048 
THE VETERINARY SCHOOLS. 
But, after all, these inquiries are merely means to an end. 
They are delightful while pursued; they lead to the habitual 
observation of nature; they shew it in its most perfect form ; 
they unfold the principles of health; but they leave us to guess, 
and often wildly, at that which is the especial object of our pro¬ 
fession—the cause of disease, and the means by which it may be 
alleviated. The comparative anatomist and physiologist sees all 
these things in health, and he is delighted, instructed; the com¬ 
parative pathologist sees them in disease, and traces the varied 
influence of a thousand agents in producing and modifying this 
disease, and all varyino; with the structure and food and habits 
of the animal. He can form some happy guesses in the first 
place; he can come to some determinate conclusion in the other. 
Therefore it is that a new name has been given to this course ; 
that it has been placed in a new point of view; and, when the 
subject is in abler hands, and a little more of the prejudice 
against the attendant on the quadruped patient is passed away, 
the advantage of such a course of instruction will be universally 
acknowledged. The present lecturer may not live to see the 
day, but it is approaching, when the study of comparative pa¬ 
thology will be considered as an essential part of the study of 
the human surgeon; and when the veterinary practitioner, for 
on him the task will fall, will be able to return, in the best of 
all ways, the obligation he owes, and which he will never forget, 
to those by whose fostering care his humbler art was nursed 
into existence. 
The diseases of the respective animals will still be classed 
according to the various systems of which the frame may be 
considered to be composed. The whole of the lectures on the 
respiratory system having been already inserted in The Vete¬ 
rinarian, and likewise those of the sensorial system, almost 
to the conclusion of the diseases of the nerves of voluntary 
motion,—these will not be repeated, but the subject will be 
taken up at this point. The diseases connected with a deficient 
supply of nervous power will be first considered; then those of 
the nerves of sensation, or affecting the organs of sense; and, 
last of all, those which are chiefly referrible to the organic sys- 
