COLLEGE AFFAIRS. 
687 
content with the way in which their work is done at the College, let them be 
so ; we have no need to interfere. It will be time enough for us to give our 
opinion on that subject when our opinion is demanded. 
We are more at liberty to speak of the College as a school of instruction. 
The manner in which this part of its duty is performed concerns, very inti- 
mately, both the public and the profession, and we may surely feel and express 
an interest in both without any impropriety. 
Veterinary practitioners of some experience must be the best, indeed the 
only fit judges of what is right and what is wrong in a course of veterinary 
instruction ; and their advice and suggestions ought purposely to be sought 
rather than rejected or neglected. This, then, is one of my wishes — that 
some contrivance may be invented and adopted for obtaining from veterinary 
surgeons their consideration and opinion of matters relating to veterinary 
instruction. On a subject so important to humanity and to the public good, 
the directors ought either to be fully qualified for the office they fill, or they 
should seek the assistance of others who are better qualified. To dispense 
with both qualification and assistance where the interests of others are so 
much concerned, is certainly to act very unfairly or very heedlessly. 
To veterinarians — the only judges — the College has been long and noto- 
riously deficient as a school of instruction. By some late arrangements, I 
believe, it is now intended that the pupil shall be taught the anatomy and 
pathology of all domestic animals. This is a very considerable reform, and 
it is much to be desired that efficient means, — teachers and patients, — be ob- 
tained for carrying it into execution. 
Until now the instruction has been confined altogether to the anatomy and 
pathology of the horse. The College has gone no further ; but even in regard 
to this animal the instruction has been very defective. Every experienced 
veterinarian will, I think, agree with me on this point. The pupils leave Col- 
lege without having seen a single case of many diseases which are quite com- 
mon both in town and country practice. If the young practitioner has pre- 
viously or subsequently to his College residence been apprentice or assistant 
to an experienced veterinarian he has little to regret. But if he has learned 
nothing save what he has seen at College, he is soon sensible that he has not 
half learned his business, even in regard to the horse onty. Patient after 
patient comes to him with diseases which he has never seen, and which he can 
neither name or treat. After many blunders and much serious vexation, he 
learns by degrees all that he should have learned at College ; and if he suc- 
ceeds in business, he very often has to thank chance and favourable circum- 
stances more than skill. But very often he fails to establish a business, not 
so much for want of employment, as for want of skill. 
The short residence of pupils at College is one cause of their incapacity. 
Those who have not been either an apprentice or assistant ought to attend 
three or four years : a good veterinarian can hardly be made in a shorter period 
Constituted, however, as the College is at present, it cannot give the pupil 
a good education. Anatomy may, indeed, be taught and learned as well as 
need be ; but not so with pathology. The terms upon which patients are ad- 
mitted exclude a great many cases of disease. The subscribers are nearly 
all men of wealth. Their horses never, or very rarely, have the diseases 
which are common to those of very slow and very fast work. Coaching, cart, 
all horses subject to harder work, and grosser negligence and greater ignorance 
than the rich man’s horses have ever met with, are liable to diseases which 
the College student never sees, however long his residence. 
To remedy this, some effort should be made to enlarge the College practice. 
The student should have an opportunity of seeing disease as it exists in the 
horse and the cow of the poor man. This, I think, could be easily managed at 
