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ON MYOITIS. 
By Arthur Cherry, M.R.C.V.S. 
“ But many things have prevented me from taking the most fertile ele- 
ment. The entirely abstract education that is given us hardened me for a 
long time. It took many long years to efface the sophist that had been cre- 
ated within me. I came to myself only by shaking off that foreign acces- 
sory ; I have learned to know myself only by negative means.” — Michelet. 
The late Professor Coleman taught that “animals were subject 
but to few diseases,” and used also to dilate upon what he consi- 
dered to be a fact, that “ in a natural or undomesticated state disease 
did not exist that the maladies to which “flesh is heir” were the 
result of being under the dominion of man. Those who knew the 
talented Professor will bear me out in saying, that his easy dic- 
tion and persuasive eloquence were well calculated to carry with 
him the opinions and feelings of men, even upon a subject based 
in error ; and the consequence naturally ensued, that during the 
Professor’s life but very few of his dicta were questioned, and, in 
all probability, years will yet have to elapse before the erroneous- 
ness of many of his opinions will be overcome. Like all others 
who listened to his teaching, I was in early life smitten with the 
Professor’s views on both the dogmas that I have stated, and so 
implicitly believed the dicta, that, in spite of every fact to the con- 
trary, I considered my observations were wrong, not that the dicta 
were fallacious. I shall now, however, confine myself to remarks 
on the first ; viz. the small number of distinct diseases to which 
animals are liable. 
When more close examination and longer inquiry kept reite- 
rating the same results, conviction that I had been pursuing a 
“ will o’ th’ wisp,” at last was forced on me ; and, on summing up 
the results of my observation, I found that my nosology, as re- 
garded variety of disease, was more than doubled, and many vistas 
were opening to view through the dim obscurity that promised to 
add still very largely to the number : some of these have since 
proved that the shadows were cast by bodies having substance, 
and not the mere shadows of the imagination ; others are still being 
explored, and will, doubtless, yield a return to the inquirer. 
I have somewhere read, as an opinion of very high authority, 
that our universities, though indisputably the very foci of learning, 
have spoiled more men than they have made : as a motto I have 
quoted from M. Michelet to the same purport ; for whatever may 
be the school, i. e. the training, to which the bulk of men are sub- 
jected, so will they continue through life — “ the child is the father 
