684 
ON PUERPERAL FEVER IN CATTLE. 
or that being born without a brain at all even, is not of half the 
consequence that many people foolishly imagine. If he wants 
to put this to the test, let him divide the spinal marrow, between 
the atlas and dentata, and favour us with the results in another 
Veterinarian. But, to me, nothing can be a greater evidence 
of the weakness of his argument, than the proof he has adduced 
to support it. ‘‘A child was born without a brain; but still, 
though the fountain was taken away, the streams continued to 
flow!!!!!” “ a period of seven hours,” out of seventy years (this 
not the maximum of human life.) How he must have been struck 
with the brilliancy of his own imagination, when he appended 
five large notes of admiration to this sentence in italics ! Why, 
gentlemen, what would he say to me if I were to tell him se- 
riously, that dividing the tendo-achillis in the race-horse would 
not interfere with progression? and instance a case where a horse 
had them both divided, and yet continued to run on; that is, he 
ran seven yards out of a four-mile heat after the operation. 
Would he not say, that the horse did not continue to run ? He 
would : and I say, that the child did not continue to live , and 
the streams did not continue to flow. 
Was there, in this half-existence of seven hours, the proper 
performance of those functions necessary to continue life? Was 
there digestion, arterialization, &c. ? Assuredly not; if there 
had been, the child might have continued to live , which it did 
not (“!!!! \”J Never halloo till you are well out of the wood. 
Mr, W, next asserts, that my classification of invariable living 
symptoms is not correct in many respects ; and out of these many 
respects, he favours us with two objections : first, he says, para- 
lysis of the hind extremities is not an invariable living symptom ; 
and he notices, in support of this, that in two of his cases, “ the 
patients were able to get up, with some assistance, in the worst 
stages of the disease.” This is to me a very strange doctrine. 
Does the mildness or the intensity of any disease alter its real 
character? It would be just as fair in me to retort, that these 
two cases were not really puerperal fever, because they could get 
up at all, even with assistance. Would Mr. W. have the assur- 
ance to tell me, that a horse could not be afflicted with lock-jaw 
because it might be possible to open his jaws a little way? But 
we will look at it in another light. Of course, so admirable a 
critic as Mr. W. would be careful to let his theory and practice 
be perfectly consistent. Now, what is his theory, and what his 
practice ? He says, this inability to rise is “ not from paralysis, 
but from great debility.” “ Nature seems worn out from com- 
plete general exhaustion.” This is his view of the case. Now, 
how does he prepare to remedy this “great debility ,” this “com- 
