638 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
Turning to the living animal: the field of application here 
is clinical practice. The daily experience of disease and 
treatment which you will have the opportunity of acquiring 
within these walls, if you take advantage of it, will afford you 
a fund of information. All your other knowledge is valuable in 
proportion as it contributes to practice, but it must be consi¬ 
dered as subordinate to it. Theory alone may admit you into 
the society of the learned and the rich, but it can never support 
you as veterinary surgeons, for without practical tact and 
skill you will be ridden over, rough-shod, by the charlatan and 
the groom. Disease seen with your own eyes is the book of 
books for you all, in which, of course, I include treatment, 
and its observed effects. I therefore conjure you, most ear¬ 
nestly, to lose no opportunity of observing every case which 
comes into the College. Investigate it for yourselves ; verify 
the diagnosis ; follow and make notes of the treatment. Keep 
close along the limits and landmarks of clinical practice, and 
of all the other departments which will be brought before you 
here ; but constantly respect this as the chief in importance, 
and as indeed your very calling. 
The agents you will see applied in the treatment of disease 
are the subjects of two sciences—chemistry and materia 
medica. I mean the drugs ; for we have other hygienic agents 
of great importance besides drugs. Chemistry is a science in 
itself, infinite in detail, marvellous in definiteness, providing 
substance upon substance for every conceivable use, medical, 
domestic, artistic, scientific, manufacturing. The study of it 
is, as it were, the opening of a new world reaching from pole 
to pole of nature, and with a future before it inconceivable 
in the probable greatness of its effects upon civilization. 
Materia medica resides, as it were, within it, and partakes in 
some measure of its grandeur. 
These subjects will be brought before you in their general 
bearing, and also in their application to veterinary practice; 
and you will bear in mind that the more you know of them, 
the more easily your mind ranges over the multitudinous sub¬ 
stances of nature; knowing their properties and affinities, 
the greater are your resources, and the more abundant the 
powers of your skill. Nor must it be forgotten that all 
scientific power comes out of the growth and expansion of 
the mind itself, and that you cannot enter upon the considera¬ 
tion and knowledge of this science without improving your 
mental condition bv the mere fact of contact with it. 
I may not quit this subject without alluding to one who has 
so long and so worthily filled the chair of Chemistry and Materia 
Medica in this institution; whose valuable life has for many 
