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Rh veterinary pathology in the relations it bears to human medicine, to the public health and wealth, as well as to agriculture, has not been sufficiently appreciated; and in consequence but little allowance has been made for the difficulties with which the practitioner of animal medicine has to contend. The rare instances in which animals can be seen by the veterinary surgeon in the earliest stages of disease, and when this would prove most amenable to medical treatment; delay, generally due to the inability of those who have the care of animals to perceive these early stages; the fact that animals cannot, except in a negative manner, tell their woes, describe their sensations or indicate what and where they suffer; the absence of those comforts and conveniences of the sick-room which cannot be called in to ameliorate their condition; the violence or stupor, as well as the attitude and structural peculiarities of the sick creatures, which only too frequently render favourable positions for recovery impossible; the slender means generally afforded for carrying out recommendations, together with the oftentimes intractable nature of their diseases; and the utilitarian influences alluded to above—all these considerations, in the great majority of instances, militate against the adoption of curative treatment, or at least greatly increase its difficulties. But notwithstanding these difficulties, veterinary science has made greater strides since 1877 than at any previous period in its history. Every branch of veterinary knowledge has shared in this advance, but in none has the progress been so marked as in the domain of pathology, led by Nocard in France, Schtitz and Kitt in Germany, Bang in Denmark, and McFadyean in England. Bacteriological research has discovered new diseases, has revolutionized the views formerly held regarding many others, and has pointed the way to new methods of prevention and cure. Tuberculosis, anthrax, black-quarter, glanders, strangles and tetanus furnish ready examples of the progress of knowledge concerning the nature and causation of disease. These diseases, formerly attributed to the most varied causes—including climatic changes, dietetic errors, peculiar condition of the tissues, heredity, exposure, close breeding, overcrowding and even spontaneous origin—have been proved beyond the possibility of doubt to be due to infection by specific bacteria or germs.

In the United Kingdom veterinary science has gained distinction by the eradication of contagious animal diseases. For many years prior to 1865, when a government veterinary department was formed, destructive plagues of animals had prevailed almost continuously in the British islands, and scarcely any attempt had been made to check or extirpate them. Two exotic bovine diseases alone (contagious pleuro-pneumonia or lung plague and foot-and-mouth disease) are estimated to have caused the death, during the first thirty years of their prevalence in the United Kingdom, of 5,549,780 cattle, roughly valued at £83,616,854; while the invasion of cattle plague (rinderpest) in 1865–66 was calculated to have caused a money loss of from £5,000,000 to £8,000,000. The depredations made in South Africa and Australia by the lung plague alone are quite appalling; and in India the loss brought about by contagious diseases among animals has been stated at not less than £6,000,000 annually. The damage done by tuberculosis contagious disease of cattle, transmissible to other animals and to man by means of the milk and flesh of diseased beasts—cannot be even guessed at; but it must be enormous considering how widely this malady is diffused. But that terrible pest of all ages, cattle plague, has been promptly suppressed in England with comparatively trifling loss. Foot-and-mouth disease, which frequently proved a heavy infliction to agriculture, has been completely extirpated. Rabies may now be included, with rinderpest, lung plague and sheep-pox, in the category of extinct diseases; and new measures have been adopted for the suppression of glanders and swine fever. To combat such diseases as depend for their continuance on germs derived from the soil or herbage, which cannot be directly controlled by veterinary sanitary measures, recourse has been had to protective inoculation with attenuated virus or antitoxic sera. The Board of Agriculture and Fisheries has an efficient staff of trained veterinary inspectors, who devote their whole time to the work in connexion with the scheduled diseases of animals, and are frequently employed to inquire into other diseases of an apparently contagious nature, where the circumstances are of general importance to agriculturists.

Veterinary science can offer much assistance in the study and prevention of the diseases to which mankind are liable. Some grave maladies of the human species are certainly derived from animals, and others may yet be added to the list. In the training of the physician great benefit would be derived from the study of disease in animals—a fact which has been strangely overlooked in England, as those can testify who understand how closely the health of man may depend upon the health of the creatures he has domesticated and derives subsistence from, and how much more advantageously morbid processes can be studied in animals than in our own species.

Although as yet few chairs of comparative pathology have been established in British universities, on the European continent such chairs are now looked upon as almost indispensable to every university. Bourgelat, towards the middle of the 18th century, in speaking of the veterinary schools he had been instrumental in forming, urged that "leurs portes soient saus cesse ouvertes à ceux qui, chargés par l'état de la conservation des hommes, auront acquis par le nom qu'ils se seront fait le droit d'interroger la nature, chercher des analogies, et vérifier des idées dont la conformation ne peut être qu'utile a l'espèce humaine." And the benefits to be mutually derived from this association of the two branches of medicine inspired Vicq d'Azyr to elaborate his Nouveau plan de la constitution de la médecine en France, which he presented to the National Assembly in 1790. His fundamental idea was to make veterinary teaching a preliminary (le premier degré) and, as it were, the principle of instruction in human medicine. His proposal went so far as to insist upon a veterinary school being annexed to every medical college established in France. This idea was reproduced in the Rapport sur l'instruction publique which Talleyrand read before the National Assembly in 1790. In this project veterinary teaching was to form part of the National Institution at Paris. The idea was to initiate students of medicine into a knowledge of diseases by observing those of animals. The suffering animal always appears exactly as it is and feels, without the intervention of mind obscuring the symptomatology, the symptoms being really and truly the rigorous expression of its diseased condition. From this point of view, the dumb animal, when it is ill, offers the same difficulties in diagnosis as does the ailing infant or the comatose adult.

Of the other objects of veterinary science there is only one to which allusion need here be made: that is the perfectioning of the domestic animals in everything that is likely to make them more valuable to man. This is in an especial manner the province of this science, the knowledge of the anatomy, physiology and other matters connected with these animals by its students being essential for such improvement.

Considerations of space forbid a complete or detailed description of all the diseases, medical and surgical, to which the domesticated animals are liable. Separate articles are devoted to the principal plagues, or murrains, which affect animals—,, , , &c. Reference will be made here only to the more important other disorders of animals which are of a communicable nature.

Every horseman should know something of the injuries, lamenesses and diseases to which the horse is liable.Unfortunately not very much can be done in this direction by book instruction; indeed, there is generally too much doctoring and too little nursing of sick animals. Even in slight and favourable cases of illness recovery is often retarded by too zealous and injudicious medication; the object to be always kept in view in the treatment of animal patients is to place them in those conditions which allow nature to