INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
639 
With reference to therapeutics, and their bearing on patho- 
logy, it is only necessary to observe that it is to the principles 
of treating disease that your attention has to be given, not 
to the mere exhibition of medicines. Therapeutic agents used 
without judgment often augment the very affection they are 
intended to relieve. Some of you, T fear, may have come here 
fresh from the country, and well stored, as you believe, with 
a long list of remedies for particular diseases. Throw these 
to the moles and the bats. Earnestly apply yourselves to the 
science of medicine, and then you will never be at a loss as 
to what to do, or what to give. If you desire to be men of 
science, veterinary surgeons in the strict meaning of the term, 
you must do this. If charlatans, men of mere routine, then 
retain your bundle of receipts, and take your place among 
that now nearly extinct class of illiterate farriers and cow- 
leeches. Enough of this. Let us hope that your presence 
here this day is an assurance of your desire to rise in the 
profession you have chosen, and also an earnest of your 
success. 
Th us far, gentlemen, have I gone, with a view of giving 
you an outline of veterinary science and its collateral branches, 
and it must long since have been evident to you that a 
division of labour is not only required, but that each of 
your teachers has enough to do in his particular department. 
Whether ee the right men are in the right place, ” is rather 
for you than me to say ; but this day I have leave and 
license to give free utterance to my sentiments ; and there- 
fore, uninfluenced by any other feelings save those of can- 
dour, and that honest friendship which should exist between 
those who have been so long associated together, I hesitate 
not to say that my colleagues one and all are not only 
specially fitted for the duties they have to perform, but that 
their time, talents, experience, nay health and strength, are 
all freely devoted to the cause of veterinary science and your 
success. On Professor Spooner, as heretofore, devolves the 
task of instructing you in the anatomy, physiology, and 
pathology of the horse, with veterinary jurisprudence and 
the principles of shoeing. On Professor Morton, to lead you 
through the fertile paths and mazes of chemistry, as well as 
along the somewhat rougher road of \eterinary materia 
medica. On Assistant-Professor Varnell, to conduct you 
through the misty ways and intricate windings of practical 
anatomy. While on myself will devolve the duty of giving 
you all the information I am capable of on cattle pathology. 
These, gentlemen, are the main divisions of the course of 
instruction you will receive, but there are others. Thus, 
