64 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
Believe a woman or an epitaph, 
Or any other thing that’s false before 
You trust in Critics, who themselves are sore.” 
Now, for the other part of their criticism, which to me is of 
infinitely more importance. The question seems to be, was I, 
being President of the American Veterinary Medical Associa¬ 
tion, justified in expressing disapproval of an unwarranted, and 
as I believed unjust, criticism of one of the American Veterinary 
Medical Association clinics ? I agree with Doctors Merillat 
that “ whether this clinic merited the drastic criticism it re¬ 
ceived has no bearing on the case’’'; but may I not ask, had that 
clinic any bearing on the elucidation of Dr. Young’s method of 
operating? Was it necessary to properly describe the operation 
under consideration for the editors to permit Dr. Young to pub¬ 
licly insult the profession, severely criticise a brother operator, 
and reflect discredit, indirectly at least, on the American Veter¬ 
inary Medical Association ? There has been much covert criti¬ 
cism of these clinics, chiefly by those who refuse to give the 
profession the benefit of their overpowering genius, but this one 
was open, so insulting, and uncalled for, and so far out of place, 
in such a truly able series of articles as Doctors Merillat are 
giving us in their Department of Surgery, that I have no apology 
to offer either Doctors Merillat or Dr. Young for my comment 
upon it. Doctors Merillat disclaim responsibility for Dr. Young’s 
coarse insult to those who operated at the Omaha Clinic, but 
by no rules of common sense or journalism can the editors of a 
department like theirs in the Review be acquitted of responsi¬ 
bility for u matters of fact ” appearing under their names, and 
the fact that Doctors Merillat replied to my comment is proof 
that they did not consider themselves guiltless. 
I did not wish to criticise Dr. Young’s u Knglish,” but a 
man who, in order to describe an operation, finds it necessary to 
criticise others, certainly displays neither skill nor good judg¬ 
ment, and I was, therefore, justified in my conclusion that others 
might be able to perform the operation as successfully as Dr. 
Young, even though they had neither his egotism nor his 
u properly appointed operating room.” 
In conclusion, permit me to again assure Doctors Merillat 
that my sole purpose in commenting upon Dr. Young’s peculiar 
exhibition of bad taste was to resent their insult to the Omaha 
operator and the American Veterinary Medical Association in 
permitting Dr. Young’s irrelevant tirade to appear under the 
sanction of their names ; and in all that I have written, in my 
