446 MR, youatt’s introductory lecture 
rally succeed ? Will the diploma of a veterinary surgeon bring 
him practice ? Will the farmer leave the smith, or the gentleman 
cease to confide in the skill of his groom? Let those, too nu* 
merous, whose sanguine hopes have been disappointed, answer 
the question ! Let those who, having left the college, have sunk 
the greater part of their little patrimony, and then abandoned 
their profession, or mingled with it something incompatible or 
degrading, answer the question. I adopt the language of a re¬ 
cent veterinary periodical: In what racing stable is not the 
^Weterinary surgeon, if he be even admitted there, a mere 
cipher, compared with the training groom ? In what sporting 
establishment is he suffered to have a voice, if it be opposed to 
that of the huntsman, the groom, or the amateur ? In how few 
instances does the title of veterinary surgeon obtain admission 
to the presence of the nobleman or the gentleman, unless it be 
the pleasure, or answer the purpose of the groom or the coach- 
man that he should be admitted? What town is there in which 
the uneducated farrier, or the practitioner without a diploma, 
does not rival, and frequently beat, the graduated veterinarian?’^ 
There must be some cause for this. Neither in the natural nor 
the moral world is there any effect without its cause. The young 
veterinarian has not the confidence of the country; and he has it 
not, because he has been too frequently weighed in the balance 
and found wanting. What is the cause of his deficiency? One 
cause is the strangely limited time appropriated to the instruction 
of the veterinary pupil. The candidate for the diploma of a 
human surgeon must have served a certain apprenticeship or pu¬ 
pillage to a medical man. He must have been long accustomed to 
medical subjects and medical inquiries; he must have fonned 
habits of medical conversation and medical thought. He is, after 
that, compelled to pass two winters in the metropolis, to build 
some superstructure of science on the foundation which had been 
thus laid. 
Far different is it with many veterinary students. They come 
from the shop-board, or the mechanic’s desk. They bring not with 
them this all-important previous preparation. They enter at the 
college; they pay the usual fee, and they attend on the lectures 
of the professor. He addresses them—he must do so—in a lan¬ 
guage strange and unintelligible. They understand not, at first, 
the meaning of some of the most common terms which he uses. 
They have no data deeply impressed on their minds as land¬ 
marks, by which they are to steer their course through the too 
often bewildering paths of medical science. They listen with 
mingled pleasure and wonder. An indistinct and often erroneous 
impression is made on their minds. Forgetfulness rapidly sue- 
