238 
YORKSHIRE VETERINARY MEDICAL SOCIETY. 
of another year of united good feeling and progress. For though 
perhaps we fall short of what we were expected to do, yet there 
have been good practical papers produced by many of our members, 
and those have been ably discussed ; so that we all must have felt 
benefited by such continued interchange of ideas; by which we 
shall have gained a better opinion of each other, and a more 
elevated view of the objects of our study. For be assured that it 
is only by such intercourse that we can expect to gain satisfactory 
results. Remember the fable of the “ Bundle of Sticks.” 
We have a worthy object to accomplish, namely, the elevation of 
our profession. 
Why should we be placed with the groom and the smith? We 
ought to take as good a position in the social scale as the other 
liberal professions. I myself see no reason why we should not 
stand on a level with medical men. 
Our education ought to be as good as theirs. For if we thoroughly 
understand all the requirements of our profession our intellectual 
training must be equally varied and extensive. 
The study of our patients is much more difficult. Medical 
men have the advantage of the sufferer’s description of his feelings. 
We can only be guided by our own observation of symptoms, and 
those in different animals so unlike as often to perplex the most 
acute observer, and yet, by minute discrimination, we are enabled 
to give as correct a diagnosis as the medical practitioner can with 
the aid of his questioning. 
This, gentlemen, leads me to the great question for the day,—the 
scholastic training of veterinary pupils. 
You have, I am sure, seen much that has been most ably written 
on this subject by many members of our body, so that it is un¬ 
necessary for me to say more than that we all have agreed on the 
need of a preliminary literary examination, but are scarcely agreed 
as to what that is to be. 
Now, as I some time ago proposed a certain test for those about 
to become veterinary pupils, I venture again to bring that proposi¬ 
tion before you on the present occasion, there being so many here 
who are deeply interested in the welfare of our profession. And I 
hope that they will now give full utterance to their views, and 
decide upon something that may be a starting point for our future 
advance in the social scale. 
Gentlemen, in this room I formerly proposed, and again venture 
to repeat it, “ That all veterinary pupils ought to pass the middle- 
class examination of one of our universities.” 
I do the more strongly urge this, because the examination is con¬ 
ducted by gentlemen of high standing in the intellectual world, and 
it is one in which there is no possibility of unfairness to the pupil. 
I would further add, that the examination be that for “ senior 
students,” which takes young men from sixteen to eighteen years of 
age, that the pupil must not merely have a certificate of satisfying 
the examiners, but be must have been placed in one of the classes, 
and if he have obtained honours so much the better. 
