464 
Foot-and-Mouth Disease. 
veterinary science pleads incapacity, and recommends the 
poleaxe. 
Human plagues are in fact as incurable as cattle plagues, but 
the human doctor never deems it his duty to force his convictions 
of this truth on mankind, nor indeed to utter them at all, save in 
hesitant vifhisperings in the select circles of his scientific asso- 
ciates ; hence, while the two divisions of medicine are on a par 
in regard to the effects which they can produce on the progress of 
epidemic and epizootic diseases, the practitioners of the two 
systems have become widely separated by the acceptance on each 
side of entirely opposite principles ; one rejoicing in the belief 
that there is hope always while there is life, the others gloomily 
accepting the proposition that there is no hope but in death. 
Whether or not veterinary surgeons were morally bound to 
publish their incapacity to cure, and in the interests of the 
country to recommend killing, is a point for the moral philosopher 
to determine ; there can be no question of the error of policy 
thus committed, and the censure which the profession has 
incurred is a just reward for the deliberate abandonment of its 
true position. 
In the true sense of the word all diseases are susceptible 
of cure, that is, of careful attention ; but according to the usual 
acceptation of the term, only those maladies which can be 
arrested in their course — cut short, in fact, before they attain 
their full development — can be called curable. To use a familiar 
subject by way of illustration, — small-pox is by most persons 
considered to be a curable disease ; its fatal character is 
admitted ; nevertheless, various plans of treatment are tried 
with more or less success, that is to say with more or less 
disturbance of the average of fatality. Formerly, hot rooms 
and spare diet were deemed necessary to the cure ; now, plenty 
of cool, pure air and nutritious food are deemed essential, and 
under the improved system of treatment, in which medicine 
plays a secondary part, the recoveries are far more numerous 
than they were under the old method. Still the affection passes 
through its various stages of incubation, invasion, vesication, 
pustulation, and desiccation, as though no medical interference 
were attempted. The disease is not arrested ; on the contrary, 
the greatest care is given to facilitate its development, on the 
clear understanding that the interruption of the external expres- 
sion of the disease in the form of a specific eruption, means 
retention of the poison, and deadly injury to the organism. 
A distinction is to be drawn between the cure of a disease by 
the employment of an actually antagonistic agency, and the re- 
covery of the patient under the careful attention of the physician 
who has watched, and in some degree guided, the malady 
