156 IRISH CENTRAL VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
pay the cost of treatment in many diseases, from the fact that they 
lose so much of their market value as beasts fit for our consumption 
as food; so, though “ stamping out ” may seem unprofessional in 
many cases, it is the cheapest, and in that sense the right one, as 
was proved in the recent outbreak of cattle plngue ; the danger 
of infection to other sound animals, the isolation from them 
on farms, except in a few favoured places, being impossible. 
Prevention of disease is what we have to look to, and we have seen 
in the present session the legislature have viewed the matter in its 
proper light, and in the event of certain diseases being imported 
from abroad, instead of being allowed to run their course unchecked, 
there is a fair chance of their being extinguished before they have 
gained any great hold in the country. 
Taking warning by that severe visitation in England, and the 
advice of those who from the first predicted what would occur unless 
restrictive measures were carried out, the public has come back on 
this question to the advice and assistance of the properly constituted 
guardians of the health of its domesticated animals, to those men 
who had made the study of disease the labour of a life, in contra- 
distinction to amateur advice, an additional proof, if any were 
wanted, that in veterinary science, as in all other arts and sciences, 
a strictly professional course of study is requisite, and that no royal 
road leads to its acquirements ; no matter what branch of industry 
or usual amusements of life is selected, the professional, the man who 
has gone through a systematic training in that particular branch, be- 
ginning at the bottom and learning it step by step, wins in the end. 
Take the subject of painting, is there an amateur whose production, 
when compared with very ordinary pictures by professionals, comes 
near them ? The eye may be caught by tricks of colouring, but look 
at it closely, and the faults of an early hurried training are clearly 
perceptible. So in music, the prodigy of the drawing room, brought 
before the public on the arena of the stage, fails when in competi- 
tion with the ordinary students of the academies, even before his 
own select circle of admirers. The highest compliment that can be 
given to his performance is that it is professional. Take the turf, 
so well acknowledged is the principle, that even with a severe 
penalty in the shape of increased weight where the contest is at all 
close, the amateur horseman is nowhere, his well meant but inju- 
rious efforts impeding instead of assisting the animal he is guiding. 
And here I may briefly run through the history of the science, 
though I fear to many it can only be a repetition of what has 
often appeared in the Veterinarian. 
In the early days of the world’s history, the professors of the 
healing art seem to have practised indiscriminately. Hippocrates 
is the first whose name we find in connection with veterinary as 
with the sister science. 
Virgil, in the Georgies, gives minute directions about rubbing 
sheep with sulphur, oil, and hellebore, for skin disease, and refers to 
the habit that animals, feeling the first symptoms of disease coming 
on, have of isolating themselves from the rest of the herd. 
