EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
671 
taken the pains to accumulate all the facts which belong to 
its history. Over and over again we have been able to 
obtain very useful information up to a certain point, and 
then all has become vague and undefined. A man of many 
years* experience in a district will speak in general terms 
of the progress of the disease, its comparative fatality 
and period of duration, but in reference to any dozen 
centres of infection, he cannot tell how many days inter- 
vened between the attacks, the development of the disease 
in animals of different ages, or the precise period when re- 
covered animals have been allowed to associate with a 
healthy herd without communicating the infection. It may 
appear that these are points of inferior importance ; which 
admitting without cavil, it nevertheless remains clear that 
they, with the many other points of higher importance, 
ought to be definitely known, and so recorded as to be easy 
of reference, by the veterinary surgeons in every district in 
the country. 
Veterinary medical associations might, if they acted in 
concert with the central society, do an incalculable amount 
of work in the right direction without abandoning what is 
really rather recreation than work, the reading of papers for 
discussion. They might, for example, select certain diseases, 
as exudative pleuro-pneumonia, splenic apoplexy, and other 
forms of blood diseases, and investigate them exhaustively 
with the aid of their members living in districts where those 
affections are rife. The inquiry would have to be con- 
ducted upon a uniform system — each man must know his 
work and be prepared to do it thoroughly, and all expres- 
sions of opinion must be ruthlessly struck out of the 
reports, while all the facts relating to the natural history of 
the district, including geology, botany, and meteorology, 
must be carefully arranged and classified. Every fact con- 
nected with the origin, progress, symptoms, products, and 
termination of the diseases would, of course, be conscien- 
tiously recorded, and the natural result would be that in a 
few years we should possess a complete history of many 
affections which are now only spoken of, with hesitation, as 
obscure maladies. 
