Hisfoi-y of Animal Plagues. ly^ 



before the Berlin Academy of Sciences a project for the estab- 

 lishment of a veterinary school in that city. The idea appears 

 to have originated with the King himself, Frederick the Great; 

 but through the able representations and zealous interposition of 

 Cothenius, the national school was founded at Berlin, and it has 

 proved of incalculable benefit to Prussia from that to the pre- 

 sent time. At Munich, Dresden, Hanover, Carlsruhe, and 

 Stuttgart, others sprang up. In Spain, a magnificent school 

 was commenced ; and in Italy four such establishments were 

 soon flourishing. Holland, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, 

 and Russia, with great liberality and discernment, founded col- 

 leges for teaching veterinary science. It was not until 1792, 

 however, that England had a veterinary school, but this of a 

 private and speculative nature, deriving no benefit from the 

 State, but allowed to push its own way from the fluctuating 

 support or patronage of private subscribers, and the fees of the 

 students. The Scottish capital, in the beginning of the 19th 

 century, through the patient and energetic exertions of a private 

 individual, had a school; and in recent years others, also pri- 

 vate, have been commenced in Glasgow and London. Un- 

 fortunately, however, and much to the cost of the country, 

 veterinary medicine has not received that encouragement and 

 confidence so necessary to the welfare of any branch of science. 

 In Britain, it has been left to grapple with ignorance and 

 empiricism. In many instances it has also, greatly to the de- 

 triment of commerce and the welfare of the nation, been ig- 

 nored by prejudice and narrow-mindedness, and its representa- 

 tives put aside for the self-sufiicient amateur, the unlearned 

 cow-leech, or the plausible impostor — a mode of proceeding 

 which has kept it far behind, when compared with continental 

 nations. 



Consequently, to men of education and natural al)ility, it at 

 present offers the most meagre inducements as a way to distinc- 

 tion or emolument; and the same ]niblic apathy which permits 

 the ravages of disease to decimate our herds and flocks, also pre- 

 vents those men from entering the profession and studying this 

 science, whose object it is to avert or ameliorate these ravages. 



From this chang-e in the mode of investiirating the diseases 



