HISTORY OF VETERINARY SCIENCE. 
23 
Lastly, the art of preserving and perfectionating the breed was, 
as concerned most of the species, destitute of any rules based upon 
experimentation raisonnte. Here, as in every other department of 
the management of domestic animals, traditional practices of more 
or less intelligence were the only guides; upon no part, as yet, had 
the lights of experimental science beamed. 
It was in the face of difficulties such vast ignorance set up that 
the founder of veterinary schools had to act in instituting courses 
of instruction. 
These difficulties, however, failed to arrest him; confident as he 
was, and had a right to be, in the prospects of the work he had in 
hand, and assured that a scientific method of experimentation 
would speedily multiply and on every side enlarge it. 
He made the basis of his instruction zootomy or the anatomy of 
animals in general; comprising osteology, myology, splanchnology, 
angciology, neurology, and adenology. 
This .principal department received, from the commencement, 
very great elucidation; and soon a museum with a rich anatomical 
collection received preparations made by the pupils, shewing the 
skill they had already acquired in the art of making anatomical 
preparations. 
A second course of instruction was devoted to the science of the 
exterior of domestic animals. 
This highly complex and extensive branch of instruction em¬ 
braced the study of external form, and the appreciation of the ap¬ 
titudes of animals for different purposes, according to their con¬ 
formation, their age, their sex, their breed, their origin. It treated 
also of the laws of hygiene, and of the higher departments of phy¬ 
siology, such as the laws of the coupling of animals of the same 
species as well as of different species. This constituted a vast 
frame-work, in which different subjects had been ranged according 
to their actual affinities, until such time as the progress of art had 
assigned to each sufficient development to enable it to admit of 
being separated and formed into a distinct branch of education. 
A fourth course was dedicated to botany, materia medica, and 
the compounding of medicine. 
A fifth course to clinical study. 
Chirurgery, bandaging, and the theory and practice of shoeing, 
constituted the two final courses. 
And, lastly, the practical study of disease in the different locali¬ 
ties, whither the pupils were sent on mission, formed a special sub¬ 
ject of study. 
Such constituted the first outline of study at the veterinary 
schools. 
[To be continued.] 
