652 
INmODUCTORY LECTURE. 
nay more, which in a great measure make them the courted 
companions and confidential advisers of all classes of persons, 
from tlie monarch to the beggar. Formerly, the barber or 
the herbalist was called upon to cure the ills that human 
flesh is heir to, just as at no very distant period the farrier 
or the cow-leech were the only persons to whom one could 
entrust the medical treatment of the lower animals. When 
we reflect that we may date the rise of the parent profession 
of human medicine from the time its practice began to be 
carried on by men who had alread}^ received a superior pre¬ 
liminary education—that its origin was as ignoble as, and its 
objects, although higher, still similar to, those of veterinary 
medicine—it certainly appears to me fair to predict that vete¬ 
rinary surgery will take much higher rank than it now does 
so soon as it is knowm that it is adopted as a profession by 
men of liberal education onl^. 
Of late years, persons desirous of obtaining commissions 
in the army, as combatant officers, have been compelled to 
pass an examination in the elements of those subjects of 
general education with which every gentleman is supposed 
to be acquainted. Now you, gentlemen, so soon as you 
shall have obtained the diploma of the London Board of 
Examiners, will be entitled to compete for and hold com¬ 
missions as veterinary surgeons in Her Majesty^s cavalry. 
Certainly, then, those of you whose ambition lies in this 
direction should consider it a duty to the officers with whom 
you will associate, to the service you will join, and to the 
profession to which you will belong, to be as well educated 
as the mass of the other officers in the army are. 
It may not be thought, I hope, quite out of place here to 
mention, that in an American paper called ^ Wilkes’ Spirit 
of the Times,’ it is stated that both Federal and State 
authorities have awoke to the stringent necessity of appoint¬ 
ing a thoroughly educated and competent veterinary sur¬ 
geon to each cavalry regiment. * * * * 
this plan been adopted at the commencement of the war, 
the lives, of thousands of valuable animals would have been 
saved, and hundreds of thousands of dollars spared.” In 
the paragraph concluding the article from which I have 
just quoted, reference is made to the appointment of .Mr. 
Thomas K. Quickfall, as veterinary surgeon of the Second 
New Jersey Cavalry.” This gentleman was a pupil of this 
College, and is a member of the Royal College of Veterinary 
Surgeons. 
Such an acknowledgment, by a country like America, of 
the value of the London diploma, and of the services which 
