1T6 
J. F. KENNEDY. 
VETERINARY SCIENCE AND ITS RELATION TO 
THE PUBLIC HEALTH. 
By T- F. Kennedy, A. M,, M, D., Sec. Iowa State Board of Health, Des 
Moines, Iowa. 
A Paper read before the Iowa State Veterinary Medical Association. 
M 7 \ Preside 7 it and Gentleme^i of the Iowa State Veterinary 
Medical Association : 
Your secretary in asking me to present at this meeting a 
brief paper for yonr consideration, was kind enough to suggest 
the topic which I have selected—“ Veterinary Science and its 
Relation to the Public Health.” 
My subject therefore naturally resolves itself into two gen¬ 
eral divisions. 
1. Veterinary science. 
2 . Its relation to the public health. 
It is but a comparatively few years since veterinary medicine 
has been lifted from a basal position among the professions— 
from the domain of rank empiricism to the honored and digni¬ 
fied position of a science—a noble, beneficent and liberal, if not 
literally humanitarian science. 
The whole world of science owes a debt of gratitude to 
Chauveau, Wesley Mills, Fleming, Riautard and a score of 
others because of their earnest, well directed and efficient work 
in the field of comparative anatomy and physiology. 
Forty years ago, when I studied medicine and attended medi¬ 
cal lectures at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and 
at the University of New York City, there was no instruction 
whatever in our text books, or in the lectures delivered by the 
ablest teachers of the country upon these branches. The edu¬ 
cated physician of that day knew little more about comparative 
anatomy and physiology than the uneducated “horse doctor” of 
to-day, or at least was not required to know more. 
The whole science of medicine and surgery, whether applied 
to man or beast, is almost being revolutionized—and largely by 
experiments upon the lower animals. Every advance in pre- 
