690 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
these influences succumb. The veterinary surgeon under 
these circumstances recommends the employment of disin- 
fectants, not because he has to deal with an infectious 
disease, but because the agents which are employed as disin- 
fectants exert a generally purifying influence upon all 
bodies, solid, fluid, or gaseous which are in a septic condition. 
Is it desirable to arrest fermentation or putrefaction, to 
destroy organic matter in solution, to kill animal or vege- 
table parasites, or to neutralize offensive odours ? Some of 
the class of disinfectants are required to do duty for all these 
purposes, and they do it effectually. If the professional 
man wishes to be consistent and does not fear to be called 
pedantic, he may term the agent at one time a disinfectant, 
when he prescribes it in foot-and-mouth disease or pleuro- 
pneumonia ; an antizymotic, when he uses it to arrest 
fermentation ; an antiseptic, if he seeks to prevent putrefac- 
tion, but in each case the same general intention is apparent. 
The object is to destroy or neutralize by chemical means 
some noxious principle which will infect the animal system 
with a fatal disease, which is not infectious because it does 
not pass from one animal to another, yet owes its origin 
to poison floating, perhaps, in air or water, instead of in the 
secretions of the animal body. 
There can be no doubt that much of the misunderstanding 
which commonly exists between scientific and unscientific 
men, depends upon the unnecessary employment of terms 
which recommend themselves by their sonorous tone rather 
than by their general utility. 
It is not possible, perhaps, to express ourselves in techni- 
cal language so as to be at all times intelligible to the 
uninitiated, but in so far as scientific terms are a bar to 
correct expression they are objectionable. Science has 
nothing to gain by seeking to be mysterious. Whatever 
words are capable of conveying ideas in the most exact and 
definite form are the best words for use under all circum- 
stances. We do not decry the use of technical terms when 
they are necessary, but we hold that upon those who use 
them liberally lies the onus of proving their superiority over 
the language of common life. In microscopic observations 
