CENTRAL VETERINARY MEDICAL SOCIETY. 
be thrown upon matters which are now T obscure. Hearty co¬ 
operation, and an unflinching desire to achieve success, must have 
their due reward. 
In such a profession as ours, which is yet in its infancy in this 
country, the amount of work to be accomplished is almost suffi¬ 
cient to daunt the stoutest heart, contending, as it must do, with 
many difficulties that appear to be all but insurmountable, and 
labouring to obtain advancement under every discouragement. 
The fact is, veterinary science, for reasons which need not be 
alluded to here, is not understood in Britain, and is but little 
valued; veterinary surgeons are only too often, in some respects, 
looked upon as but little, if at all, removed from the illite¬ 
rate farrier or cow-leech, and their sphere of utility is gene¬ 
rally supposed to be limited to administering a drench to a 
cow, a dose of physic to a horse, or some such trifling opera¬ 
tions as castration, or firing the limb of a broken-down animal; 
and not unfrequently they are confounded with horse-copers, 
general jobbers, frequenters of race courses, and the associates 
of betting men and bookmakers on racing events; in fact, any¬ 
thing but educated scientific men, who respect themselves and their 
profession. 
This, gentlemen, is a most unjust light to view us in; and if 
our profession has perhaps furnished more than a moderate pro¬ 
portion of men who have disgraced it, and retarded its advance, 
yet surely the science of comparative pathology is one deserving 
of public attention and encouragement, and its hard-working re¬ 
spectable students, as a body, ought to be exempted from the 
disgrace which should only be awarded to individuals. 
If anything more than another could show how very little legis¬ 
lators, and the public generally, understand the capabilities of 
veterinary science to confer signal benefit upon the country, it is 
in the manner in which contagious diseases have been allowed to 
revel almost at will over the land for a number of years, causing 
an amount of destruction that is truly appalling. Nothing could 
be more deplorable than the reckless manner in which maladies, 
readily amenable to sanitary police measures, are allowed to 
spread, and to inflict heavy loss and serious inconvenience, merely 
because the country appears to ignore veterinary science, or is too 
apathetic to insist upon proper sanitary laws being introduced. 
The present condition of affairs, and the absence of any efficient 
veterinary organization for the suppression of contagious maladies 
among the valuable animals of this country, reflects the greatest 
disgrace upon us as a nation. Our system of inspection is a com¬ 
plete farce, and a delusion. The public do not seem to know that 
the true aim of veterinary science is the prevention of disease, and 
that a scientific organization, like that of enlightened continental 
XLV. 5 
