PREFACE.
During a long experience in teaching veterinary medicine and surgery in Cornell University, the author felt the urgent need of a compend on the subject, written from the American standpoint and having special reference to the American live stock industry. This led to the production of the Farmer’s Veterinary Adviser, which has been well received, and has, up to the present, passed through ten editions in the United States, besides the unauthorized editions published in Canada and Great Britain.
In entering upon a larger field as Director of the New York State Veterinary College, and professor of medicine and sanitary science, he aims at producing a work which will meet the needs of the American student and practitioner. The special phases of animal pathology in America, the diseases peculiar to our soil, and the parasites that prevail here, but are unknown in Europe, demand consideration from the American point of view. The special features of our breeding, grazing and feeding industries, and of the dairy, over our great extent of territory, and the varying influence of soil, water, climate, altitude and traffic, the scope and limitations of our interstate traffic, and our special relation to the old world in the matter of meat products, combine with other conditions in demanding a somewhat different treatment of the subject from that which we find in European publications. Then, too, the recent extraordinary advances in the field of bacteriology and sanitary science, which have virtually revolutionized modern medicine, and are an earnest of still greater advances in the near future, demand a work which shall, as far as possible, set forth the present advanced status, and thus lay a solid foundation to intelligently follow, if not to lead, in the imminent advance. As a contribution to this, the present volume, the first of a series, is offered to students, practitioners and scientists by their friend,