SOCIETY MEETINGS. 
305 
from a real live veterinary association meeting. As your Sec¬ 
retary, it affords me great pleasure to be able to come before 
you bearing tidings of prosperity from the profession in gen¬ 
eral. The prosperity with which our country has been blessed 
during the past year has been shared and appreciated by the 
members of the profession. Almost without exception the let¬ 
ters that have come to me from veterinarians during the past 
year have spoken of an increasing business. I have made no 
systematic estimate, but I feel sure that I am perfectly safe in 
saying that the volume of the veterinary business done in Iowa 
during 1899 exceeded by fully 25 per cent, that of any previ¬ 
ous year. During the seven years that I have served as Secre¬ 
tary of this association I have endeavored to keep a record of 
the names of all veterinarians in the State, with the name of 
the college from which they graduated, and the date of gradua¬ 
tion. On this record I now find 249 names. Of this number, 
probably less than 150 are resident practitioners at the present 
time. The others have either moved into other States or taken 
up other lines of business. During a period of time prior to 
the decline in the value of live stock, which occurred about 1893, 
the comparatively few veterinarians who were then practicing 
in the State were enjoying a very lucrative business. Horses, 
especially, were selling at high prices, and when occasion de¬ 
manded our farmer friends and stockmen sought eagerlv for 
the services of good veterinary surgeons, and were willing to 
pay a good fee for the services rendered. This state of thongs 
soon brought a large number of new men into the profession. 
Many young men who had never had any previous training or 
experience in handling live stock, and who had no natural tact 
for such work, took up the study of veterinary science with a 
view to preparing themselves for the practice of the profession. 
Many of these fellows were theoretically bright, and graduated 
from the colleges with high honors, but soon found themselves 
or others found them—to be utterly incapable of applying 
their theory to practical purposes. Thus it has been that 
many of the men who have gone out as graduates have thrown 
a shadow over the profession by utter failure in practice, simply 
because of being a misfit in that line of work, where some non¬ 
graduate of a practical turn has succeeded much better. In 
this way, recognizing, of course, the dull seasons following the 
decline in prices of live stock, we can account for the great 
fluctuating movements of the veterinarians in Iowa. As "a re¬ 
sult of these changes our association has suffered also. Many 
