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,