50 
EDITORIAL. 
That the benefits to be derived from the performances of the 
duties allotted to these State Veterinarians will be largely felt by 
the people, none can deny; and the efforts made to perfect the 
proposed legislation are but part of the many existing evidences 
of the advanced rank that veterinary medicine is acquiring in the 
United States. With almost as many contagious diseases amongst 
our live stock as are found in the different countries of Europe; 
with pleuro-pneumonia in our Eastern States gradually threaten¬ 
ing to invade our wealthy fields of the West; with tuberculosis 
prevailing as it does; Texan fever slowly gaining ground and 
enlarging its boundaries; with various forms of anthrax killing 
many valuable animals every year; with epizootic abortion in 
cows; foot and mouth disease; glanders and farcy in almost all 
our large cities; with hog cholera, chicken cholera—cot to men¬ 
tion trichinosis and a few others—with all these, one cannot be 
surprised that at last our State governments are beginning not 
only to realize the danger threatening our stock, but also to ap¬ 
preciate the losses which we have already suffered, and which our 
general agriculture may have to suffer, unless proper measures 
are employed to check their progress. 
The creation of the office of State Veterinarian would prove 
to each State essentially beneficial, and we have no doubt that 
they will soon be called to the active performance of their duties. 
These will, of course, be important, and those who will receive 
the appointment will not lack a sufficient amount of work, and 
with it of enjoying abundance of opportunities of elevating the 
veterinary profession to the standing in the eyes of the public 
which it has the right to claim. 
The organization of sanitary measures, the accumulation of 
statistics which will necessarily result from the investigations 
which will have to be made relating to the etiology, pathology 
and prophylaxy of diseases; in fact, all matters connected with 
the prevention and suppression of contagious diseases, will furnish 
the State Veterinarian abundant opportunities for showing the 
vital importance of his profession in its direct relation to ques¬ 
tions of practical political economy—questions which, while they 
have to the present time been almost entirely ignored in the 
