VETERINARY SCHOOL AT ALFORT. 
153 
with this drug justify us in attributing to it a sufficiently powerful 
influence to rely upon its arresting the course of pneumonia, if em- 
ployed alone and without the addition of bleeding? 
23. This question still remains to be solved. Notwithstand- 
ing the numerous experiments made on the point this year, we 
do not yet feel capable of returning any definite answer. It is par- 
ticularly in the appreciation of the effects of a drug when applied 
to the animal economy that the proverb, experientia fallax expe- 
rimentum difficile, is verified. 
The problem to be solved is one of the most complex, and, if not 
carefully studied, if each of its data are not separately weighed 
and estimated at its own proper value, we are liable to fall into 
great delusions, draw false inferences, and arrive at wrong con- 
clusions. Thus, for example, in order to appreciate the influence 
of tartarised antimony on the treatment of pneumonia in the horse, 
we must have it in our power to try the effect of this drug, admi- 
nistered by itself, and isolated from all other therapeutic means, on 
the patient ; and, in studying the phenomena consecutive on the 
administration of the antimonial salt, due allowance must be made 
for the breed, age, sex, and constitution of the patient ; his actual 
state, which will give some idea of the resistive power of his or- 
ganization ; the data and extent of the disease, the treatment which 
has already been resorted to, &c., &c. ; all of which circumstances 
impress a special and distinctive character on the diseases observed 
in different individuals. 
Nor ought one single experiment made under any of the con- 
ditions above enumerated to be regarded as conclusive : it is only 
when each has been several times repeated, and when, by an ob- 
servation of the phenomena under similar circumstances, we have 
noted a certain consistency in the results ; it is then, and only then, 
that we may be allowed to lay down any definite conclusions 
based on the facts thus carefully observed. But in by far the 
greater number of cases it is impossible to pursue a course of the- 
rapeutic experiments with this exactitude. 
When a patient is placed under your care, a conscientious feel- 
ing of duty compels you to have recourse to those modes of 
treatment the efficacy of which have been demonstrated by expe- 
rience : it is but as secondarily that you can try the effect of those 
agents whose therapeutic influence is doubtful ; and the action of 
these secondary means being confounded with the primary treat- 
ment, and with the salutary effects of the healing influence of 
nature, it becomes difficult if not impossible, amid this confusion, to 
assign to each of the therapeutic agents you have employed its own 
peculiar share in the result produced. 
In pneumonia, for instance, the first indication which presents 
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