230 
THE DANGER OF DRENCHES. 
He is surprised this time. He is “ surprised to find himself attacked 
in the most illiberal and scurrilous way, with a mixture of contempt 
and malignity.” The contempt is admitted, and therefore the ma- 
lignity need not be denied, since no one can contemn and hate the 
same thing ; that which is contemptible is too mean for malig- 
nity. The illiberality I cannot find ; but if there be any, it may 
stand till I see some reason for generosity. The charge of scurri- 
lity would not, perhaps, have been made had the word been well 
considered. That he is not a veterinarian, Mr. M. himself “ can- 
didly admits that he wants experience, ability, and comprehen- 
sion, will scarcely be doubted by any one who has heard him urge 
his dismay and his sorrow as argument against the truth of a pro- 
position. I have said no more, nothing but the truth ; and that 
which is true cannot be scurrilous. 
He says that the cases I have put on record are no proof that 
draughts are dangerous; for, had any portion of the mixture en- 
tered the lungs, the inflammation would “ much more speedily 
have run its course.” 
Now, here is a man who denies the danger of draughts, and at 
the same time pretends to tell in what time a draught should pro- 
duce death. Without experience himself, he yet assumes the license 
of contradicting that which experience has told others. If stupid- 
ity so arrogant be not contemptible, I know not what is. If a 
man disdain the report of another, how shall he know the effect of 
a cause 1 He must try it. There is no other way. Has Mr. M. 
tried to produce bronchitis by putting any portion of a pungent liquid 
into the trachea 1 Not he. 
He begs “ to ask the Professor, Did he attend those cases (that 
is, the third and fourth cases) previously to the drinks being given; 
and how it came that these horses were so scandalously neglected 1” 
The Professor replies, that he never saw the third case till the day 
the horse died, nor the fourth till one day before death ; and that 
in both he refused to undertake the treatment, because he knew of 
none that would do any good. Not knowing why the horses were 
so scandalously neglected, he cannot tell, and he thinks it needless 
to inquire. 
Finding, rather too late, that he had written what he could not 
defend, Mr. Markham makes another attack. He assails a paper of 
mine, not published till two months after that which gave him 
such grief and astonishment. In the second paper I had asserted 
that “ no man, take what care he might, would give to each of two 
hundred horses a couple of pungent or disagreeable draughts with- 
out producing bronchitis in seven or eight of them.” 
Mr. M. tells us that 127 horses took the influenza, and among 
them got 1600 draughts, of which some were pungent and disa- 
