476 
F. S. BILLINGS. 
Infection ” raised by the lamented Gerlach—the Virchow of 
veterinary medicine—to the very close relations existing between 
anthax and authracoid diseases of animal life; to the innumer¬ 
able dangers of septic infection, to which we are exposed from 
untimely slaughtered flesh; to the immense losses which the 
nation suffers from the various animal epi and enzootics. One 
need but allude to the yet but little appreciated truth in pathol¬ 
ogy, that the more one knows in general, of the processes and 
phenomena of disease, the better can lie judge in a special case. 
Comparative pathology is not yet truly developed, aye scarcely be¬ 
gun. Numerous mistaken writers have spoken of veterinary path¬ 
ology as comparative. We have veterinary and human pathology. 
The union of both, and comparison of the results of both, forms of 
investigation is true comparative pathology, all authorities to the 
contrary. The drafters of this memorial undoubtedly entirely 
overlooked this matter, yet we think they are mistaken. We 
are fully aware of the difficulties the nation would find, in search¬ 
ing for a man equal to the emergency. We are perfectly aware 
that if the duties of the other members of said Board are to be 
onorous in the extreme, those of the veterinarius will be such as 
to make every one who realizes them, tremble for the life and 
health of the man on whom such an honor is conferred. We will 
say at once, the man can be found, and a veterinarian at that. We 
will now say what that man must absolutely know and do, or 
history will pronounce him a failure. First, lie must be a gentle¬ 
man ; further, he must be well educated in the rise and progress 
of medical art and science, and of the difficulties which have been 
overcome. Fie must be at home in the history of his own profes¬ 
sion m every land, and he must be able to exert a healthy judg¬ 
ment over the stand of veterinary medicine in those lands. He 
must know why it is that his profession has been always in the 
back-ground, why in most lands it is still holding religiously on to 
the skirts of the last century. He must be an American in the 
true sense of the term. He must be impregnated with the scien¬ 
tific spirit of the day, and with fore-seeing ability suiting him to 
mould things for the future. He must be at home with the various 
forms of American life, and have power to mould these forms- for 
