634 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
this, but time forbids it being now little more than glanced 
at. 
To proceed. The next thing to which I direct your notice 
as a means of obtaining knowledge, is the Veterinary Medical 
Association. At its weekly meetings, papers are read and 
discussed, morbid specimens exhibited, and the treatment of 
diseases criticised. As the Society is based on the mutual 
instruction system, so, when its debates are rightly conducted, 
it cannot fail of being everything its founders desired it should 
be for your improvement. It has been said that “ reading 
makes a full man, writing a correct man, and speaking a 
ready man and as in this Society all these essentials are 
brought into active exercise, so it must ever hold an impor¬ 
tant place among the auxiliaries to your studies. You will 
do well, therefore, to become members of the Society, and 
by it contribute your portion to the general fund of veteri¬ 
nary knowledge. Connected with the Society is a most 
valuable library, of both old and modern authors. These 
works, subject to certain regulations, are circulated among 
the members, affording them every facility of storing their 
minds with the general literature of medical science. 
Mention may here be made of some of the books which you 
should consult. Books, however, as has been rightly observed 
by Dr. Gull, are but secondary aids to knowledge. “They 
can be read to advantage only after observation, or as helps 
to it; to trust to them alone, is to spoil the faculty of obser¬ 
vation ; for we do violence to our intellectual nature, when 
we take that on faith which should be admitted only on 
demonstration. Knowledge so acquired, however full and 
sound and beautiful it may seem, is but as the child’s bubble, 
and will collapse on the least contact with the realities of 
practice. 
Percival’s c Anatomy of the Horse 5 is the text-book 
of the dissecting-room. It only treats, however, of de¬ 
scriptive anatomy, and even in some of its details may be 
found to lack sufficient explicitness for the student of the 
present day; still, it is to be preferred to any other. For 
general or structural anatomy Guam and Sharpey’s ‘ Ele¬ 
ments 5 holds a deservedly high position, and should be care¬ 
fully studied by you on the several tissues and composition 
of the body. Todd and Bowman’s 4 Physiological Anatomy’ 
is a work of the same class, and of the highest order. The 
books exclusively devoted to physiology are now so numerous 
and meritorious, that it is indeed difficult to make a selec¬ 
tion ; but in this institution we have been chiefly in the habit 
of referring to Carpenter’s 4 Manual,’ and also to his more 
