EDITORIAL. 
291 
United States Veterinary Medical Association. —Twenty- 
five years ago, on the third Tuesday of September, 1863, a large 
body of gentlemen met in the rooms of what was then the great 
Uew York hotel, the Astor House, and organized the United 
States Veterinary Medical Association. They supplemented their 
good day’s work by meeting together to partake of such a sumpt¬ 
uous dinner as the Astor House was then and has continued to 
be famous for serving. 
On the 19th of September, 1888, the same association again 
met in the rooms of the Rossmore Hotel and spent a day similar, 
in respect to the work done, to many others of which the history 
has been recorded for some years past, the members once more 
holding a supplementary meeting around the table of feasting, 
and doing honor to a splendid collation. 
In 1863 all was activity, movement, discussion, anticipation 
and hope. Something like sixty members were present, and the 
dinner also was a lively event, it was such a grand result for the 
veterinarians of America which it commemorated, and such an 
epoch in their history. 
The meeting of 1888 was remarkable for its quietness, its 
somnolence—in fact, the torpid condition which seemed to pre¬ 
vail and to affect the forty members, or thereabouts, present, and 
from which nothing could rouse them. At this meeting but three 
members were present of the number of those whose names had 
been signed on the roll of 1863—so few of them remain after an 
interval of twenty-five years. Since the first date, however, large 
accessions have been made to the membership of the Association, 
and the roll at the present time contains nearly two hundred 
names. Yet but forty of these were present, and among this 
number only a little over half a dozen were residents of the city 
of New York, the remainder of the assemblage being made up by 
members of the Bureau of Animal Industry, together with veter¬ 
inarians from Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connec¬ 
ticut, Rhode Island, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Nebraska, Maine, 
New York State, South Carolina, etc. 
It is, however, a pleasure to record the fact that although the 
meeting was not such a gathering as ought to be expected from 
