DISEASES OP THE OX AND SHEEP. 403 



pleteness of the gaiety and fashion of a city, itself the centre of 

 fashionable life, who can say where their conscious existences — 

 where their souls have gone ! Who, in thinking of Life and 

 Death, can realise either the one or the other ? Who can picture 

 the unfathomable mysteries presented by this world and its 

 inhabitants ? We look around, and on every side and in every 

 distant corner the same huge mysterious uncertainty presents 

 itself, and unless one has the immense power which attaches 

 itself to a faith in the good destiny of mankind, all life looks 

 like a hideous mockery, and the Universe presents the appear- 

 ance of a gigantic panorama of fraud and phantasms, a fitful 

 and most perplexing image of desperate folly, dreadful strife, and 

 cruel misery, and unmeaning, empty, and fleeting joy. 



A man, apparently in the heyday of youth and spirits, rides 

 out on a bicycle soon after a heavy meal, and probably a pipe or 

 two of tobacco. He ascends a rather steep hill, is seen to fall, 

 and is picked up, a lifeless corpse. His heart has stopped, owing 

 to a degre* of exertion which it was not powerful enough to with- 

 stand. .Again, a man is found dead in a railway carriage. What 

 is the cause of death ? He had run swiftly to catch the train. 

 His heart was weak, and it could not bear the strain put upon 

 it. Such cases as these are indeed quite common — cases, we 

 mean, in which people have died from stoppage of the heart's 

 action. Indeed, when the heart is weakened with disease, a 

 degree of exertion, which in the general way would not seriously 

 damage the constitution, will kill ; whereas, if such strains are 

 avoided, the man or animal, as the case may be, might live for 

 years and years. 



Much time and labour are necessary in order to enable one to 

 become conversant with diseases connected with the heart and 

 blood-vessels in every class of animals, and it is of importance 

 that investigation should be conducted in regard to this subject, • 

 not only in the case of animals suffering from disease, but also 

 in that of those which are in a slate of health. Indeed, the 

 physician does, as a matter of fact, expend an immense amount 

 of care and time in the acquisition of the necessary skill and 

 judgment, and every day that comes probably he will have a 

 great number of patients who suffer from temporary or permanent 

 derangement of these most important organs of the body. 



Manifestly it i^ very* different in the case of the lower animals; 



26 * 



