^98 
THE IMPORTANCE OF COMPARATIVE 
PATHOLOGY. 
To the Editors of “ The Veterinarian.” 
Gentlemen, 
Having become a constant reader of your very excellent pe- 
riodical, to which my attention was first directed by finding an 
old and esteemed acquaintance, Mr. Youatt, one of its editors, 
I am desirous of expressing to you my obligations for the infor- 
mation it conveys. There is no undertaking in your branch of 
medical practice nearly so well calculated as it is to promote the 
science and respectability of veterinary surgeons, whom I am 
happy to consider our younger brethren ; and there are very few 
in ours, which throw equal light with it, upon human pathology 
and therapeutics. 
I have glanced over all your volumes, have read with great 
pleasure many of the articles, and have been extremely gratified 
by the science, by the judicious views of morbid actions, and by 
the active benevolence generally characterizing the papers of 
your correspondents. 
The extended field of comparative pathology cultivated by 
you, increases the utility of your work, and recommends it more 
particularly to those who are anxious to derive every information 
calculated to elucidate different topics in human pathology and 
practice. The principal object of this communication is, to ex- 
press a hope, that this end, to which, indeed, your researches 
necessarily tend, will not be lost sight of by you ; and that, 
although the nobler animals must engage your chief attention, 
those with which man has only a casual intercourse will not be 
overlooked by you whenever their diseases are likely to advance 
our knowledge. The particulars of disease in animals in the 
Zoological Gardens, published by Mr. Youatt, are particularly 
interesting ; and it is to be desired that he will persevere in this 
department of medical observation and instruction. 
I need not remark, how much those maladies which are com- 
mon to the lower animals and to man, or those to which the 
latter is subject only by being infected by the former, require in- 
vestigation, further than to suggest, that a more precise research 
may be instituted into their nature, at various periods of their 
progress, than has hitherto been attempted, or indeed can be 
contemplated in the human subject; and to recommend the trial 
of new or active medicinal agents with a close observation of 
their effects, as preliminary to, and illustrative of, their use in 
human practice. 
