MR. YOUATT’S INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 607 
marc knows little, is often as rapid in its progress. Many thou¬ 
sands of cattle, and some hundreds of thousands of sheep, die , 
annually of these diseases. Then the rot, as fatal to the sheep 
as the plague to the human being—what school on this side the 
Tweed teaches the nature or the treatment of it? What vete¬ 
rinary surgeon has written on it ? More than two millions of 
sheep died of the rot in the last w inter. The father of one of my 
pupils lost five hundred. Have I any specific to propose for the 
cure of these maladies? I wish I had. At least, how ever, I may 
be enabled to give the pupil some glimpse of their nature; I may 
set him a thinking and experimenting; and I may possibly give 
him some hints not altogether unimportant as to the preventive, 
and even the curative treatment of these pests. 
At the veterinary schools in every other part of Europe the 
pupil is qualified for the proper treatment of all his patients. 
Common sense would demand that it should be so. North of 
the Tweed, Mr. Dick has established a school at Edinburgh, 
under the patronage of the Highland Society of Scotland, in 
which the diseases of all domestic animals are ably treated of. 
It is the same at the University at Glasgow, where the veterinary 
lecturer is permitted to occupy a Professor’s chair. If the go¬ 
vernors choose that the College at St. Pancras shall be a school 
merely for horse knowledge, and the subscribers will send there 
nothing but horses, the governors and subscribers may make it 
what they please, and 1 do not know who has a right to com¬ 
plain, unless the College attempts to delude the public or the 
pupil by promising that which it does not and cannot perform. It 
must cease, how ever, to be fully considered as a national institu¬ 
tion ; for the agricultural interests of the country imperiously re¬ 
quire that a school should be established which will condescend to 
consider the maladies of cattle and of sheep; and which will 
attempt to arrest the too frequent ravages of disease among these 
animals. The time cannot be far distant when either government 
will interfere, or agriculturists generally will awake to a sense 
of their most important interests, or some spirited individuals will 
establish a school, not standing disgracefully alone amidst the 
veterinary establishments of Europe, but identifying itself with the 
agricultural interests of the kingdom, and protecting the most 
valuable part of agricultural property. 
My cards promise some outline of the Veterinary Materia Mediea. 
This will include the natural and chemical history, and medicnal 
properties, of the drugs used in veterinary practice, with- their 
various effects on different animals, and the proper dose for each; 
and also a history of the adulterations to which, in the present 
disgraceful state of the drug trade/they are liable, and the 
