TREATMENT. 107 



to the dumb creation. Besides the driig-provings which have 

 been made on the liuman race, cannot with any certainty, or 

 in some cases, even of probability be transferred to the brute 

 races. This is more especially true of the ruminant orders, 

 whose complex arrangement of the digestive organs would 

 render the disparity of symptoms relating to the functions of 

 assimilation, and of the reflex action upon the brain and cord 

 from the direct influence of drugs acting upon the stomachic 

 apparatus, more than probable, ^o such result might how- 

 ever be expected, when once the influence of the drug was 

 felt, after it had been absorbed and entered into the blood 

 circulation. Besides, as in this disease the function of the 

 first and second stomachs is quite suspended, and medicines 

 carelessly administered (especially in large quantities) and 

 thrown into the paunch, are as inert as if lying in their origi- 

 nal packages; so it might happen in the administration of 

 different drugs to obtain their provings, that different results 

 would follow if these were thrown into the first or the fourth 

 stomach. And after all, what could we know of their symp- 

 tomatic indications so pregnant of suggestion in the various 

 morbid states of the human subject, derived from provings on 

 a nervous expanse, not only so delicate as to register at once 

 every, the most trivial departure from the normal state, but 

 so secure and protected in such registry as to confirm it by 

 an unequivocal and audible tell-tale ; — what could we know 

 except by the loosest inference, when we seek the same intel- 

 ligence from those to whom nature denies the power of speech. 

 Hence, we are thrown upon the more tardy method of watch- 

 ing our provings of medicaments introduced into the system 

 of any animal, by experiments on those doomed to slaughter, 

 or massing the drugs, and leaving the proving to go on until 

 death supervenes. So that not only as Dr. Pope remarks — 



" Any nicety in the selection of a medicine to meet a particular 

 case, seems well nigh impossible." 



^but all our reliable knowledge of the various scope of drugs 

 irritative or destructive of nerve or tissue, alterative of the 

 blood structures for a brief period, or exerting power until the 



