602 MEDICAL EXAMINERS AT VETERINARY BOARDS. 
in sucli subjects as anatomy and physiology, medical men 
should be appointed as examiners. I might even go further, 
and designate it as a burlesque to appoint human surgeons and 
anatomists to examine students on the anatomy and physio¬ 
logy of the domesticated animals: subjects which these men 
have not studied, and the practical importance of which, with 
regard to their bearings in veterinary science, they cannot 
appreciate. Who would ever think of asking the opinion of 
one of these examiners in an obscure case of lameness, a 
case of disordered digestion in the cow, or the other number¬ 
less cases in which a knowledge of veterinary anatomy and 
physiology is all important ? 
Is not the daily round of the veterinary surgeon’s ex¬ 
perience largely mixed up with his knowledge of these 
sciences ? Does not his success in practice mainly depend 
upon his keeping up the elementary notions of them he 
acquired at College; adding to them, and perfecting them 
by the experience he acquires day by day ? To my mind— 
and I daresay I shall he borne out in this by those who have 
observed like myself—a good veterinary practitioner is a 
better anatomist and physiologist than the mere lecturer or 
the veterinary surgeon who has just obtained his diploma, 
simply because he can apply his knowledge of these subjects 
in a practical manner, and has learned to know how much of 
them are useful to him and beneficial to his clients. It 
would appear that some of those who are anxious that 
medical men should be maintained as examiners altogether 
omit the'fact that, however accomplished these men may 
be as anatomists and physiologists, unless they have care¬ 
fully studied the lower animals, their learning in their 
own special department avails them very little; and at the 
meeting one of the speakers who spoke strongest in favour of 
the old-fashioned system being continued, was obliged to 
confess “that the anatomists they had had knew very little 
beyond the anatomy of the human subject.” Those who 
have some acquaintance with the anatomy and physiology of 
man, and are still more familiar with the structure and 
functions of the lower animals, will assent to the assertion 
that they are as widely different as is human pathology from 
comparative or animal pathology; and that, as a rule, medical 
men know as little of the one as they know much of the 
other. Therefore it is something more serious than a farce 
to appoint them as examiners—it is lending ourselves to 
what some plain-speaking people would unhesitatingly desig¬ 
nate as an imposition—merely for the sake of having their 
names on the graduate’s diploma: for that really was the 
