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REVIEW — SPONGIO-PILINE. 
paragraphs than we had meditated taking from it. We felt we 
had transgressed, and yet we felt an unwillingness to abridge or to 
curtail ; knowing that, in all probability, this notice would for ever 
close our pages to the honoured memory and departed worth of the 
veterinarian, — M oorcroft. 
Spongio-Piline. 
Whilst surgeons are engaged in experiments on any and every 
new invention that may happen to be introduced to their notice as 
in any way promising to be auxiliary to the healing art, it would, 
indeed, be a shame were veterinary surgeons to be found idle or 
standing still in this respect — ignorant or indifferent about what, 
in the world of improvement, was going on as applicable to their 
own art. We trust such is not the case. On the contrary, we 
entertain little doubt but that there are many veterinarians who, 
like ourselves, have already put to trial the above-named novel 
substance, desirous of eliciting its properties and uses. For 
our own part, we feel it our duty to say something about it, not- 
withstanding, as we must confess, our experiments with it have 
neither been so multiplied nor so varied as we could have wished. 
Spongio-Piline is a newly invented substance, consisting — as 
its name implies — in a mixture of sponge and wool felted together, 
spread out, and afterwards coated on one side with a plaster of 
caoutchouc, which forms a sort of foundation for the felting, and 
at the same time renders it, on the side coated, impervious to wet 
or steam. As will probably suggest itself from this cursory de- 
scription, spongio-piline much resembles sheep’s skin, the cutis 
representing the india-rubber foundation, while for the wool is sub- 
stituted the spongio-piline ; and thus, while one side is a pilous, 
and, consequently, an imbibing and retaining surface, the other 
is a smooth and an impermeable one ; and for these reasons has it 
become a substitute for poultices and fomentations, and, as such, 
has for some months past been in use in several of our metropolitan 
hospitals. Now, supposing that it be found as efficacious as poul- 
ticing and fomenting, we need not tell veterinarians of the great 
