Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/749

 �The Modern "Horse

Doctor" and How He

Saves Money

��By A. M. Jungmann

���This terrier is suffering from a compound fracture of both hind legs. He fell from a fourth-SLory window. To the right is shown a sick horse. He developed pneu- monia when a barge contain- ing horses for the Allies was sunk in the Hudson

��OXE million dollars is a fortune — at least it seems so to most of us. Yet animal surgery is saving one million dollars a year in New Orleans, a city of about three hundred and fifty thousand population. As New York has fourteen times as many inhabitants as New Orleans it is safe to assume that animal surgery means fourteen million dollars to New York every year.

"Oh, it's only a poor dumb animal!" is a wasteful expression of a wasteful thought. When the value of the poor dumb animal is considered in dollars and cents he immediately becomes impor- tant. Science has discovered that ani- mals are worthy of attention because of themselves — or their economic value.

The good old-fashioned "hoss doctor" is disappearing and in his place we have the veterinary surgeon. The man who intends to devote his life to the health of animals is a man of scientific training who takes his profession as seriously as does the physician to human kind. You cannot hold yourself out as a veterinary

��surgeon any more than you can proclaim yourself a doctor or a lawyer without being one. In the Regent's Examina- tions veterinary science is classed with law, medicine, dentistry, etc. The United States has twenty-two veterinary colleges as against twelve ten years ago. There are between three and four hundred teachers and about three thou- sand pupils.

The American Society for the Preven- tion of Cruelty to Animals has been making an appeal for the protection and conservation of animals for years. Un- doubtedly it has accomplished a great deal even when it has based its appeal on humanitarian motives. But in New Orleans, where the figures show that by adopting more efficient methods, the lives of its mules and horses are lengthened and the city is actually saving a million dollars a year, the Society has made a direct commercial appeal for the rational treatment of animals. Once the owners of large numbers of horses and mules were convinced that by better care they

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