EDITORIAL. 
270 
Some twenty years ago the practice of veterinary medicine 
was almost entirely in the hands of empirics. Here and theie 
in the large cities one or two educated veterinarians might have 
been found ; but the great majority of those who attended 
our domestic animals were ignorant men, many of them unable 
to read or write and entirely unfit for the calling they wcit 
following. In those days the requirements of the horse doctor, 
cow leech and others were limited, and their standing as scientific 
men was of course entirely ignored, without saying anything of 
their social position, which, for many, was a superfluity. 
Should anyone have spoken to these pretended practitioners of 
sanitary science, of the connection of their duties and knowl¬ 
edge to human medicine, of the necessity of their action in case 
of epizootics, of the noble work they might be called to peifoim, 
no doubt it would have been to them a great surprise; though 
perhaps some of them might have been applied to, so ignorant of 
the requirements were the public at large. Again, what did those 
men know of jurisprudence , a word they certainly never heatd? 
And when called in the practice of that branch of their specialty, 
the tradition of their doubtful integrity in the matter has been 
handed down to our days, and, we fear, may remain attached to 
the profession as a stigma which only years of excessive probity 
will remove. 
But if the observer will turn his attention to our own day 
and see the difference which exists, how gratifying the pros¬ 
pects will appear to him. 
First, the establishment of veterinary schools and with them 
the sending over the country of men, who, if not possessed as 
yet of the amount of science which is obtained in much older 
European institutions of the same kind, have in them the founda¬ 
tion to obtain it by their own work, and certainly have the elements 
that go to make good practitioners. With the number of educa¬ 
ted veterinarians increasing, there came amongst them the desiie 
of social and scientific intercourse, and soon veterinary societies 
were formed, amongst which the United States Veterinary Medical 
Association is one of the oldest. Though this was progress, some¬ 
thing was wanting; that by which all members of the profession 
