THE NEW MEDICAL YEAR. 
583 
to be rectified. The lectures at the Veterinary College should 
commence at the same time that the metropolitan medical lec¬ 
tures begin ; an arrangement that would give the student not 
only every advantage of those lectures, but would enable him to 
complete his more arduous duties—his dissections and demon¬ 
strations—in the course of the winter season ; and fit him, by the 
month of May or June, to leave the confined atmosphere of the 
lecture and dissecting-room either for professional practice or re¬ 
laxation in the country. 
Advancing so rapidly and spreading so widely as every branch 
of knowledge and education is in this country, it behoves us to 
look narrowly “ at home,” and watch if our own house is kepf in 
the same order and state of improvement as those of our neigh¬ 
bours. Unless we keep pace with them in knowledge, we shall 
retrograde twofold—ay, twofold in every other respect. 
“ Scientia est potentia.” 
To us indeed it is power—veritable power ; the only front we 
can put on to look that man full in the face who denounces us 
all as a race of “ horse-doctors.” No matter, however, whether 
we be horse-doctors or pig-doctors, so that we possess that 
through which we can at any time hold most persuasive argu¬ 
ments with our “ superiors,” that w 7 e are not vastly beneath them 
in mental worth, however much higher w r e may palpably stand 
opposed to them in our professional liberalism, one to another. 
Let us cast away from us that bugbear that assails us under the 
imposing garb of respectability . Let us call persons, as well as 
things, by their right name; and look upon him only as truly 
respectable whose knowledge amounts to power, and whose 
moral worth is such as “ all men must approve of.” 
To enter, at the present day, on a residence in a country-town, 
and find the physician above the apothecary, the rector above 
his curate, and the magistrate and banker, perhaps, above them 
all, is so truly ridiculous and disgusting, that a man of sound 
sense and independence can only measure his happiness by the 
distance he can keep out of such incongruous society. We know 
a locality, not a hundred miles from London, where, on the occa¬ 
sion of a subscription ball being got up, the general practitioner 
(a most respectable surgeon) was refused a ticket of admission 
