ON CLINICAL MEDICINE. 
171 
to the termination ; and even clinical lectures on new or in- 
teresting cases are attended on by not half of those who are found 
in the theatres of anatomy, surgery, and the practice of medi- 
cine. This, however, is slowly changing, and the interest and 
the duty of the student will, ere long, be better understood. 
How stands the case in the schools of veterinary medicine ? In 
the College and its neighbourhood are able teachers of anatomy : 
the form, the situation, and the structure of the different parts of 
the frame are well explained ; their relations and their func- 
tions are traced, yet often too much as matters of curiosity 
and of general physiological science, than as applicable to the 
treatment of disease. A long succession of lectures are delivered, 
and many a beautiful, and many a fanciful theory developed, 
and zealously and eloquently enforced ; but the deviations from 
Health, which it will be the duty of the student to combat and 
remove, are comparatively rarely heard of ; and the attendance at 
the stall of the patient, and the laboured and scrutinizing exami- 
nation of the horses that die, are comparatively neglected. It is 
true, that on every morning the patients in the hospital are exa- 
mined in the presence of the pupils ; but there is not the graphic 
delineation of the changing features and character of the disease, — 
there is not the succinct, but lucid and satisfactory explanation 
of the modification or change of treatment, — there is not the 
prophetic glance at what the morrow will probably produce — the 
plain-speaking, eloquent symptoms, whether refernble to the 
countenance, the membranes, the pulse, or the respiration, are not 
seized and descanted on. This is not spoken altogether in 
censure. It was long in being established in other schools — it is 
not established now in many — it is not established to its full extent 
in any of them — but it is that which must be established sooner or 
later in every school. Lectures are very excellent things ; they give 
a general view of medical science — an orderly representation of the 
extent and importance of the art; but “thev are introductory — 
and only introductory. They are introductory to knowledge that 
must be acquired by other means;” — a knowledge of diseases in 
their actual character and in all their forms ; — ** an acquaintance 
with remedies in all their kinds, and with all their varying appli- 
cation ; — a knowledge that can only be attained by intercourse, 
continual intercourse, with diseased animals — with all their modes 
of acting, and of moving, and of suffering, and of dying.” 
It is interesting to hear a scientific lecture ; but the student 
would soon acquire a deeper interest in this study. There is a 
variety in it — a gratification of the quick, and curious, and rest- 
less spirit of science — an excitement at first, and then a pleasure, 
and then the deliberate choice of the mind. And the reward ? — 
