368 , VETERINARY EXAMINING COMMITTEE. 
* 
professors, shall be permitted to do so; and that we and the public 
may have assurance that justice is done to the pupil, and, more 
particularly, that justice is done to the respectability of our art. 
, At Berlin, the professors are sufficiently numerous. There are 
three principal and three assistant teachers. The office of cen¬ 
sorship is, however, guarded by a very peculiar provision. Cer¬ 
tain medico-veterinarians, persons who have been educated and 
obtained diplomas as human and veterinary surgeons, assist at 
the examination of the students, and their meetings are at specific 
times, and public. 
The natural consequence of these equitable and excellent ar¬ 
rangements is, that the veterinary surgeon abroad, although not 
bearing the rank of a commissioned officer, when in the army, 
is generally respected on account of his education and profession, 
and is employed to the exclusion of the empiric and the groom. 
He ranks far higher in the public estimation than does his insular 
brother, although, by some strange necromantic process, we are 
enabled in four, or five, or six short months, so to metamorphose 
the mercer, the tailor, and the cobbler, that his previous habits 
shall all be changed, his mind most gloriously illuminated, and 
he be rendered fully qualified to practise the veterinary art in 
^^all its branches.’’ 
This leads us to another argument. Things have gone on 
very well hitherto, but these veterinarians will overturn all our 
fixed plans of proceeding, and introduce among us confusion 
“ and discord.” 
Who has told these gentlemen that things are going on veiy 
well at present? Have they been grossly deceived, or do they 
deceive themselves? We will tell them that there is not a* 
veterinary surgeon, of any respectability or eminence, who does 
hot bitterly lament the degraded state of his profession. Nearly 
forty years have elapsed, and, except in the cavaliy, he stands 
little higher in the public regard than he previously did. In 
what racing stable is he not a mere cipher, compared with 
the training groom? In what hunting establishment is he suf¬ 
fered to have a voice, if it be opposed to that of the huntsman, 
the groom, or the owner? In how few instances does the title of 
veterinary surgeon obtain admission to the presence of the no- 
