46 
D. McEACHRAN. 
The question what that standard should be is the great stumbling 
block in the way, it is in fact the rock on which our good ship is most 
likely to be wrecked, unless we can convince the heads of the teaching 
colleges and those associated with them, that there is truth in our 
professional motto, Vis TInita Fortior. So long as mercenary motives, 
jealousy, or self-agrandizement, instead of the elevation of the science, 
actuates any one of them to frustrate concerted action, no real lasting 
progress can be made. We have seen the length of study and subjects 
embraced in the curriculae of the schools of Great Britain, and the 
continental countries; why should we- accept an inferior position to 
either as we certainly do by adopting an inferior standard of education? 
To every intelligent mind who knows anything about the course 
of study embraced in a medical curriculum, it must appear almost 
ridiculous to profess that more than a rudimentary knowledge of each 
subject crtn be obtained by cramming the studies into any period of 
time short of three full winter sessions, and I am positive no reader 
who has tried it, but will agree with me that justice cannot be done to 
any subject so crammed. What then must be the condition of those, 
who, with almost no education, unaccustomed to study and past the 
pliant age of youth, are allowed to graduate after attending lectures 
for eight or ten months, .that is four or five months in each of two 
successive winters ? 
I do not altogether agree with a recent writer in “ The Spirit of 
the Times,” in the curriculum therein propounded—to say the least of 
it, it is not practicable; whoever would spend the time and money to 
master all the scholastic attainments suggested, would expect to be 
qualified for a profession offering a more advanced field for scientific 
renown, or else a greater certainty of lucrative emoluments, than our 
struggling, neglected, but noble profession as yet offers; no, our 
progress to be sure must be gradual, and it must be in accordance with, 
and in proportion to the necessity experienced by the public for our 
services, otherways it will neither be practical nor lasting. The writer 
above referred to suggests for the United States a grand central 
veterinary institute with each professor a specialist in his subject, the 
institute or university to be richly endowed by state grants, &c., the 
idea is a good one for that country, but his ideas of detail are extrav¬ 
agant and impracticable, and his sweeping denunciation of all the 
powers that be, except the creations of his own fertile imagination, 
are far from calculated to further the ends he has so much at heart. 
