REVIEWS. 
673 
anything wrong, and that no exertions would be wanting on 
his part to prevent fraud or imposition, and secure the pro- 
tection as w ell as the confidence of the public. 
REVIEWS. 
Quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non. — H or. 
The Diseases of the Chest and Air-passages of the Horse. 
By William Percivall, m.r.c.s. & v.s. A New Edition , 
thoroughly revised, with extensive additions. 8vo, pp. 224. 
Longman and Co. — London , 1853. 
The medical fashion of the day most decidedly is Homoe- 
opathy; and never was a fashion, on the one hand,— stretched 
to a more extreme point, becoming not only “ fine by degrees 
and beautifully less,” but being carried to that minute degree of 
attenuation, as at last to make us doubt the truth of the axiom, 
ex nihilo nihil fit ;' — nor, on the other, been more caustically 
treated by the stinging shafts of sarcasm and ridicule — w hich 
of these two extremes may be right, ee w ho shall decide when 
doctors disagree,” but fully coinciding in the maxim of this 
most utilitarian age, that 6( the better part of valour is discre- 
tion,” w r e are content to believe that in medio tutissimus ibis. 
One fact, how r ever, is incontrovertible, — that the great bulk 
of practitioners, both human and veterinary, are rapidly be- 
coming practical homoeopathists. Is there a practitioner now 
in existence, removed from the lowest grade, who w r ould think 
of giving the huge farragos of heterogeneous matters that were 
daily administered some twenty or thirty years ago? Nay 
more, where are the practitioners who would give the more 
scientific but over-charged doses, which they, some ten or 
fifteen years since, administered ? and we may go yet further, 
and inquire where is the practitioner who does not, — ipstead 
of trying how large a dose of this or that medicament he can 
employ, — carefully ascertain, and well weigh the effect of, the 
smallest doses, by which any given effects can be produced. 
87 
XXVI. 
