540 
REVIEW— PERCIVALL ON GLANDERS. 
the rationale of this sort of partiality, our author’s words are our 
own. “ My own experience will not allow me to step out of my 
road to endeavour to account for a fact whose truth is by no means 
confirmed, and which, were there any truth in it, must be admitted 
to be of that extraordinary pathological character that seems to 
defy all attempts at explanation.” 
Another quotation, clear, distinct, and definite as it is, we must 
give of Mr. Perci vall’s idea of the specific nature of glanders : — 
“ Of the nature of the (so-called) virus of glanders we know 
no more than we do concerning the supposed viruses or poisons 
of syphilis, rabies, variolus, vaccinea, &c. : we have the same 
ground for arguing the existence of virus as there’ is for doing so 
in the diseases just named, and no more ; all the knowledge we 
possess in regard to the virus of glanders arising out of the observa- 
tions we have been enabled to make of its operation and effects. 
Indemonstrable, however, as the virus is in any abstract, palpable 
form, yet we have no conception, at least according to the views 
we take of the pathology of glanders, of the existence of the dis- 
ease without its presence. We do not imagine, as we said on a 
former occasion, that simply an unhealthy or ill-conditioned state 
of body can give rise to glanders or farcy. We believe that the 
specific virus must, in some form or another, somewhere or other 
exist.” 
And, having done so, in taking leave we tender him our thanks 
and respects. We are indebted to him for a clear, copious, and 
unbiassed history of the most formidable disease to which the 
horse is liable. He indulges in no one-sided views — in no precon- 
ceived opinions ; but, after fairly and fully discussing the subject, 
gives us in plain and intelligible language the results at which he 
has arrived respecting it. Would authors in general adopt the 
same straightforward plan ; would the diffusion of truth be their 
object instead of the dissemination of crude and ill -digested theo- 
ries, veterinary science might not make more rapid, but, certainly, 
more correct and solid advances ; for one tedious task, at least, 
would be spared us, — that of having to unlearn, as we get older 
and wiser, much that we had learnt when younger and more easy 
of belief. 
OBITUARY. 
On the 10th of June, suddenly, of apoplexy, at Allahabad, 
East Indies, William Wilkinson Barth, Esq., Veterinary Sur- 
geon to the 9th Light (Native) Cavalry, aged 28. 
Mr. Barth was formerly Demonstrator at the London Vete- 
rinary College. 
