464 
Review. 
Quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non. — H or. 
Treatise on the principles and practice of Veterinary Medicine 
and Surgery . By William Haycock, Veterinary Sur- 
geon, and M.R.C.V.S. Part I, London, John Churchill, 
New Burlington Street, 1858, p. 160. 
“ What is truth ? 19 is a question as applicable to physic as 
to morals, but not as easily answered ; hence many theories 
have arisen in connexion with medicine. Some of them have 
for a time dazzled like a meteor, and then like it disappeared, 
leaving not a “wrack” behind. Or they have been as 
characters written on the sand, which the returning tide has 
washed away. Others have been more abiding; and these 
may be compared to the surrounding rocks which confine the 
mighty waters to their bed, whence they issue in vapour, to 
fertilise the earth and benefit its inhabitants. 
The votaries of truth are many, and each traces as he 
pleiases the streams to their source, but the wells are deep, 
and only a very few can fathom them. This has too often 
led to the substitution of conjecture and speculation for 
facts; and yet from error good has sometimes arisen, and the 
mind has been directed into the right path when reason has 
asserted her prerogative. 
It would be idle to say that homoeopathy has not taken a 
strong hold on the public mind at the present day; still are 
we no believers in its subtil ties. The doctrine of sbnilia 
similibus curantur is not perhaps so great an obstacle to our 
credence as the infinitesimal doses of medicinal substances 
advocated by its followers, and the development of an 
inherent principle by the trituration of the drugs they use; 
since in orthodox medicine calomel is given in affections of 
the liver, laxatives in cases of spontaneous diarrhoea, and 
