INTELLIGENCE AND EDUCATION COMMITTEE-REPORT. 
435 
inary practitioners and graduates, the remainder by graduates of 
human medicine, is all that is necessary for the fitting of students 
for practical work in our calling. The exacting demand of a 
growing nation like America seems hardly willing yet to find a 
place for veterinary theorists in the ranks, but demand positive 
results with a practical and definite face upon them, to win them 
as supporters. The branches of materia medica and therapeutics, 
surgery and obstetrics, anatomy, theory and practice for all the 
classes of animals, over which we exercise a rigid care, are not 
such as can be properly filled, save only by veterinary graduates 
and practitioners, and each of them is wide enough to demand 
the whole labors of individual members. If schools are merely 
for the purpose of sending forth men with a large range of storage 
knowledge, impractical and to a large degree useless, then strong 
becomes the reasoning of those who have secured their knowledge 
by hard knocks, with a foundation of good common sense judg¬ 
ment ; potent becomes their power in many ways, for success is 
seldom questioned of its means, while their blunders are excused 
and mitigated because of the paucity of opportunities afforded them 
in their education; while on the other hand our failures bring 
us much severe criticism, and in a great measure justly too, for 
the power we claimed to have gained through the channels by 
which we secured our education, but when the latter are shallow 
and superficial, we are perplexed to find a fair avenue of escape 
from the cutting thrust of unlicensed criticism. 
A wise and well timed suggestion was made some time ago 
by one of our esteemed and revered members, when he proposed 
a National Board of Examiners for the graduating classes of the 
various veterinary colleges and schools. I deem it worthy of our 
consideration here to-day, and would suggest the appointing of a 
committee to examine into the expediency of such a body, to 
report the feelings and opinions of the profession in general on 
this all-important subject at a future meeting. 
Since our 'last meeting, the bill that rested before Congress 
for the suppressien of contagious diseases has become a reality, 
and a large corps of efficient men are now laboring in affected 
localities for the rooting out of these threatened calamities. But 
o 
