316 
AUSTIN PETERS. 
WHY NOT BE A VETERINARY SURGEON.* 
By Austin Peters, D.Y.S., M.R.C.V.S. 
To the young man just completing his college course, or 
the youth about to leave school without going to college, 
the question, “What shall I do?” presents a most serious 
problem. “Am I best fitted fora mercantile career,” he asks 
himself, “ or do my tastes incline toward one of the learned 
professions ? ” 
Opportunities for rapid advancement in business are not 
relatively so numerous as they once were, while the number 
of applicants for positions is proportionately larger. In the 
professions the same conditions prevail. There are hosts of 
young lawyers struggling for a living, young physicians are 
equally abundant, there is a sufficient number of dfentists to 
supply the demand, and it is not every one who is adapted 
to success as a minister of the gospel. 
While it is true that “there is plenty of room at the top,” 
the top seems farther beyond reach than it used to be, and it 
is much more difficult to climb from one rung of the ladder 
to the next. 
Yet there is one profession, that of the veterinary surgeon, 
which, although it has become more prominent of late years, 
is still unfilled, especially in this country. The United States, 
with its vast agricultural and live-stock interests, offers a large 
field for such practitioners. 
Until recent years the popular idea, usually borne out by 
the facts, was that a “ horse-doctor ” belonged to a low order 
of beings. He was supposed to be an ignorant, disreputable 
person, one to be generally avoided unless his services were 
needed for a sick horse or cow, when he was called in as the 
custodian of certain traditional stable lore which ordinary in¬ 
dividuals were not supposed to possess. 
Still some of the old school of “ horse-doctors ” were 
thought well of. They were men who had not an oppor¬ 
tunity to go abroad to study veterinary science, and yet had 
* From the Youth's Companion , Boston, Mass. 
