viii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 



method from this test, there will necessarily result a narrowness in 

 therapeutic methods. 



A second difficulty in the preparation of a text-book on general 

 therapeutics is the abundance of material. One must here choose 

 between a broad, voluminous discussion or a short, concise pres- 

 entation. I am fully aware of the advantages and disadvantages 

 of the two plans. I decided that this book should be as concise 

 as possible, because, for one reason, among others, we already have 

 in our veterinary literature a large and valuable text-book on 

 therapeutics (EUenberger), in which the assistance of nature in 

 healing and the history of therapeutics especially are given a large 

 amount of space. Therefore, I have limited my discussion of the 

 subject to a presentation of artificial assistance. 



There are yet to be subjoined some observations concerning the 

 relations between veterinary curative methods and those of human 

 medicine. There can be no doubt that in veterinary medicine we 

 have derived very many, if not the most, of our therapeutic con- 

 ceptions from human medicine. But it may not also be known 

 that there are several curative methods peculiar to veterinary 

 medicine, as, for instance, blisters, the actual cautery, lactagogues 

 and ruminatorics; and that some methods, as vaccination and dis- 

 infection, are much more extensively employed in veterinary 

 than in human medicine. The prophylactic measures also show, 

 as is well known, a greater stage of development, especially in 

 reference to combating epidemics (sanitary laws), in the domain 

 of veterinary medicine than in that of human medicine, in which 

 in our day preparations were first made for the formulation of sani- 

 tary laws. On the other hand, different highly developed curative 

 methods in human medicine can never obtain practical considera- 

 tion in veterinary medicine, — ^for example, pneumotherapy, bal- 

 neotherapy, climatotherapy, mechanotherapy, orthopaedics, sug- 

 gestive therapy, etc. Those who are interested in these subjects 

 must be referred to the text-books on General Therapeutics by 

 Ziemssen, A. Hoffman, and others. 



Finally, in justification of the introduction of the numerous 



etymological footnotes into the book, I may remark that on 



account of the strangeness of many of the therapeutic terms a short 



explanation seemed to me to be necessary in the interest of students. 



Berlin. E. Frohnek. 



