476 
JOHN J. REPP. 
By this I do not mean that anyone who has this material 
can produce a technical and worthy treatise. The writer of a 
book should be a man of high attainment and wide experience, 
so that he may possess wise judgment, close discrimination, and 
high powers of reasoning. He must be on a plane far above 
the mere compiler. Yet no one can write a treatise on veteri¬ 
nary medicine worth reading without making frequent and con¬ 
stant use of the experience and reasonings of others. 
It is in a large measure the character of the writer that 
makes the difference between the compiled and the elaborated 
treatise. The compiler and the elaborator both use the experi¬ 
ence of others, but the former jumbles that experience together 
in a careless manner and makes use of but little original thought 
or experience, while the latter uses the experience of others 
with discretion, and disposes it according to his own wise judg¬ 
ment and broad education. It is for the use of infen of the lat¬ 
ter class that the current magazines and periodicals and reports 
of societies should be teeming with reports of experiences and 
investigations of the practitioner and experimenter. 
It is a fact much to be deplored that there is so little of 
scientific veterinary literature by American authors. Practi¬ 
tioners here are compelled to rely in a large measure upon for¬ 
eign publications or their translations. The Germans and 
French have excellent treatises on the various branches of 
veterinary medicine, well suited for their own veterinarians, 
but these works are in many instances not adapted to the needs 
of the American practitioner. America has such immense live 
stock interests that she should be represented by a bountiful 
literature covering every phase of the subject and kept revised 
by the addition of the latest developments of science. The de¬ 
mand for such a literature is imperative. Our sister profession 
has accomplished this task, and if we wish to obtain such rec¬ 
ognition as we ought to have from the fraternity of human 
medicine, we must produce an adequate literature. 
European writers have had more than a hundred years of 
active scientific veterinary experience and research from which 
