324 THE PORTRAIT GALLERY 
A VETERAN EDUCATOR IN VETERINARY MEDICINE 
127. Paralleling Dr. James Law (122) in the pioneer nature 
of his service in the field of veterinary education was Dr. H. J. 
Dermers, founder of the College of Veterinary Medicine of the 
Ohio State University. Dr. DeTMERS was of German nativity, 
having been born in the province of Oldenburg, in April, 1835. 
His education was received in the leading universities of Europe, 
both at Hanover and Berlin, where he pursued agricultural and 
veterinary courses. In the late sixties he came to America and 
at once became a naturalized citizen. 
His first duties of an official nature in America were in con- 
nection with the Commissioner of Agriculture of the United 
States (the forerunner of the present federal Department of Agri- 
culture), with whom he studied the causes of the then recently 
introduced cattle plague, contagious pleuro-pneumonia. In coop- 
eration with Dr. Law, Dr. BILLINGs and Dr. SALMon (33) means 
for its eradication were proposed and successfully executed. 
When the new Bureau of Animal Industry was formed under 
the control of Dr. Satmon, Dr. DETMERS was retained as an 
investigator of hog cholera and other infectious animal diseases. 
At that time the science of bacteriology was in its infancy, and 
Dr. DeETMERs attracted wide attention through his use of this 
science to attack the cause of hog cholera. His. work in this 
particular direction still stands as classic. Dr. DETMERS suc- 
ceeded in isolating and cultivating an organism in beef broth 
which he believed to be the cause of hog cholera, or as he called 
it, swine plague. At the time that he was doing this Dr. SALMON 
(33) isolated another organism which he believed to be the cause 
of cholera and for many years there existed a strong rivalry 
between the two scientists for the honor of prior discovery of the 
organism. As a result two distinct swine diseases were popu- 
larly recognized for a long time under the respective names of 
swine plague and hog cholera, but Dr. DeTMers was never willing 
