550 
THE VETERINARY SCHOOL 
ineffectual. Few patients were committed to him, and conse¬ 
quently little result appeared from his labours, and he was 
obliged to return to the practice of human medicine, which he 
exercised for six years with some success, “in spite,” as he feel¬ 
ingly says in his letter, “of the prejudices which existed against 
the veterinary art, which he was known to have studied—preju¬ 
dices equally injurious to his fortune, and to that public confi¬ 
dence, without which the physician is nothing, and which he 
would never have been able to surmount, had it not been for the 
unwearied exertions of his friend De Berger. 
In 1771, Messrs. De Berger and Abildgaard were directed to 
draw up the plan of a veterinary school to be established in Den¬ 
mark : in M. CEder, one of the most celebrated men of that 
time, the project likewise found a zealous advocate. Dis¬ 
pirited and disgusted by six years of disappointment and pri¬ 
vation, Abildgaard had now changed his views and purposes; 
and he refused to lend himself to that, in the promotion of which 
he would once have sacrificed his life : he had already suffered 
too much to put to hazard his future prospects. Judging from 
the past, he saw numerous difficulties surrounding the execution 
of the plan, and he did not conceal from , his patron the reasons 
which compelled him peremptorily to decline the offer. 
De Berger, however, was not to be repulsed: he represented 
to his friend the injury he would do himself if he refused to com¬ 
ply with the wishes of the minister; and he reminded him, that, 
although the result had not been what Bernstoff had anticipated 
or what Abildgaard had a right to expect, yet he had been sent 
abroad, at the expense of government, to learn the veterinary 
art—it had been the avowed intention of government to turn the 
knowledge so acquired to the advantage of his country, and there 
was a claim upon him from which he could not honourably retire : 
and to this De Berger added, that the business, being seriously 
taken up by the government, must necessarily succeed. Abild¬ 
gaard yielded, and presented the required memoir, in which he 
disguised not the disadvantages under which a veterinary school 
must then be established, the forgetfulness in himself of much 
that he once knew, and the total want of experience in all about 
him. The minister was now as much bent upon the plan as the 
venerable physician De Berger; and Abildgaard was ordered to 
enter into communication with the director of the royal stables, 
in order that the school might be immediately established. It 
would seem, however, as if fate had determined to persecute the 
unfortunate Abildgaard. The well-known revolution now took 
place in Denmark, and, with it, the subversion of all that the 
former ministry had planned. 
