A PLEA FOR VETERINARY SURGERY. 
171 
United States. 
Great Britain. 
Horses, asses, and mules, .... 
11,149,800 
2,790,851 
Cattle,. 
27,870,700 
6,115,491 
Total horses and cattle, .... 
39,019,500 
8,906,342 
Sheep,. 
35,935,300 
31,313,941 
Swine,. 
25,726,800 
2,422,830 
Total live stock, (except carnivora,) 
100,681,600 
42,643,113 
Veterinarians, actual, (probably,) 
Veterinarians needed in ratio with 
200 
2,000 
live stock,. 
Veterinarians need in ratio with Brit- 
4,762 
ish Calvary,. 
39,019 
It is perhaps an extravagant estimate to set our 
needs down 
at four thousand seven hundred and sixty-two, or one veterinarian 
to every twenty thousand head of live stock; though if these 
could be collected within a reasonable area, we would find more 
than enough to do in attending to their health. The objection is 
not want of practice, but the fact that in many places the stock 
is scattered over such a wide district, that it would not pay the 
veterinarian to visit them at rates, which the interests of the stock- 
owner could allow. If, however, we could furnish such districts 
with practitioners having the double qualifications, they could 
find within a reasonable area a sufficient number of patients to 
make it worth their while to stay, and worth the people’s while 
to employ them. One such practitioner to every two hundred 
square miles is surely a very modest estimate, and this would give 
us considerably over five thousand in the States of the Atlantic 
slope. 
VALUE OF VETERINARIANS TO THE COUNTRY. 
The value of the present services of veterinarians in the 
United States must be a very meager sum comparatively to what 
it might be if veterinary science were availed of as it ought. 
Some estimate of the value of a scientific veterinary supervision, 
may be deduced from the fact that prior to 1836, the losses in 
the French cavlary amounted to one hundred and ninety per 
