HISTORY OF VETERINARY SCIENCE. 105 
It is natural enough for a man to feel a repugnance at receiving 
medical aid from the same hands that administers it to beasts. 
Consequently, Bertin’s project turned out a failure. 
Another scheme of this minister would have proved more suc¬ 
cessful had it been put into execution. 
He had annexed to the Alfort School from its foundation “ a 
menagerie of such foreign domestic animals as promised hope of 
fecundation in France, as well as of such wild animals as might 
afford prospects of becoming tame, or of forming alliances with 
domestic animals of their own species, and which, improved 
through either of these means, might turn out of real advantage in 
the general economy. With this view were imported from Eng¬ 
land a considerable number of animals, both fowl and quadruped; 
Spanish sheep were procured with fine wool, and male and female 
goats from Angora; and from the king had been obtained lamas 
and the vigou, out of the menagerie of Versailles.”— Extracts from 
the reports of the day. 
Here was the germ of a good idea, which on some future day 
would have been productive of excellent results, had it been fol¬ 
lowed up. 
On the retirement of Bertin, however, economy becoming the 
order of the day, government deprived the school of the means of 
cultivating this vast and precious field of physiological experimen¬ 
tation and practical teaching. And the same happened to a depot 
of stallions which had been withdrawn from the royal stud for the 
purpose of being made subservient to the instruction of the pupils. 
So that from its very origin, very many circumstances combined 
to render abortive the plans of Bourgelat, so well understood by 
the minister who organized it, and to whom he had communicated, 
for adoption, his entire scheme. 
Project of Calonne (Minister of Finance) for the Organization of 
Veterinary Schools. 
A brilliant effort to organise a system of veterinary education 
according to a plan truly philosophic and comprehensive was made 
in 1783, under the administration of the enterprising and reform¬ 
ing minister Calonne; who, in order the better to accomplish this 
end, availed himself of the suggestions of Vicq-d’Azyr, Daubenton, 
and Broussonet. 
Three fresh professorships were created at Alfort; one of com¬ 
parative anatomy , a second of general physiology , and a third of 
rural economy. 
In instituting these new chairs this minister’s plans “ were vast 
in the highest degree,” according to the report of the time. They 
had for their object the reunion in each of the new professorships 
