868 
W. L. WILLIAMS. 
best fit the student to discharge his duties as a learned member 
of his community. 
This laboratory teaching is extensive, including descriptive 
and surgical anatomy, physiology, histology, bacteriology, 
pathology and finally clinical surgery, or as we commonly ex¬ 
press it, practical surgery. 
We need only glance at the announcements of our colleges to 
discover that they are nominally a unit as to the comparative value 
of clinical surgery, nearly all of them announcing unsurpassed , 
and a number of them unequalled clinical teaching facilities. 
Yet it must be confessed that whether they possess the fa¬ 
cilities or not, some of them do not teach practical surgery at 
all, and virtually confess it. They evade their responsibility 
in a variety of ways. 
The veterinary college having the greatest number of grad¬ 
uates in America, evades its duty by demanding that the stu¬ 
dents shall spend their one summer vacation with private prac¬ 
titioners, evidently for the purpose of learning practical surgery, 
which would be unnecessary if it were taught in the college. 
The college thus unloads upon practitioners a very grave re¬ 
sponsibility, and assumes the position that while there are only 
two or three professors fitted to tell students in lectures what 
they will see in practice, any horse doctor is good enough to 
teach them the really practical part of the subject. We do not 
know how many practitioners have contributed toward educa¬ 
ting the students of this college, but they probably reach in the 
aggregate 2500 to 5000—the largest unpaid faculty of clinical 
professors iif the world. 
Other colleges evade their duty by advising or winking 
clandestinely at students practicing on their own account dur¬ 
ing their vacations, claiming that such a course is as advantage¬ 
ous as clinical instruction with some of the members of the 
large faculty above cited. This shifts the responsibility for 
practical education upon the student himself. 
Some erroneously call self-educated veterinarians charlatans 
or horse doctors, while to those having a certificate that they 
