391 STATE AND PROSPECTS OF THE VETERINARY PROFESSION. 
like the true “ clodhopper 99 of old, is unable to distinguish 
between ignorance and knowledge in our profession, or 
between the presumptive man groping in the dark and the 
enlightened practitioner. I entertain some strong opinions 
upon this point; I view it in its broad and common bearing 
upon mankind generally. The relation in which our own 
profession stands to society is unmistakably a peculiar 
one. This fact has been confirmed by many a w 7 riter and 
speaker. The good results of our labours as a body, or as 
individuals, are valuable and useful only in proportion as we 
are successful in practice, and this again depends almost 
entirely upon the soundness of our knowledge of disease. 
I come now to another subject. I fully agree with much 
that has been said upon the question of a preliminary exami¬ 
nation of the students. I feel I cannot too highly applaud the 
sentiments of some of our teachers, who have expressed 
themselves in favour of a preliminary examination; not one 
to test the pupil's knowledge of Latin and Greek, but 
into the soundness and the extent of his English 
education. In this sense I believe the Council and the 
profession generally will agree, and be unanimously in 
favour of such a preliminary examination of the student. 
The conviction in my mind is, that to keep a youth at school 
until he is nearly twenty years of age, for the purpose of 
making him acquire a knowledge of all the higher branches of 
a classical education , and then sending him to a veterinary 
College, is in many cases a mistake. I believe that at least 
some part of such an education actually tends to unfit him to 
become a plodding and useful veterinary surgeon. Much of the 
time thus spent would be more profitably employed in his 
obtaining a practical knowledge of the profession he is to 
follow. It is a fact that many of our best and most success¬ 
ful practitioners, highly respected and even educated as they 
may now be, were previous to their having obtained their 
diploma men of limited education. Whatever difference there 
may be among us on this point, there is one at least on which 
we are all unanimous, and that is, that the time spent at 
college as the sole means of acquiring veterinary instruction 
is absurdly and ridiculously short. To remedy this I would 
strongly urge the necessity of a previous apprenticeship, 
and even to this I would add an extended period of college 
instruction. 
In respect to veterinary empiricism, I would remark that 
whatever be the amount of practical knowdedge an empiric 
may have acquired, it is oftentimes used erroneously. In 
every such case he is a dangerous man, and what is more he 
