653 
Translations and Reviews of Continental 
Veterinary Journals. 
By W. Ernes, M.R.C.V.S., London. 
Journal des Veterinaires du Midi. 
The July number of this journal contains an article on 
the difficulty of forming a correct diagnosis in some peculiar 
cases, by M. Serres, Medecin Veterinaire, Auterive. 
The writer of this article does not assert that the prac- 
titioner is arrested at every step by this difficulty, or that 
the interpretation of the symptoms is so beset with ambiguities 
that he cannot arrive at a correct conclusion as to the seat 
and nature of the malady, but he only means those cases that 
present themselves under such insidious forms that the most 
minute examinations are unsuccessful, and in which the 
unusual character of the disease, before which all the efforts 
of the veterinary surgeon seem to be paralysed, and in which 
all the symptoms are opposed to each other and contradic- 
tory, and in which the complications succeed each other so 
rapidly, and in so short a time, that the practitioner does 
not know on which to depend so as to form his diagnosis. 
How is one to act under these circumstances, when labouring 
under a profound ignorance as to the object to be attained, 
or how select from the pharmacopoeia those agents which are 
to be employed, when you do not know on which organ or 
what system to act, so as to attain the object towards which 
all the aspirations of the proprietor are directed? In other 
words, how are you to cure the patient? What is to be 
done? Are we to have recourse to empiricism when the 
rational and correct method fails ? Perhaps this may succeed; 
and it must be acknowledged that quackery is not always to 
be despised, for not a few practitioners have occasionally re- 
sorted to it. Or one may say, why not use la medecine ex- 
pectants? But while we are waiting, the patient may die. 
Or shall we, as has often been done before, adopt a general 
treatment, of which the effect, though not immediate, may 
still be effectual, and thereby obtain a cure. This, I 
confess, is often the case. But then we fell headlong into 
that system which holds that all irritations should be 
combated by debilitants, and that all atonies are to be treated 
by stimulants. Having often had recourse to these means 
in different cases, where I had not data sufficient to establish 
a diagnosis, I have generally succeeded, and if I have not 
