A NATIONAL VETERINARY SCUOOL. 421 



Spinoza, Galileo, Newton, Descartes, Knox ; the fathers of Ameri- 

 can independence, Washington, Paine, Jefferson, Otis, Adams, and 

 others; Yesalius, Bichat, and Yirchow in medicine; Darwin, Tyn- 

 dall, Huxley, in science ; and the fathers of America's second inde- 

 pendence, Garrison, Parker, Sumner, Whittier, and others, have all 

 been condemned in their own day and generation as visionary, im- 

 practical, extravagant ; and yet, one after the other, succeeding gen- 

 erations have raised monuments to their memory and pronounced 

 them most practical men. 



The first bugbear which threatens our purpose is to be sought 

 in some secret meaning which is supposed to lie behind the word 

 " national.'' It is assumed by some that I desire to put my hands 

 in the public Treasury, and retire, to be the envy of the Kear- 

 neyites, a " bloated bondholder." Others suppose that by the 

 wi»rd "national" I mean a school endowed and controlled by the 

 Government at AVashington ; and they immediately see a whole 

 mountain of political evils overclouding their vision. Beyond 

 these views, no one seems yet to have proceeded, notwithstand- 

 ing five years' public advocacy and repeated restating of these 

 ideas. 



The only sense in which I have ever used the word national is 

 in reference to a plan for a school which shall best serve the re- 

 quirements of the central Government, the State governments, and 

 the people individually, as if each one of these bodies were but a 

 single individual whose entire interests were to be served. Any 

 other definition of my meaning is but a perversion. 



One school for the nation is what I am advocating, until the 

 necessities of the country shall require another. 



Nothing more need be said of the evils of private or State 

 schools. It is to meet all these evils that I advocate one school. 

 The work of this scliool should be as follows : 



1. To educate veterinarians who shall be equal, both to the de- 

 mands of the State and the public. 



2. To supply a suitable number of qualified specialists who, in 

 the event of an outbreak of contagious animal diseases, or a suspi- 

 cious connection between those of animals and man, may proceed, 

 at the order of the National Board of Health, or at the request of 

 any State board, to the invaded district, and make there the neces- 

 sary researches and observations. These persons should always oc- 

 cupy the position of assistants, or tutors, at the school. 



3. It should be an institution at which all manner of feeding, 

 inoculation, or other necessary experiments could be made, by 



