SOCIETY MEETINGS. 
59 
secondly, there has been a noted tendency to have enacted bet¬ 
ter laws, both national and State, to control infections and con¬ 
tagious diseases, and to regulate the practice of veterinary medi¬ 
cine. These, however, have been brought about more by the 
personal efforts of individual members than of the veterinary 
body whole. 
“ ’Though we have a much more difficult berth in life than 
our co-laborers in the allied profession, medicine, the average 
veterinarian of to-day, notwithstanding, compares very favorably 
with his brethren in human medicine. Perhaps the difficulties 
which he must overcome in the pursuance of his daily duties 
make him more alert, observing and skilled than he might other¬ 
wise be if subjective symptoms and psychical drugs did not fail 
him ; but the fact remains that the progressive veterinary sur¬ 
geon who has kept abreast with the times need no longer feel 
himself subordinate in general intellectuality or technical knowl¬ 
edge to the peerage of any of the more ‘ learned callings.’ As a 
whole we are not apt to be ‘ hide bound ’ in our prejudices, and 
usually are wont to mould to practical advantage scientific 
‘dogmas’ at which our more speculative M. D.’s would fain 
scoff. 
“ One of the most progressive steps the veterinary profession 
has ever taken was the alacrity with which we appreciated the 
revolutionizing of medicine by the latter day investigating 
scholars of modern physic. As an example : Nothing has ever 
done as much for the veterinary art as the ready adoption by 
our brethren of the science of bacteriology. Then to the world 
was proven beyond all reasonable doubt the close and insepar¬ 
able relationship between animal and human medicine. It 
proved to thinking men that between the two a scientific differ¬ 
ence does not exist. What difference there is we have brought 
about ourselves—it is an artificial one, a social one. To right 
this evil, to wipe out this artificial difference, we should as a 
body of professional gentlemen comport ourselves toward the pub¬ 
lic and our fellow brethren, our colleagues, as men in every sense 
that that term implies, we should be above our profession rather 
than beneath it. A little practical application of the Golden 
Rule ‘ do unto others as you would have others do unto you,’ 
would not come amiss with many of us. Speak well of the 
members of our profession to all, organise and stick together. 
In union lies our strength. 
“ Instead of the mere handful of veterinarians who come to 
our meetings, every member of our honorable profession within 
