8787. VETERINARY COLLEGES, Advantages.—
The advantages of the veterinary
institution proposed, may perhaps be doubted.
If it be problematical whether physicians prevent
death where the disease, unaided, would
have terminated fatally,—oftener than they produce
it, where order would have been restored
to the system by the process, if uninterrupted,
provided by nature, and in the case of a man
who can describe the seat of his disease, its
character, progress, and often its cause, what
might we expect in the case of the horse, mule,
&c., yielding no sensible and certain indications
of his disease? They have long had these institutions
in Europe; has the world received as
yet one iota of valuable information from them?
If it has, it is unknown to me. At any rate,
it may be doubted whether, where so many
institutions of obvious utility are yet wanting,
we should select this one to take the lead.—
To Joel Barlow. Washington ed. v, 402.
(W.
1808)
