THE PROGRESS OF VETERINARY SCIENCE. 
405 
their causes, as if the science had been founded on observation 
and experience alone, and the application of a number 
of specifics believed to cure them. Now it begins to 
assume a more philosophical aspect. Attempts to theorise 
on the phenomena of disease are observable, and have led 
those who glory in styling themselves practical men to sneer 
at all modern advances in pathology. 
Until lately it was imagined that the chief, if not the only 
method of obtaining skill in art is by practising it ; that is, 
obtaining experience* In medicine this is proverbial, and 
every practitioner is more apt to boast of his experience than of 
his scientific knowledge* At one time a diploma to practise 
the art could be got after a three months’ attendance at col- 
lege ; now three years are considered barely sufficient to get 
posted up to the present state of science, which is now ad- 
vanced beyond art, even working out details, and making art 
obedient to her commands. 
Only a few years ago some veterinarians of high standing 
professed to hold a specific for “ broken wind now we have 
learned dissertations on its phenomena, which tell pretty 
clearly that a radical cure has yet to be found. From our 
advanced knowledge of physiology, diagnosis is gradually 
becoming more and more perfect, and by the use of instru- 
ments and chemical tests, which bring morbid structures 
into more intimate relation with the senses, it is losing its 
conjectural character, and approaching an exactitude to which 
the practitioners of a former period were altogether strangers. 
It is recorded that some of the former teachers at the London 
Veterinary College used to instruct their pupils to carry 
about with them- a small trocar and canula, to pierce through 
the intercostal muscles (in the absence of the owner or his 
groom), to ascertain if the chest contained fluid, in order to 
give a correct diagnosis. Now the sounds of the chest have 
been studied and simplified, and are known by almost every 
tyro ; at least the symptoms of hydrothorax are easily recog- 
nised without having recourse to such procedure. 
Recent advances in diagnosis and pathology have not 
failed to suggest the reasonableness or unreasonableness of 
former modes of treatment ; for when the principles which 
guided our predecessors were shown to be incorrect, there 
was every reason to suppose that their practice was incorrect 
also. In nothing is this more apparent than in the treat- 
ment of diseases, such as influenza, pleuro-pneumonia epi- 
zootica, and other blood diseases of a similar kind ; in short, 
the almost complete abandonment of the antiphlogistic 
method and the establishment of a more rational and suc- 
29 
XLIV. 
