CENTRAL PROPOSED VETERINARY MEDICAL SOCIETY. 433 
that when any question connected with our science comes 
before the world, no matter what its importance may be, or 
whether the welfare of the whole agricultural community be 
at stake, we have no central organization in which that 
question may receive full and fair discussion, and the public 
be informed as to its importance and its immediate or 
remote consequences. 
We are compelled to remain mute, and it is, therefore, 
taken for granted that we are incapable of forming an opinion, 
and are of but little use to the community at large. What 
better example could be afforded of this lamentable state of 
affairs than our position during the late invasion of cattle 
plague? Had there been, in 1865, a Central Veterinary 
Medical Society in London, enjoying the confidence of the 
public, and whose decisions were acceptable as trustworthy, 
a grievous national calamity might have been largely averted, 
and our profession spared the indignant and humiliating re- 
proaches undeservedly heaped upon it by almost every one. 
Isolated individual efforts were then, if not altogether un- 
availing, at least all but rendered powerless by the overwhelm- 
ing torrent of panic, ignorance, and prejudice prevailing ; 
but would this have been the case had the whole profession 
been heard through a central society ? I am certain it would 
not. The veterinary profession, disunited, speechless, is but 
of little advantage to itself, and perhaps still less to the 
public ; united, organized, determined that it will be heard, 
and that it will assume that position among the sciences and 
in public estimation which it has every right to claim, it will 
be in a fair way to accomplish its highest duty. 
As has been very properly and justly remarked, in the 
leading article on this subject in the Veterinarian for May, 
there are many subjects of paramount interest and importance 
to science which can only be investigated and discussed by 
such an organization. Veterinary medicine in this country, 
it may be asserted, has scarcely yet commenced its career or 
entered upon its higher duties. There is a vast, an almost 
limitless expanse of research and investigation still before it, 
which the few scattered but enthusiastic labourers in the field 
have been unable to touch. Such a society as that now 
under consideration alone affords the best prospect of success- 
fully entering upon this new ground. 
Next to the benefits our science and the public interest will 
derive, must be remembered the improvement such a society 
will effect in the case of individual members, by the stimulus 
it will give to their mental faculties and powers of observa- 
tion, causing them to search, read, study, write, and speak. 
