EDITORIAL. 
305 
and t\\e canine. He emerges from the stable and enters the 
parlor, and needs to be as versatile in the one as in the other. 
While his prescription in the former may have demanded that 
the druggist shall compound four grains of strychnia for a 
single dose, he asks in the latter that the pharmaeist be earefiil 
not to exceed the sixty-fourth of a grain of the same drug lest 
it prove fatal to his delicate little toy-terrier patient. If the 
babe is the most difficult patient the human physician has to 
diagnose and treat, surely the veterinarian ean equal it in his 
canine praetice. 
But the horse and the dog do not exhaust by any means the 
scope of veterinary versatility, for a very profitable department 
of his avocation lies among his ruminating patients. Cattle 
practice, with many diseases not known in any other species of 
animal, is the chief reliance of many of the members of our 
profession ; and with this branch more than with any other the 
demands of sanitary medicine are most pronounced. Bacteri¬ 
ology must be one of his familiar studies, and its developments 
can only be kept pace with through the medium of our monthly 
magazines, so rapidly are new facts being brought to light by 
the incessant researehes of the observers of two continents. 
Only the demands of spaee in this month’s Review curtails 
the length of the enumeration of the variety and scope of the 
knowledge which he should possess, for we have not even 
finished with the recital of his patients, since we have omitted 
the hog, the cat, and even birds, whieh upon the European con¬ 
tinent, at least, are demanding the services of members of our 
profession. This same veterinarian whom we have shown 
must be proficient in all these departments, cannot feel that he 
is master of his profession until competent to fill the post of 
sanitarian, for he must include such a position with his local 
board of health, and here his proficiency in meat and milk in¬ 
spection will be thoroughly tested. 
We contend, therefore, that the eonscientious and educated 
veterinarian should be eonsiaered as superior in every sense to 
his medical brother, and when it has been possible for higher 
