Man and beast

Abstract

Extract

I appreciate the honour of being asked to address the annual meeting of a sister professional organization. I think these mutual contacts are very valuable, and should be made at every opportunity. In the case of veterinarians, the task should be easy, for our material interests are so closely interwoven. We both deal with living stuff, and the realms of plants and minerals bear the same relation to us, both as medium of life and source of subsistence. How closely the tissues lie, in structure, in function, in derangement, I think we do not always realize. But we argue constantly from human to animal and vice versa, and we are both at bottom trying to understand that amazing enterprise of animal life started by the amoeba. Who could have foreseen it—the ineffably complicated chemical structure, the use of water, oxygen, light, and heat—the endless experiments into larger, fresher, and more complicated fields. Sometimes beautiful and successful, sometimes failures, or at least non-survivors—until we come to Homo sapiens, with his brain and self-knowledge and self-determination. We tremble as we watch him teetering along on his tight-rope above the abyss which is littered with the remains of the dinosaurs and the megatheria, and hope he will gain his haven.