THE PRESENT CONDITION OF VETERINARY MEDICINE. 471 
and therapeutics, applied to the horse, where are their proto- 
types in the cattle department? — all honour to the name ofYouatt 
for what it has accomplished ! But what can one man hope to 
achieve in such a field as that — what correctness of detail can be 
expected in the productions of one individual, who, single 
handed, investigates the structure, functions, and disease of five 
several animals, all of them markedly varying from each other. 
Until this outline is filled up — until the anatomy of every do- 
mesticated animal is thoroughly understood- — until the farmer 
can see ample reason to anticipate good results from the medical 
treatment of his stock — until, in short, he sees clearly that it is 
more economical to call in the aid of the veterinarian than the 
butcher, will cattle medicine occupy its present insignificant 
position. 
To the practitioners of the new school we alone look for real 
improvement. To expect men who have spent the best part of 
their lives in pursuing the beaten track, to forget their accu- 
mulated prejudices and begin anew, is absurd ; we do not ask 
it. The system must form a prominent part of veterinary 
education to ensure an adequate amount of knowledge; but 
difficulties of no common character are opposed to this. The 
absence of deceased cattle at the Veterinary College is a sub- 
ject of frequent regret : the Professor of the department has 
more than once publicly lamented the deficiency : while some 
disaffected spirits in the profession, who take an insane delight 
in animadverting on the faults of the institution, are invariably 
triumphant in their sarcasms on the state of the cattle de- 
partment. 
While we are keenly conscious of the unfortunate hiatus, 
we are slow to perceive how abuse and ridicule can afford a 
remedy. If the time and paper that has been spent in vilifying 
and condemning had been devoted to impartially inquiring into 
the cause, we are not certain that a very material change for 
the better had not been present now. 
The hospital of the Royal Agricultural College has been 
open for the last eighteen months: during that time the supply 
of horses has been fair; but we have authority for saying, that 
save the stock on the farm, but one cattle patient has been 
admitted, and that a surgical case. If those animals are not 
sent to a hospital in the centre of an agricultural district, with 
the advantages of proximity and a low scale of charges, it 
ceases to be remarkable that an institution so much more re- 
mote, with difficulties of transit and necessarily higher charges, 
should be deficient in such patients. But this is not all : we 
must bear in mind that a sick horse is a thoroughly useless 
animal to his owner; it becomes economical to remove him, 
