674 
REVIEWS. 
Where is the boast of having cut down this and that disease, 
by the abstraction of quarts and gallons of blood, repeated 
again and again, in which we plead guilty, at one stage of our 
professional progress, of having indulged, now ? when not only 
the more reasonable question of how far this system of de- 
pletion can be lessened is constantly discussed, but also the 
extreme one, of how far the fleam and lancet should be alto- 
gether dispensed with. 
Gossiping on this subject at my druggist’s the other day, 
the intelligent gentleman, who formerly travelled for the 
establishment, but is now one of the firm, bore testimony to 
the correctness of these views, in the medical as well as the 
veterinary world, by stating, that when he was on the road, 
some twenty years ago, he used to have entrusted to him, by 
different medical men, every journey, some twenty or thirty 
cases of lancets to have set and sent with their drugs, while 
notv-a-day a request of the kind is rarely or ever made. I 
repeat, therefore, that we are practically becoming homoeo- 
pathists, and whether we take similia similibus curentur , or 
contraria contrariis curentur , as our motto, we are lessening our 
depletions, moderating our doses, and treating our patients on 
a much more rational system. 
There must be some cause, however, for this difference 
in the mode of treatment, otherwise cateris paribus, it would 
have gone on as usual, and this cause is to be found in 
the altered character of diseases, which is now of an 
asthenic rather than of a sthenic nature ; the mucous mem- 
branes suffer more in connection w T ith the serous, and 
the typhoid type will be found the prevalent one of the 
present day ; as a consequence, the active depleting system 
has to be exchanged for a soothing and sustaining one, and 
the treatment in many cases to be considerably modified. 
That these are not the opinions of a mere individual, but 
are becoming recognised as the current data of the day, is 
abundantly proved in the new edition of the 6 Diseases of the 
Chest and Air-passages of the Horse,’ by Mr. Per civall, just 
issued from the press. The clearness and perspicuity of 
arrangement in this volume, the minute description of symp- 
