METHODS OF ELUCIDATING DISEASE. 



CHAPTER II. 



METHODS BY WHICH DISEASE MAY BE ELUCIDATED AND 

 UNDERSTOOD. 



For a correct and compreliensive appreciation of those subjects 

 which together form the department of the practice of medi- 

 cine, human or veterinary, for a sokition of such problems as 

 are presented for our consideration — for problems they often 

 are — there is one, and only one, way of attainment, viz., 

 through the correct cultivation of our powers of observation. 

 We may all of us be observers, we must all of us be observers, 

 if we are successfully to cultivate the practice of veterinary 

 medicine. 



For although I can scarcely acquiesce in the opinion enter- 

 tained by some that to be an observer requires as great a range 

 of faculties as to make a speculative thinker, that to note facts 

 is as lofty a range of intellect as to conceive thought, still 

 there is little doubt that in the science of medicine it is not 

 easy to overestimate the importance of correct observation, 

 seeing it is by pure induction, by the observation of mdividual 

 facts, that we rise to those general inferences which are to us 

 the most comprehensive expressions of attainable truth. 



No doubt facts are of themselves of little worth until asso- 

 ciated with mind ; they must be registered and collated, and 

 except as indices of particular functional or organic changes, 

 and the exact relation which they bear to these, are of com- 

 paratively trifling practical value in advancing the study of 

 clinical or systematic medicine. 



In this study of the 'Practice of Veterinary Medicine,' 

 embracing, as it does, the causation, history, phenomen.al 

 EXHIBITIONS, and treatment of special diseases and disturbed 

 states of the system, these present themselves for our considera- 

 tion in two somewhat different characters or aspects : 



1. As these diseases offer themselves to our notice in sepa- 

 rate, distinct, and individual cases or animals — the so-called 

 clinical study ; 



2. As they form, or constitute, or are gathered or grouped 

 into particular classes or genera of diseases — the systematic 

 study. 



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