HISTORY OF VETERINARY SCIENCE. 
169 
Practical Means of Instruction and Demonstration. 
1. Experimentation on living animals for the study and demon¬ 
stration of the functions of organs*. 
2. Demonstration of the forms of animals in specimens of the 
different species. 
3. Demonstrations by anatomical preparations and plates, of the 
different species of parasitic animals. 
Personnel. 
One professor, assisted in the repetition of his courses by the chef 
de service of another chair. 
Observations .—The teaching of physiology in the veterinary 
schools has never been conducted with that importance which so 
principal a branch of science deserved. Consigned, as though it 
were a supplementary duty, to the professor of anatomy, it became 
comprised in from twelve to fifteen lectures, and these were coun¬ 
ter-drawn from correspondent lectures on human physiology, and 
consequently, possessed the character neither of originality nor 
truth. To which we may add, so far as veterinary physiology is 
concerned, that the entire science almost has yet to be formed. 
Scanty have been the labours that have been bestowed upon it, 
for want of time, for want of means, and for want of persons spe¬ 
cially engaged in it. 
The committee have deemed it important to fill up a hiatus so 
considerable by proposing the institution of a special chair of 
physiology, to which might be attached sufficient means of experi¬ 
mentation and demonstration. 
And it has completed the duties of this professorship by the ad¬ 
dition of the lectures of the exterior of domestic animals, which, in 
truth, constitutes no more than a product of physiology; also it has 
endeavoured to remedy a main defect in this department of study 
by specifying that the demonstration of the external forms of ani¬ 
mals should be made on the different types of the leading breeds 
brought under the notice of the pupil: the only way in which the 
lectures can be rendered of real value to him. 
Lastly, for a true veterinary education there needed a course of 
zoology. This the committee have imposed upon the professor of 
physiology, in limiting it to the generalities of the science, to the 
pointing out of the zoologic characters of the different domestic 
animals, and to the study in detail of parasitic animals, which, ac¬ 
cording to the old method of teaching, became the objects of the 
* We should be sorry to see such cruelty practised iu our own schools 
even in the cause of science.— Ed. Vet. 
