259 
ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE VETERINARY 
PROFESSION, IN REPLY TO V. S. 
By W. J. G. 
To the Editors of “ The Veterinarian 
Gentlemen, 
On looking at the index of your last number but one, I per¬ 
ceived “ A Reply to W. J. G.” announced, to which I certainly 
turned with some avidity. But I must confess my disappoint¬ 
ment after perusing it; for instead of its being any thing like 
an answer to the grievous circumstances that I had stated in a 
previous number of The Veterinarian, it is rather a kind of 
tacit but unwilling acknowledgment of the truth of most of 
them; and, evidently, from the pen of an unfortunate brother 
chip, who would prefer to hide from the world our degradation, 
rather than expose it in its true light. 
When you commenced the publication of The Veterinarian, 
I am ready to admit that, at that period, there did exist a great 
spirit of party feeling and rancour, which tended to do our cause 
more harm than good : you very justly pointed out to us the 
mischief that was likely to accrue were it encouraged, and you 
very properly withheld many communications that w'ould have 
fanned a flame much better extinguished j but that day is 
gone by, and although your pages have temperately put forth 
the absurd incongruities that are now suffered to exist, to our 
great prejudice, still we are not (I am sorry to publish it) one 
iota nearer that climax to which every real devotee to his pro¬ 
fession must ardently look forward than we were years ago. 
Could your correspondent have communicated to us, that the 
Professor was strenuously employed in endeavouring to introduce 
some members of the veterinary profession into the examining 
committee, and which committee can never be efficient or 
deserve the name of a veterinary board of examination until 
veterinary surgeons form part of it, or preside over it; could he 
have informed us, that a competent lecturer of chemistry had 
been appointed to teach that science at the College, instead of 
allowing pupils who have paid their twenty guineas fee of admis¬ 
sion to run promiscuously over the town, like so many charity boys, 
with gratuitous tickets to lectures delivered three miles from 
the institution; could he have told us, that the materia medica 
was to be taught, and that the infamous formula of college ig¬ 
norance, so notorious for its unchemical and absurd combina- 
ons, had been revised and made intelligible, instead of being 
permitted to remain a disgrace to the institution and the profession; 
could he have said, with justice, that, instead of grooms and igno- 
