THE FUTURE OF THE VETERINARY PROFESSION. 
13 
General practice is the body, the foundation of veterinary 
science; sanitary medicine, meat inspection and others are 
branches. 
The present status as pictured by some reminds me of the 
willow and the oak. Take a willow twig and stick one end of 
it in the sward—no matter which end—and it begins at once 
to grow, sends out forks just at or under the mud, each fork 
apparently trying to outgrow the other, each leaning away 
from every other in order to get more sunshine and appear 
more important than the other. 
The oak starts from the acorn, grows a root first, then a 
trunk, and when of sufficient stature and strength sends out 
branches in noble symmetry and grandeur. Each is a tree, the 
oak by merit; the willow on a technicality. The oak is worth 
more a century after death than the willow in its prime. It 
seems inevitable to me that the future will demand and have a 
broadly educated, refined, enthusiastic body of general prac¬ 
titioners, with a substantial and ample preparatory education 
followed by thorough general veterinary training, a trunk, a 
body of solidarity, and then, after appropriate maturity and 
attainment of due self-respect, owing to special proficiencies or 
experience, certain individuals will be called out to constitute 
branches, spreading out broadly in perfect harmony, not antag¬ 
onistic, each mutually helpful to the other, and supported by a 
competent, compact trunk. 
Inseparably linked with the destiny of our profession stand 
the veterinary schools. A study of these only adds clearness and 
hope to what we have stated. The first schools were merely 
those required by the country, teaching a moderate amount of 
the veterinary knowledge of the time. They were private insti¬ 
tutions, to a greater or lesser degree commercial in aim, doing their 
pioneer work well and rendering greater achievements possible. 
Naturally they grew old and momentous changes followed 
rapidly. An affiliation was made by some veterinary schools 
with universities, a sort of quasi recognition of veterinary sci¬ 
ence as a branch of higher learning. 
