EDITORIAL. 
507 
EDITORIAL. 
SHALL STATE VETERINARIANS BE APPOINTED ? 
No one will deny that the various attempts which have been 
made during the last few years to establish veterinary colleges in 
the United States, and the success that have been met with by 
some of those institutions, have done much to elevate the profes¬ 
sion in the eyes of the public. But there is also another reason 
for the advance made by veterinary medicine, and that is the 
need of her practitioners, which presented itself because of the 
presence of contagious diseases amongst our live stock—diseases 
which were destroying so many animals, and interfering 
not only with our home trade, but also having in recent years 
diminished the extent of our foreign exportations. It was then 
that we saw the appointment of veterinarians by the General 
Government to investigate some of those affections. The first one, 
we believe, was made in 1868, given to Prof. Gamgee, who was 
requested to investigate the disease known as Texas fever, and 
from that time also, we believe, began the connection of veter 
inary surgeons with Boards of Health. 
Since then other appointments were made from Washington 
by the Department of Agriculture, so as also to rid some of the 
Eastern States from the ravages and dangers of the bovine lung 
plague—contagious pleuro-pneumonia. State commissions were 
appointed, in which the true labor of inspection of diseased ani¬ 
mals and suggestions of sanitary measures were trusted in the 
hands of various veterinarians. And in this way, by degrees, the 
veterinary surgeon found in the eye of the public the apprecia¬ 
tion of his profession. 
But all those appointments were only temporary ; they were 
only for the time when public anxiety was excited by the dan¬ 
gers ahead, whether at home or abroad, and every one knows 
that the life of these commissions has been generally short. The 
need of their existence remained, however, the same, and we 
have no doubt that it was from that need that some of the Legis¬ 
latures of the different States thought of the creation of the 
positions of State Veterinarians. 
The Western States, which are more or less threatened by the 
