OBITUARY. 
443 
OBITUARY. 
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John Wesley Gadsden, M.R.C.V.S. —On \Ye 3 aesday, A,ugt ’ 
12th, at his home, 2109 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa., the, well- 
known veterinarian whose name heads this article, diedpatAhe 
age of 64. In this simple announcement the veterinary profes¬ 
sion has sustained a serious blow, for no man was a more con¬ 
scientious laborer for the advancement of that science, both by 
example and by precept, than he who was known to his breth¬ 
ren throughout the length and breadth of the land. His was a 
familiar face wherever an event was transpiring that was con¬ 
nected with veterinary progress, and he will be missed more on 
account of the silent voice than of the absent face. 
Dr. Gadsden was born in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, 
England, October n, 1832, his father being a farmer, who in¬ 
tended that his son should follow the same pursuit, and at the 
age of 17 he was apprenticed to a scientific farmer, with whom 
he remained two years, "but disliking that pursuit he left and 
went to Eondon, where he commenced the study of veterinary 
medicine, acquiring a practical knowledge by serving under sev¬ 
eral practitioners, and on January 1, 1856, entered the Royal 
College of Veterinary Surgeons, from which he graduated April 
3°, 1858. 
He was first engaged as assistant by Win. T. Stanley, who 
had a large practice in Leamington, Warwickshire, with whom 
he remained one year, when he purchased a practice for himself 
at Bracknell, in Berkshire. He remained there until the fall of 
1867, acquiring an extensive practice, and also serving by ap¬ 
pointment of the English government as veterinary inspector. 
He then came to the United States, and located in Philadel¬ 
phia, in January, 1868. Here he devoted himself to his profes¬ 
sion, and soon built up a large practice among her best known 
citizens. He became later identified with the Bureau of Ani¬ 
mal Industry in the stamping out of contagious pleuro-pneu- 
monia, being one of its corps of inspectors sent to Chicago when 
it became decided to check its westward progress, and his valu¬ 
able experience and ripe judgment were of much assistance to 
the authorities in those momentous times, for failure at that 
point, where the disease was alarmingly established among the 
distillery-fed milch cows of that city, would have destroyed the 
design of the government to stamp the disease from the coun¬ 
try. The inspectors worked under many disadvantages, as their 
