so 
EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE. 
I must confess that my suspicion is excited; that they are not 
forward to encourage that species of instruction which tends to 
Drake the great mass of mankind the accurate judges of their 
merits. 
From the commencement of your publication, I felt an interest 
in its welfare, and have done my best to support it. In the few 
papers on breeding, &c. &c. that have been occasionally printed 
in The Veterinarian, I lay few claims to originality—the 
novelties, if there were any, were chiefly those of expression, 
not of idea;—for the leading arguments were nearly the same as 
have been promulgated in the different agricultural publications 
for these fifty years past. At this period of the world, a man 
may labour hard for originality in the cells of thought, and find 
in the end all his vivid fire to be no other than a ray caught from 
another’s lamp, and, when that inspiration dies, nothing but 
darkness left. 
“ Thus saith the Preacher‘ Nought beneath the sun 
Is new,’ yet still from change to change we run.” 
Whoever writes, be it much or little, be it well or ill, is sure 
of incurring the censure of some one, and therefore I cannot ex¬ 
pect to escape; but, on the other hand, like every other author, 
I hope to meet with the approbation of some one. For my own 
part, I am determined to please; and that ought to go a great 
way to insure indulgence, since it succeeds through life, nine 
times out of ten, with those who practise the determination. 
As opportunity iavites, and inclination prompts, I shall send 
my humble scraps to The Veterinarian, as long as its 
readers consider them worthy of notice. 
I purpose then, in some of its ensuing numbers, to consider 
the causes of those diseases over which we have an immediate 
controul. 
Daily observation demonstrates that the animal structure, 
even in its most perfect form, is liable to lesions of organization 
and derangement of function, producing that state of the sys¬ 
tem in which its several actions are either interrupted or at¬ 
tended with pain. This state is called disease. Many diseases 
undoubtedly have their origin from the very constitution of the 
animal machine. Some are hereditary ; for as healthy parents 
naturally produce healthy children, so diseased parents as natu¬ 
rally produce a diseased offspring. Climate also produces many 
diseases; for every climate has a tendency to produce a particular 
disease, either from its excess of heat and cold, the mutability 
of the weather, or the peculiar formation of the country. These 
are beyond our controul; but more diseases are produced by 
