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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIY. No. 876 



pathology and therapeutics and the devel- 

 opment of our veterinary schools and col- 

 leges. It is well for us of the present to 

 recognize that these great leaders saw, as 

 did Lowell, that "New times demand new 

 manners and new men and new conditions 

 demand new schools." Law was the first 

 to carry this idea into practise. Smith fol- 

 lowed by affiliating with a great university 

 the school brought into form by his own 

 efforts. McEachran, finding it impossible 

 to provide adequate equipment with the 

 financial support forthcoming, closed the 

 doors of his institution, and Liautard is 

 constantly ringing the call for better and 

 more efficient education. 



Standing as it were at the close of the 

 first generation and at the beginning of the 

 second, it seems fitting that this association 

 should devote a little time to the consid- 

 eration of veterinary education in these 

 countries — what it is, its weaknesses, its 

 strength, its opportunities and above all its 

 responsibilities. 



It is a reasonable hypothesis that educa- 

 tion directed toward the preparation of 

 men for the practise of veterinary medicine 

 does not diifer in principle from that for 

 other professions. The laws of educational 

 evolution therefore apply here as elsewhere, 

 and the acquisition of knowledge that goes 

 to make up a so-called learned profession 

 holds exactly the same position here as it 

 does in human medicine, theology or law. 

 The purpose of education is to engender 

 thought, to eliminate dogma, to enthrone 

 facts and laws and to endow one with an 

 intellectual liberty. Accompanying the 

 possession of definite knowledge there is a 

 corresponding moral obligation to use this 

 knowledge for the benefit of mankind. 

 This is especially true with the medical 

 professions. 



If one analyzes the present status of 

 veterinary education in America, measured 



by the course of general educational laws, 

 it will be found that there still remain in 

 our system or systems of instruction many 

 examples of the methods of the unskilled, 

 remnants of faith in the magic power of 

 the by-gone mystic wand, lingering beliefs 

 in the technical ability of the so-called 

 practical man, as well as a powerful under- 

 current of forces demanding education for 

 efficiency. This demand for better train- 

 ing must eventually here, as in other fields, 

 cause ignorance to be replaced by knowl- 

 edge, unfounded opinions to give way to 

 facts and finally banish forever that error 

 in our teaching which assumes that appli- 

 cation can go ahead of the knowledge to be 

 applied. We hear much of veterinary 

 science, forgetting that the application of 

 veterinary medicine is an art based upon a 

 well-defined group of sciences, and that, 

 other things being equal, the success of the 

 artist depends upon his knowledge of the 

 sciences upon which the art rests. This is 

 illustrated by the universal fact that in 

 those countries where the most training in 

 the basic sciences is given and demanded 

 practise is correspondingly most successful. 

 In our systems too much emphasis has been 

 and still is placed upon the diploma and 

 all too little upon what it should represent, 

 thus encouraging the erroneous assumption 

 that it is possible to use what one does not 

 possess. 



In order to estimate the true worth of 

 our systems of veterinary education, let us 

 in our imagination strike from our knowl- 

 edge and from the literature the achieve- 

 ments of the devotees of pure science and 

 then ask ourselves what American veteri- 

 nary education in itself has done to ad- 

 vance specific knowledge of the nature, 

 treatment and prevention of animal dis- 

 eases. The honest answer to this question 

 would show that much we are wont to 

 claim for our humane profession comes to 



