the action of Cold on Animals. 121 



illustration of human pathology from the study of the diseases 

 of animals ; and how wrong it is to neglect or despise them. 



The experiments which we have described show that we 

 may form, as it were, morbid phenomena of all kinds, and at 

 pleasure, and that we may stop them when we please after 

 they are formed. 



We may therefore excite and develope in animals the dif- 

 ferent maladies which are observed in man, and, what we can- 

 not do upon him, we can study them upon them in all their 

 actions, in all their phases, and in all their degrees, under the 

 comparative action of medicines the most violent and the most 

 diversified. 



BufFon has said that if ariimals did not exist the nature of 

 man would have been still more incomprehensible. This is par- 

 ticularly true of the nature of his diseases, and it would no 

 doubt be worthy of a nation which has set the first example 

 of so many other useful institutions, to set also that of a simi- 

 lar and truly experimental study of the evils which afflict 

 humanity. It would be worthy of her thus to realize the 

 wish of a great physician, — of Baglivi, who, in the 17th 

 century, proposed establishments in which the diseases of ani- 

 mals might be studied with the view of illustrating and bring- 

 ing to perfection the study of the diseases of man. In or- 

 der to form an idea of what may yet be done in medicine by 

 experiments on animals, we have only to look at what has al- 

 ready been done in physiology. 



Is it not from the experiments of Harvey, Hunter, Haller, 

 Reaumur, Spallanzani, and Bichat, that there has arisen all 

 those discoveries, not less admirable than unexpected, of the 

 circulation of the blood, the course of the lymph, the proper- 

 ty of the nerves to transmit sensibility, the property of the 

 muscles to contract, the action of the gastric fluids in digestion, 

 and the opposite qualities of the red and the black blood, &c. 

 I do not speak of twenty discoveries made in our own dajs; 

 for it is well known that a discovery in order to be admired 

 must be old, and to have, as Father Malebranche expressed 

 it, a venerable beard. 



Every thing should make us hope that the ideas which we 

 have stated respecting the progress which human medicine 



