322 
SPLENIC DISEASE. 
of peculiarities of system and diseases which, among animals 
in a state more in accordance with nature, are not observed. 
Within the last ten years great advances have been made 
in veterinary as well as medical science and art. It is ques- 
tionable, however, whether, with all our progress, we have 
been able to keep pace with the times in the treatment and 
prevention of the diseases thus artificially produced. 
As instances of disease in the vegetable kingdom, we may 
mention the vine, potato, and turnip diseases. According to 
Schleiden, “ plants in a high state of cultivation are more or 
less in a condition predisposed to disease. There is an un- 
natural and excessive development of particular structures or 
particular substances, and thus, the equilibrium being de- 
stroyed, the plants are liable to suffer from injurious external 
influences. The general morbid condition produced by cultiva- 
tion is heightened into specific predisposition to disease when 
the conditions of cultivation are opposed too strongly or too 
suddenly to those of nature. 
The same may be said of animals that are placed under 
conditions far different from those destined by nature for their 
healthy development and propagation. And account for the 
fact how we may, it forces itself painfully upon our notice, 
that diseases, the effects of domestication, such as black- 
quarter in cattle and sheep, parturient and splenic apoplexy, 
are conditions of body arising out of the manner of feeding, 
and which induces peculiar and ill-understood blood-changes 
which are inimical to the continuance of life. 
The reciprocal influence of the diseases of plants and ani- 
mals has not received the attention it demands. We know 
that some of the diseases of man and animals are intimately 
related with famines and unwholesome food, and that famines 
are due more to diseases of vegetable and animal life than to 
destruction or loss of food. The records of history furnish 
numerous examples of periods of blights in the vegetable 
kingdom, associated with epizootics and epidemics ; but, as 
we are not likely to suffer from blights involving famine, we 
need not allude to them. 
The attention of pathologists has not been sufficiently 
directed to opposite conditions than those entailed by famine 
or deficiency of food, which seem to obtain so much at 
present, and to he yearly increasing — diseases induced by 
manner of feeding, system of culture, quantity and quality 
of food. 
The enzootic diseases of various districts — to say nothing 
of epizootics of various countries — are not sufficiently known 
or studied according to their importance and prevalence. The 
