494 PLEURO-PNEUMONIC EPIZOOTIC AMONG CATTLE. 
vails to any extent in any but Cheshire and one or two of the 
adjoining counties, where hundreds have been swept away : if 
such were the case, surely veterinary surgeons in various parts of 
the kingdom would, for the sake of mutual professional welfare, 
have recorded their experience therein in the monthly periodical. 
There may exist with some a fear that, were they to transmit 
their method of treating this affection to a periodical finding its 
way into the libraries of their employers, the tendency would be 
to lessen their professional emoluments : such might in some 
instances be the case ; but on all whose patronage was worth pos- 
sessing, the scientific account of a disease treacherous and varied 
in its attack — its symptoms varying with the extent and degree 
of an organ or organs implicated — requiring the utmost tact of 
the best qualified practitioner to discriminate, would impress 
the belief that he only could safely be consulted in such a situa- 
tion who had been properly taught concerning the structure and 
uses of the parts implicated when in a state of health ; who had 
carefully been taught to watch their invasion by disease imper- 
ceptible to ordinary observers, but appreciated by him in con- 
sequence of possessing, by means of the slightest pathological 
symptom, an index of what was passing in a part with whose 
healthy action and structure he is familiar; and, in addition to 
this, being well acquainted with the most effectual means, reme- 
dial and medicinal, for their relief. How far these indispensable 
requisitions can be fulfilled by persons who know nothing of the 
anatomy or physiology of their patients, the nature of the dis- 
eases they undertake to treat, or the action upon them of medi- 
cines of whose various uses and compositions they are ignorant, 
I leave those, whether owners of cattle or practitioners so called, 
to determine. 
The suggestions of your correspondent Mr. J. Relph, as to whe- 
ther it is not probable that the true seat of the disease now under 
consideration may have been overlooked, are worthy of the utmost 
consideration. 
In many examinations which I have conducted the bowels 
certainly exhibited considerable disease, but not in any case that 
I am aware of, unless violent diarrhoea was present before death, 
which, however, is almost invariably the fact. Now, we are well 
aware that an important office exercised by the lungs is the ex- 
posure, in their substance, of blood, returned from all parts of the 
body charged with carbon, to the action of atmospheric oxygen, 
and a consequent throwing off of the carbonic acid, a return of 
which into the circulation would be injurious. We are also aware 
that the liver is concerned in separating carbon from the blood, 
which, combining with other matters, forms a secretion essential to 
