A NATIONAL VETERINARY POLICE. 
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from it. The trouble is not so much with them as with the laws 
and regulations which are entirely inadequate to the business in 
hand. The Commissioners, only one of whom is active, do not 
and cannot, single-handed, control these dread ravages. They 
alone have all the responsibility of action. The veterinary and 
empirical practitioners are left too much to act on their good will. 
Horses are kept and treated in advanced stages of the disease in 
some of our boarding and livery stables, as was fully demonstrated 
by a case recently killed by authority of one of the Commissioners. 
Just so long as this laxity of the law exists, just so long as every 
practitioner, whether graduated or empirical, is not legally made 
actively responsible, just so long as the civil police are not made 
responsible for reporting every suspicious case, just so long as 
stable-keepers, horse-owners and the public in general are not 
made legally responsible, and in the most active manner, for the 
notification of the proper authorities of every suspected case of an 
animal contagious disease—just so long as this continues, shall we 
be thus impotent. It is useless to say we are responsible. The 
continual discovery of animals, especially horses, being held and 
treated for such disease, is direct proof that the contrary is the case. 
It is simply ridiculous, as in Massachusetts, having but one veterin¬ 
ary police official for the entire State. Every practitioner should 
lie such an official so long as we are in our present weak numerical 
condition. The execution of the law should be given to the local 
civil officials, without the necessity of notifying the head authority 
of every individual case. The local authorities should be empower¬ 
ed to call in a properly authorized and competent local veterinary 
officer, whose verdict should be supreme, save in questionable cases, 
when consultation should be required, or the judgment of the chief 
State official called upon. Reports of all such cases, and the action 
taken upon them, should be sent to the State Commission, better 
State Board of Health, at least quarterly. It is a great mistake hav¬ 
ing separate Commissions for the animal pests. A State Veterin¬ 
arian attached to the Board of Health would be much more advanta¬ 
geous. The relations of many of our animal diseases to human 
welfare are much more immediate than the majority of the public 
suppose. Thirteen cases of glanders by human beings, nine being 
