DISEASES OF THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM. 
requires the same treatment. In former years the author met with 
but little success in the treatment of this malady, yet recently, oy 
using more mild and sanative agents, he has been very fortunate. 
Bleeding, purging, and blistering has had its day, but that day 
has now past. We have learned that to do violence to the animal 
system is not to do good; and our aim now is to “ pair off” with 
Nature, endeavor to sustain the vital powers, or, rather, by sanative 
medication and nutritious fluids, keep the animal alive, while the 
disease runs its course. Physicians have no power to arrest the 
disease, and those who think so only deceive themselves and their 
employers; and those who attempt the feat of cutting the disease 
short by heroic medicines, are arrayed in hostility to Nature, and 
an unnecessary death is often the consequence. Any of cur readers 
who happen to have great faith in drugs will probably feel little 
comfort in the perusal of the following quotation, uttered by one 
of the 1ost distinguished physicians of France. It was intended 
for the benefit of mankind, but it also applies to veterinary medi- 
eine, simply from the fact that the diseases of animals are to be 
treated on the same general principles which apply to man: 
“The sick-room no longer resembles the sample department of 
of a drug warehouse. Our physicians have consciences and com- 
nion sense. They recognize Nature as the great antagonist of dis- 
‘ ense, and endeavor to assist her in her struggle to expel it, instead 
of negatively helping disease by prostrating the physical strength 
of its victims with drastic cathartics, cantharides, and the lancet. 
To ailments for which gallons of medicine were given half a cen- 
tiry ago, as many ounces are not administered at the present day, 
aad bleeding and blistering have almost fallen into disuse. Not 
long before his death, the great French surgeon, physician, and 
medical chemist, Majendie, told his pupils, in the college of France, 
that the old hospital practice was mere humbug; that he himself 
had prescribed the drugs of the dispensary at the Hotel Dieu, in 
Paris, without having the least idea why or wherefore, and that on 
udministering bread pills and colored water to one division of his 
patients, and the preparations of the pharmacopeeia to another, he 
found that the mortality was least among those who took no medi- 
cine! ‘ You tell me,’ said this extraordinary man, in one of the 
lectures of his final course, ‘ that doctors cure people. I grant you 
people are cured. But how? Gentlemen, Nature does a good 
deal; imagination does a good deal. Doctors do very little. wher 
