AMERICAN VETERINARY MEDICINE. 
641 
it would be almost equally appropriate had the title been Alex¬ 
ander Liautard. 
I ask you, gentlemen, to join me in a bumper to him, scien¬ 
tist, practitioner, teacher, friend, a native of the country which 
first gave birth to veterinary schools, and stands at the head of 
the veterinary profession to-day, and an adopted son of this our 
great country, which has been so much benefited by his sojourn 
amongst us, that his name will be an indelible landmark in 
American veterinary medicine. 
Dr. Liautard ! your health ! 
Any history of veterinary medicine in America is practically 
confined to the last half of this century, with the exception of 
an attempt made in 1806, by Dr. Benjamin Rush, the great 
physician, patriot and statesman, who endeavored at that time 
to have a veterinary school added to the University of Pennsyl¬ 
vania. For the rest of the first fifty years of the century we cam 
find no trace of any advance being made. Early in the fifties 
Dr. George Dadd, a man who seems to have been of more than 
usual intelligence, appeared in Boston and organized an attempt 
at a veterinary school; and at the same time published, for a 
year or two, a veterinary journal. The school itself seems to 
have been soon abandoned, though the books and seal of it 
passed to other hands and went to Philadelphia, and afterwards, 
into Ohio, and further West, where, on into the sixties, diplomas, 
were issued bearing the forged signatures of men already dead 
and others. 
In 1857 an ac t f° r th e incorporation of the New York Col¬ 
lege of Veterinary Surgeons was signed at Albany, and an 
organization was commenced, with Dr. John Busteed as Pro¬ 
fessor of Anatomy and Surgery, but only a paper organization 
was kept up for several years without any real work being done. 
1862 is the year from which dates the commencement of a 
tangible effort in the establishment of a body of veterinarians, 
who were to give to American veterinary medicine its first 
history. A number of veterinarians met in Philadelphia to 
perfect an association which was the origin of what was to. 
