2 INTRODUCTION. 



phenomena, a fortiori, do the same. Life, 

 throughout the whole range of the animal 

 kingdom, whatever may be its changes and 

 fluctuations, submits to the fixed and in- 

 variable laws which hold dominion over health 

 and disease. Our presumption and ignorance 

 alone can account for the astonishment we 

 manifest, not only when we witness great 

 general calamities, but even when we look 

 upon those simple morbid derangements which 

 organic matter, both animal and vegetable, is 

 continually undergoing on the globe, in the 

 natural progress of destruction and dissolution. 

 The habit we most of us have contracted of 

 confining our observations to the phenomena 

 which strike our eyes, instead of fixing them 

 on the general causes by which these phe- 

 nomena have been produced ; the forgetfulness 

 of some, in others the want of acquaintance 

 with general and comparative pathology, have 

 in this instance led many conscientious in- 

 quirers to misapprehend both the nature and 

 the treatment of the cattle complaint. It is 

 in vain that we have subdivided and classed 

 medical science in vain that we have arbi- 

 trarily instituted a veterinary medicine and a 



