14
REPORT OF THE IMPERIAL INSTITUTE OF VETERINARY RESEARCH,
portents are that revenue directly measurable in income will increase in future years.
The present Report has been written at greater length than the reports of preceding years,
largely to convey in the much condensed accounts of work done, the steps that have been
taken to make technical improvements and economies in manufacture to draw near to
the self-supporting ideal. If these accounts are studied intelligently, however, it will
be seen that an earnest endeavour has been made to prosecute activities in harmony
with the objects which Government laid down to be the functions of the laboratory on its
inception, to elucidate perhaps the most universal problem in India,—the preservation
of the life of its livestock,—forming, as it does, in the immemorial experience of the people
a necessity so great to their own preservation that to it has been accorded the most strin-
gent sanctions of religion. The problems of disease in animals are the same throughout
India, and the great contagious diseases do not halt in their spread at the boundaries set
up for administrative or political purposes. However well action may be taken locally,
real progress in control must come from concerted action. Again, progress in control
cannot be made except after intensive study, and the study of diseases in animals as of
the diseases in man—for the greatest achievements in the study of the diseases that
afflict the human race have been made recently by experiment on animals—requires
the support financially of the strongest body in the State and the services of men who have
passed through a prolonged apprenticeship in the exacting pursuit. Hence, unless it
is desired that this Report be drafted in future in the terms in which that presenting the
balance sheet of a limited liability company is drawn up, there must be due recogni-
tion of the place the Institute can fill in the livestock economy of the country and in regard
to the problem of disease in general.
III. Instruction.
(a) Training of officers selected from the Provincial Branches of the Indian Veterinary
Service for promotion to Imperial Grade. The two years' course drafted for this class of
student was undertaken by one man only, Mr. V. Krishnamurthi Ayyar, Professor of
Pathology and Bacteriology at the Madras Veterinary College, who arrived at the Insti-
tute on deputation from his Local Government on the 8th May 1924. This officer had been
promoted to Imperial grade prior to his deputation to the laboratory, provisionally
upon his pursuing subsequently the full course of studies laid down for the Provincial
Officers, who had already undertaken the trial course with a view to promotion. He was
put through the course of systematic instruction touched upon in the preceding Report
and was imparted special tuition in modern knowledge concerning Hygiene and Preven-
tive Medicine. On 14th October 1924 he left headquarters, to follow a set programme of
demonstrations and practical work in connection with the subjects under study at the
Agricultural College, Poona, the Station Veterinary Hospital and Government Military
Dairy, Kirkee, the Bombay Bacteriological Laboratory, and Bombay Veterinary College,
and Bombay Government House Dairy, Bombay, the Hosur Agricultural Farm, the
Institute of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, Bangalore, the Mysore Palace Dairy, and the
Agricultural College, Coimbatore. The programme of practical studies was set for him
after personal inspection by me of the resources of the first named institutions. He
returned to headquarters for the commencement of the second session of the course on
1st April 1925, and the records of his tour were inspected. A report upon his progress
during the first session has already been submitted to Government.
(b) Short courses of instruction for officers of the Imperial Branch of the Indian Veterinary:
Service and of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps in India. Two officers only arrived at
the laboratory for systematic instruction, namely, (i) Captain W. H. Thomas, R.A.V.C.,.
United Provinces District, Meerut, from June 3rd to July 25th, 1924, and (ii) Captain
P. B. Riley, M.R.C.V.S., Deputy Director, Civil Veterinary Department, Bihar and
Orissa, from September 18th to October 11th, 1924.
(c) Short courses of instruction for the personnel of the Provincial Veterinary Services.
It has been stated that much benefit might accrue to Provincial Governments from the
deputation of selected veterinary officials to the laboratory for short periods to assimilate
the rudiments of modern practical laboratory methods in the investigation of disease in
animals, and that, conversely, the Institute might secure advantage by imparting this
form of instruction as a means of training numbers of workers who would be capable ul-
timately of making reliable observations upon disease conditions and despatching morbid
material to the laboratory in a fit state for more through examination from different