872 
W. L. WILLIAMS. 
during life, while tactile sensation, the indispensable guide in 
intra-abdominal surgery fails him entirely. Neither can he 
observe the character of parts in a diseased state, nor form an 
adequate idea of the difficulties met with in operating upon 
such. Such a course is neither sufficient nor designed to com¬ 
plete the student’s education in practical surgery, but merely 
constitutes an essential and invaluable course of training- 
occupying logically a place between descriptive anatomy and 
operative surgery proper. 
In our second group, the living animal, the method may 
vary widely. The operation may be performed by the teacher 
or the student. 
The teacher may perform the operation, the student acting 
as a spectator. This constitutes the highest available form of 
teaching human clinical surgery and in veterinary education 
naturally holds an important place. Here the student sees the 
actual operation upon the living animal usually with curative 
intent. This form of teaching we might call lecture instruction 
with the most intense illustration possible. It is of equal im¬ 
portance to the foregoing, having a special value in all those 
operations which are wholly open and visible, but are very infe¬ 
rior.in concealed procedures carried on within the body cavi¬ 
ties of the patient. 
In all cases it falls short of being genuine laboratory work 
for the student and fails to train him as an operator. 
Having been so long the highest type of teaching human 
clinical surgery some veterinary teachers contend that if it is 
good enough for surgeons it should answer for veterinarians. 
We cannot agree. We are placed at numerous disadvantages 
compared with human surgeons and possess some material ad¬ 
vantages which we should eagerly seize in order to bring our 
opportunities to a par with theirs. Undeniably nothing teaches 
a student to do a thing so well as doing it properly himself 
under competent guidance. 
Here again we have to choose between two classes of mate¬ 
rial, worthless subjects to be destroyed as soon as they have 
