PREFACE, 



A REPRINT of this section of ^Hippopathology^ has 

 become necessary, not only from the circumstance of the 

 first impression being exhausted, but from the subject being 

 a class of diseases which, in their medical treatment, have 

 undergone changes so remarkable that practitioners hardly 

 suppose they are treating the same complaints. Indeed, 

 the practice of medicine in regard to them has experienced 

 a reformation so essentially necessary to meet their altered 

 character, that it is not too much to say, the ^^mode of 

 cure^^ set down for them in works but a few years old is 

 found at the present day, in comparison with the new one, 

 to be not only inapplicable, but positively harmful. 



The most glorious improvements of which medicine can 

 boast in our own age are, unquestionably, those which, 

 through its judicious administration, save persons from 

 operations with the terrific knife: surgeons now-a-days being 

 oftentimes able to efi'ect that by simple, safe, and compara- 

 tively innocent remedies, which in former days could, in the 

 judgment of their predecessors, be accomplished only by some 

 complex and dangerous procedure. Likewise^ in veterinary 

 medicine, horses are now preserved and restored to their 

 owners uuder the prudential management of the veterinary 



