ON VETERINARY MEDICAL EDUCATION. 405 
young man should be shunned by you as if the plague spot were 
on him; for the injury that he will do you, by leading you into 
little, but too frequently repeated acts of negligence and folly, 
will not fully develope itself until your course of study is fatally 
broken into, and the mischief has become irreparable. 
You ask my opinion of your College Veterinary Society. It 
may be most useful to you, but it may be easily and veiy danger¬ 
ously abused. 
When the debate or the questioning tends to impress more 
deeply on your mind the grand outline of anatomy and physiology, 
as founded on that portion of anatomy which you have honestly 
studied, you may derive considerable benefit from your attendance 
on the Society. I was present, not a great while ago, when the 
subject, or the portion of it devoted to that night, was purely 
anatomical, and I was much pleased to observe how well the 
proposer of the question stood the badgering he received, and the 
creditable manner in which he acquitted himself. 
When the business of the evening is a kind of preparatory 
grinding for your examination, you will derive considerable benefit: 
but when young men.who know nothing of anatomy and phy¬ 
siology, and consequently nothing of disease, whether of struc¬ 
ture or of function, confidently discuss the nature of maladies, and 
appeal to their practice and experience, few things can be more 
ridiculous—none more injurious. How many principles will be 
promulgated and defended which the surgeon of true information 
rejects with scorn? How many notions are embibed,founded on 
careless observation, and hearsay evidence, and exaggerated nar¬ 
ration, which the poor student will afterwards have to unlearn ? 
Until you are perfectly acquainted with anatomy and physio¬ 
logy, diseases had mueh better be let alone. You will not be 
able to separate the chaff from the grain. 
From the discussions of enlightened and experienced men good 
may be derived, but evil must necessarily result from the effusions 
of inexperience and presumption. 
If, therefore, you should belong to this institution, or any other 
(and, on the whole, and during the latter period of your time, I 
should certainly advise it), enter into no discussion for which 
your previous studies have not prepared you; and regard with 
indifference, or even with suspicion, every statement the value of 
. which serious and diligent enquiry has not enabled you to ap¬ 
preciate. 
My epistle, however, is again getting tiresome; and I must 
.postpone, until some future opportunity, a few remarks which 
yet remain. 
Philo-Vet. 
