A PLlEA Poe veterinary sErgEry. 
m 
long neglected science of veterinary medicine, at a time when it 
can no longer offer a perfect protection. 
We have just had an instructive instance of the disastrous re¬ 
sults of neglecting the warnings of science in the case of the inva¬ 
sion of the potato beetle. Professor Biley warned the nation 
of the great losses that would result from its eastward progress, 
and showed how, by the outlay of a few thousands, it might he 
prevented from crossing the Mississippi. Instead of heeding his 
advice, the Missouri government, in a tit of blind retrenchment, 
abolished his office of State Entomologist, thereby effecting an 
immediate saving of $3,000 a year, while the potato beetles , allowed 
to cross the river, at five separate points only, have laid the east¬ 
ern States under a contribution estimated at $100,000,000 per 
annum. 
Even more disastrous would he the acclimatization of the lung 
fever in the western States and Territories. Hence the urgent 
necessity that the country should foster veterinary sanitary sci 
ence, and avail of it to obviate such a catastrophe. So, too, with 
regard to other animal plagues, indigenous and foreign. But to 
accomplish this in the best and cheapest manner, in a thinly peo¬ 
pled country like the United States, we must have the new style 
of practitioner, of human and veterinary medicine, and hence the 
surpassing importance of medical schools in which both will be 
taught in the most thorough manner. It speaks well for the ad¬ 
vanced and far-seeing views of the faculty of the University of 
Pennsylvania, that they are the first among American institutions 
of learning to have recognized the importance of tins alliance 
between the two sister professions of medicine, and it is to 
be hoped that the Legislature will prove themselves equally 
liberal and true to the best interests of the country in provid¬ 
ing the means for a firm and permanent consummation of the 
union. 
