SCOTTISH METROPOLITAN VETERINARY MEDICAL SOCIETY. 167 
blood. The prosecution of the subject bids fair to clear up many 
obscure points in pathology. 
On Diseases of the Glands and Absorbents we need not dwell. 
With scrofula prevention is yet the best cure. The principal others 
are weed, glanders, and farcy. Cases of weed we can generally 
manage easily. Glanders has almost disappeared — a good example 
of what may be done with contagious diseases. Farcy now and 
then shows itself ; but owing to better agents for purifying the 
blood and other means, its ravages are more easily checked and 
circumscribed. 
On Diseases of the Urinary and Generative Organs , also, we will 
not enter. Somehow I have not been brought much into contact 
with them. Diuresis, of course, I have often met with. With 
bloody urine and haemorrhage from the uterus we have had to 
do, have seen the penis fearfully diseased, and helped to amputate 
a part of it ; but anything else has been mainly in connection with 
castration and parturition. More frequent testing of the urine 
might, however, assist our diagnosis, and show us that disease or 
functional derangement of these organs exists more frequently than 
we imagine. The various methods of castration and their conse- 
quences and the different phases of parturition are favorite sub- 
jects with us as students, and in practice we find the benefit of 
them. Our knowledge of the organs, however, I think, should be 
more minute than it generally is. Give a man his knowledge at 
College, and if he does not afterwards succeed it will be his own 
fault. According to the head and hands he has got will be his 
success or failure. 
Along with parturition such disorders as puerperal fever in its 
various forms and inflammation of the udder present themselves. 
These are still frequent and unwelcome visitors of our byres. The 
former, however, I think, we now understand and treat better, 
cases of recovery being not unfrequent. While in those chronic 
states of induration of the udder in which the animal dies from 
symptomatic fever amputation might, in some cases, be attempted 
with success. 
Diseases of the Nervous System. — Of the brain, spinal chord, 
nerves, and their diseases, I think we confess that, though we know 
something, we would like to know much more. Tetanus, partial para- 
lysis, and some others, we occasionally treat successfully, yet we judge 
of them more from their effect than from any knowledge we possess 
of their real nature and cause. Comparatively ignorant of the 
structure and functions of the organs, we can scarcely expect to 
understand their diseases. 
While admitting the difficulty of the subject, however, I think 
our acquaintance with the anatomy and physiology of the nervous 
system, so far as these are known, is not so good as it might be. 
I admit that I have never dissected these organs under disease with 
satisfaction. Congestion of the brain and abscess in one of the 
hemispheres, chronic disease of the base of the brain, and such like, 
1 have seen, and could easily detect ; but with the brain, spinal 
