QUITTOR 
53 
The first was almost wholly abandoned by Veterinarians at 
the time M. Girard’s work appeared onQuittor: a work replete 
wdth judicious reflections drawn from interesting facts in favour 
of the utility of corrosive sublimate, and one that has received 
an interest commensurate with the importance of the subject and 
the deservedly celebrated name of its author. Henceforth, this 
method attracted numerous partisans: many Veterinarians re¬ 
turned to the employment of corrosives, and the publication of 
the success resulting therefrom attested the additional service 
rendered to animal medicine by the Director of the Alfort 
School. This was attended however with what commonly hap¬ 
pens when any meritorious individual furnishes an idea suscep¬ 
tible of extension : M. Girard endeavoured to rescue from 
oblivion a measure which, in skilful hands, would prove suc¬ 
cessful ; he strongly recommended the substitution of it for a 
painful operation, one that w^as often succeeded by unexpected 
and serious evils, and occasionally by a tedious and imperfect 
recovery. But his views were misconceived : some, who adopt¬ 
ed his mode of treatment, magnifying the asserted advantages 
of it, fell into a system of exclusion ever injurious to a science 
yet in its infancy. In a Number of the heciieil de Medicine 
Veterinaire, M. Bareyre asserts, that caries is not curable, nei¬ 
ther by cauterization, nor by corrosive injections; and farther on, 
that in quittor, corrosive sublimate may with advantage be substitut¬ 
ed for the operation. I shall have occasion to discuss the vali¬ 
dity of these propositions, which, to say the least of them, 
appear extremely hazardous. 
On the other hand, the partisans of Lafosse’s procedure, dis¬ 
comforted by some instances of failure w^herein caustics w^ere 
employed, proclaim the total insufficiency of a mode of treatment, 
which probably they have not put twice to the test, and per¬ 
sist in the belief that the only remedy is the extirpation of the 
cartilage. 
This unhappy discordance all arises from want of a mutual 
understanding: I am persuaded that if the espousers of one or 
other opinion had directed their attention to the facts from 
which they respectively argued, if they had remarked the par¬ 
ticular spot where the cartilage proved carious, if they had 
noted the depth and direction of the sinus, and then had con¬ 
nected these observations with the structure of the diseased 
tissue, they would have agreed that each of these modes of 
treatment w^as judicious, depending on the inroad made by the 
disease, and also on the situation of the caries. My own prac¬ 
tice, superintended at the commencement by my father, a man 
of twenty years’ experience, in a country wherein these mala¬ 
dies are haplessly but too frequent; my residence at the Alfort 
