22 
OBSERVATIONS ON 
as recommended by Mr. Bracy Clark, had the desired effect in 
the course of two months. 
It is a pity, I think, that there has not been made a regular 
course of dissections of glandered subjects ; not merely a post¬ 
mortem examination of a poor animal that has for months been 
labouring under the disease and medical treatment; but an ex¬ 
amination of horses in every stage of the complaint. More, 
probably, would be learned from this than from the continued 
trial of medicines; one case only out of twenty, perhaps, prov¬ 
ing successful. We should then be enabled to know the pro¬ 
portion of cases in which the lungs are affected;—how far, indeed, 
the disease had extended itself in a given time; and the proba¬ 
bility there would be of a cure being accomplished in cases pre¬ 
senting certain external appearances. 
The subject of glanders reminds me of Mr. Vines. His book 
certainly contains much originality, and shews that he is a man 
of research and perseverance; but if he sends forth a book for 
public perusal, he must expect to receive public criticism. Now, 
because he was not reviewed in The Veterinarian quite so 
favourably as he wished, he makes Mr. Youatt’s lectures the sub¬ 
ject of attack ; and in terms so strongly impregnated with his 
favourite remedy, cantharides, as plainly to evince that his 
object was not so much to inform and instruct the public, as to 
gratify a feeling of pique. It might have appeared more friendly 
towards Mr. Vines if his work had been spoken of more favour¬ 
ably ; but he should remember, that the editors have a duty to 
perform towards the public, on which their reputation depends. 
Now, supposing that I had wished to have given a correct opinion 
of the work, and for this purpose I had consulted a review, writ¬ 
ten after Mr. Vines’s own heart; in which it was not only re¬ 
commended as being good in its doctrines and sound in its princi¬ 
ples, but in which it was stated that the arrangement was 
perfect, the reasoning clear, and the language good. I should 
then have read the book; and finding that there was a great deal 
of obscurity, that the arrangement admitted of considerable im¬ 
provement, and that the language was by no means choice or 
appropriate, I should have turned away with disgust both from 
the book and the reviewers: against the former I should, per¬ 
haps, have been unjustly prejudiced ;—the latter I should both 
distrust and despise. 
The doctrines Mr. Vines advances maybe, in a measure, just 
and good ; but he is certainly not a happy writer. The very term 
he use makes of, “ healthy disease,” is the greatest of obscu¬ 
rities. A dictionary would have informed him that disease means 
sickness , and health “freedom from sickness.” It is, therefore, 
