OF THE OX. 319 



belong to this class. Thus man has not the 

 psora, or itch the disease does not properly 

 belong to him ; the parasite which engenders 

 it is not bred in him, it is always transmitted 

 to him by animals. It is the same with the 

 tcenia, or tape-worm, with the trichina, or fine 

 hair-worm. 



Medical science, instituted on the bases of 

 comparative pathology, would have made the 

 study of diseases in the brute creation, not the 

 collateral, but the principal object of its in- 

 quiries. It would have applied itself to the 

 cure of the lower animals ; and whilst learning 

 to cure them, it would have ensured the cure 

 of men's diseases. 



If such be the case, can any one believe that 

 the treatment of diathetic and hereditary 

 maladies would be, as they still are, insoluble 

 problems ; and that the physician would have 

 the misery of seeing decimated, whilst he help- 

 lessly looks on, a large part of the population, 

 condemned inevitably to die of consumption 

 and cancer ? Would every man smitten with 

 hydrophobia be irrevocably condemned to 

 death ? Assuredly, it would not be so. 



That the physician should have been reduced 



