INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 787 
unacquainted with more than the mere anatomy of the animal 
or vegetable kingdom. 
Your next inquiry will be as to the chemical composition 
of these various structures, and you call in chemistry to your 
aid. In this department I need not recall to your memory 
that Professor Tuson will be ready to give you assistance. 
It will be his duty and pleasure, I doubt not, to point out to 
you first of all the simple elements and then to trace them 
through their complex arrangements. You will probably 
inquire as you go on what oxygen and hydrogen and other 
chemical bodies have to do with veterinary science. If you 
do make the inquiry let me advise you to suppress it till you 
have passed through a sessional course at least. It is one 
altogether unworthy of you, and it is one which really does 
not deserve an answer. The question cui bono ? indicates 
an unsatisfactory condition of mind. You may depend upon 
it that these studies are not arranged for the purpose of in¬ 
flicting on you considerable annoyance; it is only under a 
distinct sense of their absolute necessity that they have been 
introduced gradually under pressure from without into the 
curriculum of this and other institutions. There was a time 
when you might have sat upon these benches and have gone 
through the college course without being troubled in the 
least about the chemical constitutions of bodies or the bota¬ 
nical relations of various herbs to the condition of the animal 
body. But those times are happily past. It is more satis¬ 
factory to know that progressing knowledge from without, 
the advancing education of the people, has absolutely forced 
us step by step to make the collegiate course what it at 
present is. 
From the subject of chemistry you will pass to materia 
medica, which will teach you the nature of the medicines 
which you employ, their sources, modes of action, and doses. 
Then you will be introduced to the grand science of 
pathology ; and if I refer to the name of the principal of this 
institution, after I have spoken of the professors, you will 
understand that I do it for the reason that I connect him 
with the subject which follows in natural order after ana¬ 
tomy, physiology, and chemistry. It is essential that you 
know something of the constitution of the animal body before 
you can properly realise the changes which occur as the 
result of disease. 
It is not necessary for me to tell you that Professor 
Simonds combines the requisites which the most exacting 
can demand, the qualifications of the scientific and the 
practical man. No one can question the extent of his 
