MEDICAL EXAMINERS AT VETERINARY BOARDS.' 603 
only argument that could be brought forward in support of 
the election of human anatomists and physiologists. 
The profession will be better able, perhaps, than I am to 
estimate the weight of this argument; assuredly the public 
who employ veterinary surgeons will not. It is ability, not 
a diploma, that is required in practice; and clients not once 
in a lifetime ask to look at the names of those who testified 
to the fitness of the newly-fledged practitioner. It is perhaps 
lucky they do not; for if they only knew that the veterinary 
surgeon’s knowledge of anatomy and physiology was tested 
by Professor A-, a most distinguished teacher of these 
subjects in one of the medical schools, whose horse stood for 
some days with a dislocated patella which the talented 
gentleman mistook for a broken leg; or Professor B-, 
who blistered his horsed hip for a lameness due to a wound 
in shoeing one of its fore-feet; or some other trifling mistake 
of these distinguished men, I fear they would have little 
confidence in the skill of the veterinary surgeon. 
For myself, I would rather have the names of distinguished 
veterinarians on my diploma than the names of the medical 
gentleman inscribed thereon, celebrated as they are in their 
own immediate calling. 
In the early years of the profession in this country, medical 
men nobly came forward to assist it in its endeavours to get 
beyond the period of infancy, and their efforts must ever call 
forth the gratitude of veterinarians; hut those times have 
long gone by : eighty years have elapsed since the advent of 
animal medicine in Britain, and in that time some progress 
has been made ; the equipment of the infant should long ago 
have been discarded, and the independence of manhood 
assumed. The predictions of those who believe in the eternal 
fitness of things as they are, are destined to be unfulfilled ; 
for the propriety of these elections will not bear a moment’s 
investigation. It is not a question of Scotland for the Scots, 
nor Ireland for the Irish, but of the veterinary profession 
doing justice to itself and the public. This is no narrow or 
selfish policy, but a policy of honesty and progress, which will 
remove us further from the days of “ knackerman’s anatomy 
and blacksmith’s physiology.” 
One of the proposals persistently made by the late Professor 
Spooner: perhaps the only one he ever prominently made in 
the interests of-the profession—for the most rigid stickler for 
the upholding of things as they are could never accuse him 
of being an advocate for change—was the dismissal of 
medical men from our examining boards, and the sub¬ 
stitution of veterinary surgeons. And every member of 
