724 
E. L. QUITMAN. 
THE VETERINARY PROFESSION AND ITS FUTURE. 
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE TO THE NINETEENTH ANNUAL SES¬ 
SION OF THE CHICAGO VETERINARY COLLEGE, OCTOBER 2 , 
1901. 
By E. L. Quitman, M.D.C., of the Faculty. 
Gentlemen: 
It is with much pleasure that I welcome you to the Chicago 
Veterinary College at its nineteeeth opening exercises. I am 
pleased to see that so many of you have the courage and enter¬ 
prise to attempt to enter one of the highest and noblest profes¬ 
sions—a profession which has been dragged from the depths of 
quackery and ignorance and placed on a level with that of our 
sister profession, human medicine. Our domesticated animals 
are subject to nearly, if not all, the diseases of the human being, 
and require the same skill in diagnosis and treatment as does 
man himself. 
The term veterinary is derived from the Latin, Vetenna , 
beasts of burden. This term is now used in such a broad sense 
that veterinary medicine and surgery embrace the medical and 
surgical management of all the domestic animals. 
Veterinary science comprises a knowledge of the conforma¬ 
tion and structure of all the domesticated animals, their physi¬ 
ology and racial and individual characteristics, their humane 
management in health and disease, their utilization, their pro¬ 
tection from, and medical and surgical treatment in, the diseases 
and injuries to which they are exposed ; their amelioration and 
improvement, their relations to the human family with regard 
to communicable diseases, and the supply of food and their pro¬ 
ducts for human consumption. 
There is evidence that the Egyptians practiced veterinary 
medicine and surgery in very remote times, but only from the 
Grecians do we obtain any very definite information as to the 
state of veterinary and human medicine in ancient times. The 
writings of Hippocrates, the father of medicine (450 to 356 b. C.), 
afford evidences of excellent investigations in comparative path- 
