687 
ON PUERPERAL FEVER IN CATTLE. 
where nature has succeeded in getting rid of the offending 
matter; and that the true character of paralysis, from defection 
of nervous energy, is equally strikingly displayed in the other 
stomachs, where such want of power is on all these occasions 
equally evident. Surely there is some reason in this; for on 
Mr. W.’s system, we are obliged to make inflammation powerful 
and powerless in the same animal, and in parts immediately 
contiguous. 
His remark on the subject of rumination is scarcely worth a 
reply, as no veterinary surgeon who has seen what 1 have already 
written on the subject, would suppose that I could mean that 
the food was returned from any but the two first stomachs to the 
mouth for remastication. But there is an ambiguity in his ex- 
pressions which leaves it doubtful to me, whether he really 
means to say that the food is not returned at all by the 
oesophagus. 
This, Mr. W. tells us, is all the notice he takes at present of 
“my invariable living symptoms — or variable ones ;” not that he 
agrees with me respecting them, but because “ no good would 
result from his stating that he differs with me in the doctrines 
advanced, unless he gave opinions of his own, based, on a sure 
foundation , and calculated to do good to all interested in the sub- 
ject.” This he has declined for want of room ; and really I think 
too, as the book-makers say, this requires a chapter to itself : at 
any rate, it would have been a pity to have mixed it up in this 
article with so much of a contrary nature. 
His next opinion, as to the “ uterus being, in the great ma- 
jority of cases, the only sufferer at the commencement of the dis- 
ease, as it is contrary to what I have seen and heard from 
others on whom I can rely, I must leave for the experience to be 
derived from his future practice to decide for him. 
Having now gone through everything in Mr. WVs paper that 
bears on the subject in question, allow me to make an observa- 
tion or two not immediately connected with it. Mr. W. is, I 
suppose, a young man ; and he must allow me to say, that in all 
controverted points of theory or practice, the matter, and not the 
manner of bringing it forward, ought to be the object of consider- 
ation. It is ungenerous and absurd to waste time in sneering 
at the style or peculiarities of any writer in the pages of The 
Veterinarian. The facts and opinions introduced into this 
work are common property : a man’s style of expression is his 
own : attack the one as much as you like, but spare the other. 
Many might be deterred from giving valuable opinions to the 
public through the medium of this work, if such a line of con- 
duct be not adopted by us all. We ought not to make The 
