INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF F. W. SKAIFE. 
189 
merely to gratify the whim of some owner who wishes to shirk 
his responsibility. Every man should either not keep a dog at 
all, or keep the animal as a dog. A spayed or castrated dog can¬ 
not win a prize on the bench.” 
When we consider the difference in the practice of veterinary 
medicine of to-day, and that of the past decade, we have, I 
think, advanced as rapidly as the medical profession did. It 
was not so long ago that cupping and bleeding were resorted to 
as the sheet-anchor of nearly all inflammatory diseases. The 
barber’s pole is significant of this. We will have to go steadily 
tip the ladder, step by step, until we assume a position equal to 
theirs. Our fathers used a bullet with a blunderbuss. We to¬ 
day have a bullet for the magazine rifle. Both the weapon and 
the projectile are altered. 
Opium is a mainstay in medicine, but we also use its alkaloids 
with the subcutaneous syringe. Then again, whilst aloes has 
still the same therapeutic action, some have ceased to use it for 
many cases where it was formerly considered all important. 
The setoning and blistering which was practiced in the treat¬ 
ment of pleuritis and pneumonia, is a thing of the past, and 
many other instances may be quoted in which the method of 
using the drugs is changed. 
It has been by the blending of the teachings of science and 
of experience, but to-day we can point to a lower percentage of 
deaths in many diseases, and to the almost disappearance of 
some. 
Without doubt, clinical study must form a large part of the 
training of the surgeon, human and veterinary, and especially so 
is this the case with the latter, for he has few of those aids to 
diagnosis which the surgeon of the human patient can apply. 
At the present time we are comparatively in a state of 
quiescence ; at least, there are no steps agitating onr minds to any 
great extent, unless it is competition in its various forms, which 
seems yearly on the increase. I do not think legitimate compe¬ 
tition is objectionable. It has a tendency to stimulate us and pre¬ 
vent lethargy. I speak more especially against misrepresentation 
