TEEATMENT. 117 



be confined from the inability of the subject to express its 

 sensations, with the lesions revealed by the autopsy. In this 

 way alone can we find a specific for any epizootic, and we 

 insist, that before any drug can make a fair claim for specifi- 

 city, it should be shown to be capable of at least simulating 

 the major part of the lesions as well as symptoms of the dis- 

 temper to which it claims a therapeutic aftinity. And until 

 such or other more judicious experiments shall have been 

 conducted to a successful issue, the veterinary art will be 

 confined to its present system of palliatives. Every disease 

 will run its course ; and the issue of recovery or death will 

 be determined by the balance between the germinal power 

 of the poison absorbed, and the receptivity of the blood-fluid 

 weakened, or recruited by empirical bungling. 



We have yet in reserve, as before announced, the consider- 

 ation of those remedies, for which it has been claimed that 

 they severally exercise a specific influence in arresting the 

 peculiar ferment of the Pest. Incongruous as the list may 

 seem, they admit of an easy and scientific classification, and 

 may be arranged in three classes : 



1st. Those which are essential or concomitant elements of 

 blood-food, and which may be exhibited to supply the waste 

 of these elements during the progress of the distemper; 

 these as opposing forces may be regarded as anti-catalytic. 



2d. Those which may be supposed to set up a new ferment 

 supplanting the morbid one, and thus act as apo-catalytics. 



3d. Those generally known as antiseptics, which arrest the 

 putrefactive process, by rendering the fluid or tissues, in and 

 on which the ferment is operating, incapable of putrescence 

 — or even of fermentation ; and are thus a-catalytic. 



In this first class, as it is not our purpose to refer to those 

 which are ordinarily embraced under the head of hygienic 

 preparations ; further than to say that Dr. Smart's method of 

 preparing and exhibiting food for the sick animal meets every 

 contingency which the most skillful and assiduous nursing 

 could provide against: we will note a few instances, of which 

 the most important is the Chloride of Sodium, or common 



