470 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
tainty in the operation of our therapeutic agents, which 
otherwise could not have been the case. 
We need hardly say that we have always been advocates 
for the employment of agents of recognised and established 
value, as a lengthened connexion with the drug-trade in 
early life made us familiar with the deceptions that are too 
often had recourse to, especially when the medicines ordered 
were for the lower animals. “ Cheap” and “ bad,” are 
terms frequently correctly associated, and no veterinary 
surgeon who seeks reputation and success, or has the 
interests of his profession at heart, will ever resort to the use 
of other than genuine drugs. But he must be contented 
to give for them a fair price, nor should he be unconversant 
with their general characters; he should also be able to 
detect the adulterations which are not uncommonly prac- 
tised on the ignorant purchaser by dishonest druggists ; 
and he should likewise be conversant with the laws of 
combination. 
Again. It was something done, to cause the discon- 
tinuance of those cruelties once practised for the removal of 
diseases. In ignorance they were adopted, and this at times 
was so great, that the true seat of the malady was unknown 
to the prescribers. Since, however, anatomy has been made 
the basis of veterinary education, the function of parts is 
better understood, and many of those methods have been 
shown to be not only torturing to the patient, but injurious 
rather than curative. So in the rude performance of many 
operations, one wonders how the animal economy withstood 
the shocks it received ; and were it not that the restorative 
powers of nature are great, no hope of a cure could ever 
have been entertained. 
It would be tedious and unprofitable under these several 
heads to particularise. This general statement must suffice. 
Conviction at once impresses the mind of its truthfulness, 
so that he who merely takes a superficial restrospect of what 
has been done, will not withhold his assent to some good 
having been effected. 
To these, as causes operating to give to us the more 
