ON PUERPERAL FEVER. 
97 
other disease. But if, on the other hand, it be only the "conse- 
quence” of some other disease — in fact, that puerperal fever is 
not fever at all — that it is, as Mr. Friend will have it, a disease of 
the nervous substance — would any body ever dream of employ- 
ing strong purgatives, and pushing the bleeding to such an ex- 
treme point as I did, I may say with complete success ? If any 
one will say it would be good practice, I would only reply, ^that 
there never was a delusion so gross, a hypothesis so ill supported ; 
never was practice so atrocious, and at variance with common 
sense. In a word, it would be a most impudent insult to the com- 
monest understanding. 
I have now but to make a very few observations on Mr. 
Friend’s reply in The Veterinarian for December; and in 
making these I shall not return railing for railing, as such con- 
duct is extremely childish. However, after looking at Mr. F.’s 
six cases, as recorded, I must confess that, keeping his new 
theory out of the question, he has got nothing to boast of ; be- 
cause out of his six cases three of them died . Now, all my three 
recovered, and they were my first three. 
It 'is true, that the secretion of milk was partly destroyed in 
my first two cases ; in the third, the quantity given was not 
afterwards diminished in the least: but if I had treated the dis- 
ease as originating in the nervous system, I am afraid I should 
not only have destroyed the secretion of milk, but life itself. 
But, besides this, Mr. F. is a veterinarian of sixteen years stand- 
ing, and he has seen this disease, I suppose, in all its stages; he 
has had opportunities, too, of finding out the best kind of me- 
dicines which should be given, what their effects had been, &c. 
Now if, after all these advantages — I say advantages — Mr. F. has 
only saved three cows out of six } and yet a raw, half-educated 
youth from the country has saved the first three that were en- 
trusted to his care, surely it may be inferred that the next three 
with which he may be entrusted may be saved by the very same 
mode of treatment — that the owners of the cows may express 
their satisfaction at the results ; and that his teacher may feel 
quite satisfied that the treatment was judicious, because “ all’s 
well that ends well.” 
There is nothing more worthy of notice in Mr. F.’s paper, 
until I arrive at page 683, where he says, “I must now proceed 
to where he quarrels with my opinion, as to the intimate con- 
nexion subsisting between the nerve s, spinal marrow , and brain.” 
I never denied that the most intimate connexion exists between 
the nerves and spinal marrow ; neither did I say that no nerves 
arose from the brain; I only said, that the " organic motor 
nerves” did not arise from that organ ; and I could repeat the 
vol. x. o 
