 College {London) known as the ' subscription system.^ As is well 

 known, and as so many veterinary surgeons find to their cost, that 

 school advertises that for two guineas a year it will examine twenty 

 horses for soundness, give advice with regard to an unlimited num- 

 ber, receive into the school-hospital and treat sick horses, as well as 

 sell medicine at cost price, shoe horses for a smaller sum than the 

 ordinary farrier can, etc., while for five guineas per annum an in- 

 definite number of horses will be examined, and all other privileges 

 guaranteed. In fact, it offers to do what no practitioner could afford 

 to do, and undersells its own students to such an extent that it is not 

 only impossible for them to compete with the cheap establishment, 

 but the bread is actually taken from their mouths by this so-called 

 Alma Mater of theirs. It has been said by some political historian 

 that the French Revolutions eat up their own children. The London 

 Veterinary School does this, and more ; for it first charges them 

 heavy fees for teaching, then starves and swallows them. The sys- 

 tem can certainly boast of a long history. The school was com- 

 menced as a subscription establishment by an obscure agricultural 

 society, nearly ninety years ago ; but then it only had ignorant and 

 illiterate farriers to compete with, and two guineas in those days 

 were very much more than they are now. 



" Had the school never heen hegun on this system, there can he no 

 doiibt that later it must have heen established by the country for the 

 benefit of the country. In this case veterinary medicine would have 

 all along stood in a very different 'position to what it has done and 

 does now, and millions of pounds would probably have been saved. 

 The ' subscription system ' [proposed at Philadelphia] has undoubt- 

 edly proved a most serious drawback to veterinary science iti Eng- 

 land, as history proves. The school has done little if anything to 

 promote that science / it has never produced a scientific teacher, and 

 never will on its present footing / its teachers have been little more 

 than practitioners, whose principal functions were to ' doctor ' sub- 



