INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS, 
379 
livelihood, we have to contend with the prejudice which ignorance 
has attached to veterinary surgeons as a class, and with the re¬ 
luctance which the aspirants for this title feel, in offering to 
devote a long period of hard work to gain that which their neigh¬ 
bor, the farrier, acquired the day he opened a suppurating corn in 
a lame horse and sent it home sound, or the cow-leech took to 
himself when he gave some chance herb to a cow down with the 
milk fever and she recovered, as they sometimes do by the aid of 
nature. Before entering upon the causes which led to the foun¬ 
dation of this department of the university and its aims for the 
future, I will give a short review of the development of veterinary 
medicine in other countries and in our own. 
Veterinary medicine derives its name from the Latin “ veter¬ 
inarians,” “ veterinaria,” veterinary medicine, “ veterinarius ” a 
veterinary surgeon, these terms coming from the “Veterinse” or 
“Veheterinse,” the general term used by the Romans for beasts 
of burden or pack animals, from “ vehere ” to carry. Lenglet, 
however, claims that the term is of much older and of Celtic 
origin, being derived from “vee” or “vieli” cattle, and the verb 
“teeren” to be sick. Nearly all languages employ words from 
this same root; French “ veterinaire,” Italian “veterinaria,” 
South Germany, Hungarian and Russian “ veterinar,” but in 
North Germany “ thierarzt” and “thier-medizin” (animal doctor 
and animal medicine) are more generally used. 
Veterinary medicine comprises not only the study of anatomy, 
physiology, chemistry, materia medica and diseases in their re¬ 
lationship to animals, but includes with equal importance the laws 
of breeding animals and of raising and training them to be of 
greatest service to man, whether as motors or as machines for the 
production of milk, food and clothing; these uses in turn necessi¬ 
tate a knowledge of farriery and the inspection of meat when 
used as food. 
The earliest references to the diseases of animals are found 
contemporaneously with the first medical writings. HCsculapius 
in mythological history includes a knowledge of horses, which he 
derived from Chiron, the Centaur. Hippocrates (460-377 B. C.) 
described the symptoms of diseases and the remedies to be used 
