PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE. 
HR 
HAT one plan of organism runs through the various forms of animal 
\ life is an accepted fact of science. From this fact comes the natural 
=} inference that similarity of organism gives rise to similarity in dis- 
ease and calls for similarity of medicinal treatment. While rapid advance has 
been made in the care and treatment of man, the animals which serve him, 
particularly the horse and ox, are still the victims of the cruel and often 
fatal notion that they require massive doses of drugs. The most skillful 
veterinary practitioners have demonstrated that the horse does not require 
much more medicine or much stronger external applications than an adult 
man, except only when laxatives or anodynes are required. 
The chief defects in previous veterinary books for the masses have been: 
(1) Incomplete directions upon how to know what disease the animal is suf- 
fering from; (2) Disregard of the rational and humane rule that the dumb 
animal is to be treated upon the same principles as man. 
The most casual reader will notice the great care taken in the present 
volume to so fully describe diseases, before prescribing the treatment, as to 
clearly answer that most perplexing of all questions, “What is the matter?” 
Such careful description is the more imperative when two or more ailments 
cy 
are so much alike in symptoms as to be particularly liable to confusion. 
The parallel tables of symptoms—which are now so valuable in medical 
books upon the human family—are freely used in this work. Observation 
being the only means of determining upon the ailment of dumb animals, 
no pains have been spared to provide cuts which illustrate to the eye dis- 
tinctive symptoms which the patient, from lack of speech, cannot explain to 
the ear. 
Full directions having been given to decide what disease affects the ani- 
mal, the application of the humane rule of treatment above laid down is 
consistently observed. 
A separate part, boldly set off, is devoted to each animal treated, thus 
enabling the reader to confine his study to a specific limit when investigat- 
ing the needs of a particular animal, free from the distractions inseparable 
from books in which prescriptions are made for several animals in the same 
iii. 
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