ON CLINICAL MEDICINE. 
173 
self-taught man must necessarily be slow, and his conclusions 
often fallacious. The shades of distinction between the different 
low murmuring sounds are not soon recognized and classed by 
him ; but if they were taught him by one to whom practice had 
made them familiar — by one of the professors of his school — the 
time would not be far distant when the chest of the horse would 
be as accurately explored as that of the human being ; a circum- 
stance of immense importance, not only with reference to the 
detection and treatment of disease, but the determination of 
the soundness and the usefulness of the horse. 
The following extract, in which we have made a very few alte- 
rations, in order to adapt the advice more closely to the situation 
of the veterinary student, will probably induce him to become 
better acquainted with the work : — 
“ During the first three or four months record nothing — use your obser- 
vation to the utmost — be continually in the stables, looking at and examin- 
ing the patients. Be listening perpetually with your bare ears at the chest, 
that you may become familiar with the sounds of healthy respiration, and the 
healthy contractions of the heart ; and compare these with the sounds emit- 
ted from the chests of others labouring under certain recognized diseases. 
Accustom yourselves to feel the pulse. The number of its beats is easily 
measured ; but it has qualities which are referrible only to the sensations of 
him who feels it, and you must educate your touch to the discrimination of 
them ; for these qualities, much more than the mere number of pulsations, will 
serve to guide you in the detection of disease and the method of treating it. 
The membrane of the nose, too, must often be studied before you will be 
able to understand the various and the faithful hints which it gives. I am 
not now making any orderly enumeration of symptoms, but I am instancing 
a few cardinal points, with which practice will soon make you a little familiar, 
and enable you to appreciate the information they are calculated to convey.” 
There is one easily besetting sin of young men, and, of veteri- 
nary pupils far more than those of the medical profession, and that 
for reasons which need not now to be more distinctly alluded to, on 
which the author’s observations are singularly appropriate : — 
“ Time and diligence, and constant attendance on the sick, if you 
have but an impartial and honest mind, will enable you to lay up 
a large and useful store of genuine facts, and to draw from it as the 
treasury of your future knowledge. I say an impartial and honest 
mind, because it is remarkable how apt some little favourite theo- 
ry is to get early possession of the student’s imagination, rendering 
him unconsciously dishonest in the simple reception of facts. It 
is like some little favourite sin in our moral nature, which taints 
the character of the whole man. 
“A premature desire to generalize, and a disposition to rest in 
them, are very common infirmities, and they offer very serious 
hindrances to the right acquisition of facts ; for if the early habit 
of theorizing do not altogether estrange the mind of the student 
