590 
A. LIAUTARD. 
And not only that—these newly elected professors are not 
even satisfied with these, allow me to say, usurped and false 
pretensions, but some go further ; they who graduated yester¬ 
day become specialists—a plain, single knowledge of general 
medicine or of a branch of medicine is not sufficient—this they 
may by an extra amount of study, of intellectual labor, of extra 
work have gained possession of ; but a specialty, a mastership? 
so to speak, which ought to require time, perhaps years, to 
obtain, he who graduated in the early spring and budded out 
then as a simple veterinarian, is found in the summer a bloomed 
specialist. 
With one exception among our American schools, I know 
of none where a kind of apprenticeship, say two short years 
only, is required before a professorship can be looked for. 
What is done in Europe ? 
In the French, German, Italian, Swiss, Belgian and Aus¬ 
trian schools, which are those from which I have obtained 
proper information—I say nothing of the English-speaking col¬ 
leges and I have not been able to learn anything on the sub¬ 
ject—in the continental schools the vacant chairs are obtained 
by competition. A stated time is announced and advertised 
through the various professional journals a long time before¬ 
hand, the requirements are presented in print, the length of 
the examination, written and oral, is mentioned, lectures are 
to be delivered by the candidates, etc., etc., and to the best 
man the prize is granted. 
There the value of the man is fairly tested ; he may be a 
recent graduate, he may be a practitioner in active work and 
already out of the school for some time, but unless he has 
passed satisfactorily before a proper board of examiners he 
does not receive the coveted nomination. 
We know well enough that there is a great difference 
between European and American institutions. The former, 
or at least those which we have taken for examples, are gov¬ 
ernmental schools—the latter are almost entirely all private— 
and the fact that the English schools are of the same nature 
may account for the fact that we believe the same state of af¬ 
fairs exists with them as does on the continent. 
