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ANIMAL PATHOLOGY. 
These inquiries lead us to the observation of nature in its most 
perfect form. They unfold to us, with tolerable accuracy, the 
principles of health ; but they often leave us to guess, and wildly 
too, at that which is our especial object of concern — the cause of 
disease, and the means by which it may be alleviated. The 
comparative anatomist and physiologist sees every thing in 
health; the comparative pathologist studies them in disease, and 
traces the influence of a thousand agents in producing and modi- 
fying disease, and all varying with the structure and food and 
habits of the animal. Who does not see the importance of this ? 
The medical philosopher has often wished that the maladies, 
as well as the structure and physiology of all living beings, could 
be united in one course of instruction ; for it would enable him 
to arrive at a profound knowledge of the laws and operations of 
nature ; but who is equal to these things ? Who has had the 
opportunity of observing and studying the phenomena of health 
and disease on a sufficiently extensive scale ; or who can treat of 
the diseases of every being endowed with life with that true and 
enlarged spirit of philosophy which such a subject requires ? 
The individual who now addresses you has, in the course of 
more than twenty years’ extensive practice on the diseases of all 
domesticated animals, and, during the last three years, in the 
medical care of the menagerie of the Zoological Society of Lon- 
don, enjoyed advantages for entering on the consideration of this 
hitherto neglected subject which have fallen to the lot of few, 
or, perhaps, he may say of no man. That he may not, that he 
lias not, fully availed himself of these advantages he deeply 
feels; but they have entailed on him an obligation which he 
must attempt to discharge. He dares not to call these lectures a 
course of comparative pathology, for to the diseases of the human 
being he must direct but a rapid and hesitating glance; yet to 
them he must occasionally allude in order to render his subject 
complete. He terms them, at present, Lectures on Animal Patho- 
logy; but when the subject comes into abler hands, and a little 
more of the prejudice against the quadruped patient is passed 
away, the advantage of such a course of instruction will be uni- 
versally acknowledged, and talents worthy of such a cause will 
be devoted to it. 
Gentlemen, in the last course of lectures I entered at consider- 
able length into the anatomy and physiology of the different sys- 
tems into which the animal frame may be conveniently divided. 
I must now confine myself almost exclusively to pathology; and 
as my class, small as it is (it shall not be neglected on that 
account, but I will lecture to you as honestly and as zealously as 
if the theatre were full), is composed chiefly of veterinary pupils, 
