9 
REVIEW. 
Quid sit puichrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non. — H or. 
TWENTY-SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE ROYAL 
SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO 
ANIMALS. 1852. 
No nobler object was ever attributed to medicine, no 
greater compliment paid to its professors, than when it was 
said, that the most admired improvements made in the 
science were those which had tended to the removal of dis- 
ease and the alleviation of pain, by means comparatively 
mild and painless in their operation, or such as were of a 
nature to supersede operations, cruel in their performance 
and destructive in their character. In human medicine, the 
saving of a limb or an eye does the surgeon infinitely more 
credit than the cleverest performance of any operation, re- 
moving or mutilating such parts, can possibly reflect upon 
him ; whilst, in veterinary medicine, any substitute for the 
hot iron, or for the knife, is at all times a feather in the 
practitioner’s cap. It is true, since chloroform has shed its 
blessings upon human surgery, that operations are robbed of 
half their terrors; and that though the same anesthetic 
charm be not so practicable with animals as with men, yet 
can even they be spared, under painful operations, many a 
pang and many a struggle. The Veterinary Art, as prac- 
tised at the present day, has no less reason to be proud of 
its superiority of power to eradicate disease and remove 
lameness than it has of the comparative mildness of the 
remedies it employs: added to the absence of any tendency 
they may have to work mischief instead of good; which 
could not be said of the unscientific, and too often barbarous* 
means made use of under the denomination of “ remedies” in 
the practice of the (C farriery” of former days. No longer 
are the sound sensitive soles of horses’ feet wrenched from 
the bones they furnish the natural coverings to, (an opera" 
xxvi. 2 
