MEDICAL EXAMINERS AT VETERINARY BOARDS. G05 
found in any number in the ranks of the profession. I have 
had no experience of teaching students, but should fancy it 
more difficult to teach than to examine. I daresay some of 
the senior teachers will corroborate this ; at any rate, a 
teacher is always supposed to be a highly accomplished and 
scientific member of the profession ; though it would appear 
some think the opposite of the examiners and the profession 
as a whole. 
If, then, highly accomplished and scientific teachers can 
be found so easily, and in such numbers, why cannot two or 
three examiners be selected from the whole mass of the pro¬ 
fession to examine students on a subject of third-rate im¬ 
portance, and which may have been taught by one gentleman 
wl.o only a few months before was only possessed of a 
“ knackerman’s anatomy and a blacksmith’s physiology ?” 
Th.s question the members of the profession will, no doubt, 
be called upon to decide at some time or other. 
It must never be forgotten that our reputation is in our own 
hands, and not in those of the medical profession. If we 
indu'.ge in deprecatory remarks and unworthy insinuations 
agaiist ourselves, we are not raising the status of our pro¬ 
fession, but lowering it. There are in it teachers, examiners, 
and practitioners. All should work for the accomplishment 
of the same object—the welfare of our science; this will 
never be attained unless we are brought to hold each other 
in moie esteem, and care less for patronising medical men, 
who aie aliens, than valuing the ability that is to be found 
in our )wn ranks. The antiquated notion that our examining 
boards must contain medical men, merely because they are 
distingiished in their OAvn special department of science, will 
in due course be consigned to the usual repository for all 
old-wor'd silly notions. 
The assertion that men cannot be found in the ranks of 
the profession able to examine students in the rudiments of 
anatomyand physiology, is belied by the fact that veterinary 
surgeons are at present examiners on these subjects; and it 
will be ii the knowledge of every one who has had any 
considerate experience of the profession that all the talent 
and ability is not wholly concentrated in the teaching schools ; 
there bein^ at least quite as many competent examiners as 
there are distinguished teachers. 
If a <( knackerman’s anatomy and a blacksmith’s phy¬ 
siology” be prevalent among us, let us look to the schools 
and the system of medical examinership for the cause. One 
portion of the remedy, at least, is in our own hands; and 
when veterinary surgeons know that they may be called upon 
