454 
EDITORIAL. 
good promise that home-born and home-bred practitioners will 
soon be found in numbers sufficient to fill the almost empty ranks 
of our profession. 
Another important question will also, we believe, arise from 
this. It will be the necessity and possibility of the formation of 
a large and influential association, which will be exclusively con¬ 
stituted of regular practitioners, and which may in its organization 
include similar principles to those embodied in the Royal College 
of Veterinary Surgeons of England. This Association ought to 
elect a Board of Examiners with whom should be lodged the ex¬ 
clusive right of granting the diploma, which should be the only 
degree identifying and qualifying the regular practitioner. The 
State schools ought to be in the nature of preparatory institu¬ 
tions, whose students, while receiving an acknowledgment of 
their standing, ought not to be recognized as full veterinary sur¬ 
geons without passing a final examination by the Board of Exam¬ 
iners which would then constitute what might be called the Col¬ 
lege of Veterinary Surgeons of America. 
We feel assured that if such an association were founded, and 
such organization chartered, much good would result. First, the 
various titles and degrees in vogue at the present time would be 
reduced to a single and common title, and there would be no more 
V.S.’s, V.M.’s, D.Y.S.’s, D.Y.M.’s, etc.—but a single univer 
sal and comprehensible American title, whatever that might be. 
Again, how much more thorough and careful the education would 
necessarily be, when the question of success in a school would be 
measured by the number of its graduates, and each institution 
would exert itself to deserve the repute which should give it a pref¬ 
erence over its fellows among those seeking their degrees. As a 
natural consequence, a general similarity in the curriculum of 
studies would be established in all the schools, requiring a proper 
amount of preliminary education, a point which in the present 
condition of affairs would be looked for in vain. 
The fact, as it seems to us, is that the veterinary profession as 
it exists now in the United States ought to form such an associa¬ 
tion at once, and choose their Board of Examiners without need¬ 
less delay. 
