4 
.T. C. DALTON. 
Now, gentlemen, what have yon been doing here for the last 
two years? Yon have been putting yourselves in a position to 
understand the business you are to follow. You know very well 
that it is useless for a man to try to do any tiling without knowing 
from the start exactly what he is about. Under the guidance 
and instruction of your professors, you began at the beginning, 
and so laid the foundation of your veterinary knowledge. You 
first made yourselves acquainted with anatomy. The construct¬ 
ion of the animal machine is the first thing essential for you to 
know; because it is a machine which you undertake to keep in 
order, and it would be wasting time to try that, until you under¬ 
stand it in all its parts. The form and texture of the bones, the 
mechanism of the joints, the strength and position of the mus¬ 
cles. and ligaments, where they are visible externally, how 
they hold the body together and enable it to move this way or 
that; all these are perhaps the simplest of the things which you 
have studied, but for that very reason they were the. first and 
the most important, for you could not get on without them. 
Then came the physiological action of the different organs, the 
movements of circulation and respiration, the digestion of food, 
the growth of the parts, and all the extraordinary endowments of 
the nerves and senses. 
So far, you were occupied in learning all you could about the 
healthy organism in its natural condition. And I suppose that 
much of your future practice will be embraced in this portion of 
the subject. The whole question of hygiene, of proper feeding 
and exercise, of stabling and grooming, and of breeding and 
raising, so as to get the highest development of strong and 
healthy qualities, comes entirely within the range of strictly 
anatomical and physiological knowledge. Even in a practical 
point of view, therefore, this is by no means the least important 
part of your education. 
But you will also be largely interested in the cure or allevia¬ 
tion of maladies; and the next step is to learn what these mala¬ 
dies are. For the diseases and morbid affections of the animal 
frame have a natural history, like its healthy functions. They do 
not come by accident or helter-skelter; but every one has a defi- 
