No. 144.J 6S . 



on the preservation of health, and likewise as to general im- 

 provements in regard to vigor of frame and beauty of form, with 

 all kinds of stock; would tend to elucidate and instruct as to 

 incidental and constitutional causes of deterioration, together 

 with those dependent sequalse of hereditary defects, &c., which 

 are to be shunned in breeding and rearing; and lastly, and not 

 least, would teach better facts and truer doctrines in relation to 

 the horse's foot— the right principles of adapting the shoe — and 

 the proper manner of fitting and affixing that inflexible but neces- 

 sary evil. 



Veterinary science also tenders to the student of human medi-. 

 cine, an opportunity for improving his knowledge of animal 

 structure and functions, and likewise for becoming acquainted 

 with the treatment appropriate to animal maladies, and this in a 

 ^manner so as might not unseldom be valuable to him in his pro- 

 fessional career. In many agricultural and remoter districts, 

 the two professions, the medical aud veterinary medical, could be 

 often availably combined, and this both to individual and local 

 advantage. The hunfan medical schools themselves, at different 

 times, have derived benefit, both in the enlargement of their 

 anatomical and physiological knowledge, and the improvement 

 of methods of healing, from the inspection of the structure of 

 various animals, and from experiments made on them, both in 

 healthy and morbid states. The many instances of this do not 

 fall within the proper scope of these observations ; but it may be 

 admissible to recall that the immortal Harvey, in his famous dis- 

 covery of the circulation of the blood, which effected a total revo- 

 lution in medicine, was chiefly indebted to his experiments on 

 living animals ; and another familiar fact is that of Tenner's dis- 

 covery of vaccine inoculation, which has annihilated that fright- 

 ful scourge, small pox, in all civilized nations. 



The claims of veterinary science to intelligent consideration 

 and liberalized estimation, appeal equally to the humanity and 

 self interest of communities. The consequence of causes and 

 effects being confounded and misapprehended, as regards the 

 domestic care of animals, and the treatment of their maladies; of 

 uninformed practices, and unthinking cruelty, of various kinds; 



[Assembly, No. 144.1 E 



