ABSTRACTS
147
the Army. These absorbed the bulk of the gra-
duates and on the whole the system will have
been considered to have satisfied requirements,
but as a training for potential research workers
and for those called upon to deal with the health
of livestock in the mass, which is the lot of
most of those who elect to serve outside the
British Isles, it was sadly lacking in several
respects. This in itself might not have been
very serious, for being recruited largely from
the stock-owning classes British veterinary sur-
geons were soon able to adapt themselves, to the
changed conditions, but unfortunately the
tradition has been passed on to India, where
the training of veterinary graduates in the past
has followed very closely the British system.
How can the position be remedied?
The
departmental Committee which considered the
subject of veterinary education in the British
Isles a few years ago made a number of very
sound recommendations for its improvement
and it is most unfortunate that it has not been
possible to give effect to any of these during
the war, for every year that passes provides us
with a batch of new graduates who appear, to
those working abroad, to be lacking in certain
essentials of their profession. We require men
whose training has been woven round the sub-
ject of animal physiology and have practical
expereince of animals in health and production,
as well as in disease. A veterinary student can-
not spend too much time on physiology. Not.
only does this subject from the best stepping-
stone to many branches of veterinary science in
which a man may wish to specialize, e.g.,
pathology, immunology, dietetics,
genetics,
pharmacology and up-to-date clinical medicine,
but no other subject in the veterinary curriculum
will do so much to broaden a student's mind
and increase the imagination, in which so many
veterinary graduates, who have been trained in
short cuts for passing examinations, increasing
cash returns or swelling the out-patients regis-
ter, are wanting. We require men whose con-
ception of preventive medicine does not begin
with the use of a hypodermic syringe after a
disease appears in a village, but with the sel-
ection of the correct types of breeding-stock
and the care of the animal organism from the
stage of fertilization of the ovum onwards.
I shall, no doubt, be accused by some of join-
ing those who delight in having a tilt at the
young graduate, but that is not my intention.
I feel that he has a good deal to complain of
and in recent years I have noticed a distinct
tendency on the part of veterinary students
themselves to ask for a more imaginative course
of professional training, which is a very healthy
sign. In India, where veterinary education is
at the moment much to the fore and new curri-
cula are being devised, a- great opportunity
presents itself, and it is to be hoped that those
in authority will see that old traditions are no
longer blindly followed and that, at least in the
degree courses, the system of veterinary educa-
tion introduced will provide the necessary basic
training to enable a graduate to specialize in
any branch of science pertaining to animals
which he may select, and ensure his accept-
ance on an equality with veterinary graduates
of other countries in the administration of inter-
national
conventions and other measures
designed for the improvement of animal health
and animal production.
ABSTRACTS
Some new methods for studying intestinal
amoebae and other protozoa. DOBELL, CLIFFORD
(1942). Parasitology, 34, 101-12.
IN this article the author has described the method
of obtaining; (1) permanent preparations of intestinal
amoebae from cultures, in natural attitudes, and (2) a
new and simple method for staining amocbae and
other protozoa. As a result, of his experience for the
last 17 years, he has found that, if amoebae are desired
to be fixed in their natural forms, the technique
which he recommends is very useful. (Original article
should be consulted for minute details). Briefly, the
method consists of introducing aseptically thin cover
glasses (No. 0, not exceeding 0.120 mm. in thickness
and 7/8 in. square), which have been bisected some-
what obliquely, into the culture medium prior to the
inoculum is added. Such cover glasses can also be
inserted in growing cultures of any required age. In
the first instance, the inoculum is to be deposited at
the bottom of the tube and on the upper surface of
cover glass; in the second, the sediment at the
bottom of the growing culture is to be sucked up by
means of a sterile pipette and then re-distributed in
the same manner. The culture tubes are to be incu-
bated in a slanting position. Amoebae in such a culture
tube creep on the surface of the cover glass and can
be removed for study by means of a sterile platinum
hook. In order to obtain a stained preparation of such
a specimen, the cover glass showing numerous amoebae
(film downwards) is dropped into the fixing solution
contained in a hollow-ground glass block for a few
minutes (5-10 minutes or longer if required). It is
recommended that, after
preliminary fixation, the
cover glass should be turned to bring the film-side up
and the surface squirted with the fixative in order
to wash away a large number of bacteria, after which
the cover glass may be dropped back into the fixative