VETERINARY EDUCATION. 
]33 
You can never acquire correct and enlarged conceptions of 
the proper indications of cure, until you are perfectly acquaint¬ 
ed with the nature of disease. This, however, is not the opinion 
or practice of many students. They travel to the College to 
obtain a deploma, and to learn what they are to give in certain 
diseases. This species of knowledge is mere empiricism ; and 
the exhibition of the same drug under all the varieties and 
changes of disease will lead to dangerous and ruinous conse¬ 
quences. 
Let me entreat you diligently to inquire into the nature, seat, 
and connexion of every disease. Consider what you are to do, 
not what you are to give. What object you are to accomplish. 
The purpose and object once settled, the means will not be diffi¬ 
cult to determine. 
Provide yourself with a Case-book. Accompany your Profes¬ 
sors in every clinical round. If you are not perfectly acquaint¬ 
ed with the nature and seat of the disease, apply to them for 
information. Do not pass by a single case (so far as your ana¬ 
tomical and physiological researches have been carried) until 
you thoroughly comprehend it. 
I do not advise you to tease your Professors with foolish and 
impertinent questions, but you have a right to ask information 
from them, and it will give them great pleasure to instruct you. 
Make every case, for which your studies have prepared you, 
your own ; Vv^rite down the symptoms ; the conclusions which 
you draw from them as to the nature of the disease ; the means 
adopted; the purpose intended to be accomplished ; the effect 
produced ; whether change of symptoms has caused alteration of 
treatment; how far new affections have become connected with 
the original one. 
The study of a dozen cases, thus followed up, will do you 
more good than the perusal of a thousand volumes; or an at¬ 
tendance on the most enlarged practice, without note or com¬ 
ment. Some point of Physiology or Pathology will be daily 
illustrated. Some rule of practise exemplified, and there will 
scarcely be a disease that will not bring to your recollection 
important principles and precepts, and impress them more 
deeply on your mind. 
I fear that I have wearied you by this long epistle ; but I 
have yet to speak of the Lectures of the College, and your as¬ 
sociations there, and some other not unimportant particulars. 
They shall be the subject of another letter shortly. 
Yours, &c. 
Philo-Vet. 
