ON THE STOMACHS OF RUMINANTS. 
585 
efficacy, and I remain still so sceptical, as even to doubt the pro- 
priety of their administration, Mr. F. will see by this that our 
opinions yet remain opposed to each other; but I could wish 
him to understand that they are not so through any false ideas 
of notoriety, but principle; and with the heart-felt wish of seeing 
a much neglected part of our profession rescued from the hands 
of illiterate and ignorant pretenders, and established upon its 
only sure basis, a true physiology. I shall not, therefore, be de¬ 
terred or deluded from the path I have chosen byJiigh sounding 
plausible words, or the more severe but still harmless ones of 
sarcasm; for, pinning my faith upon no man’s sleeve, but taking 
plain and open facts for my guidance, I trust I shall, by their 
means, be enabled to keep within the pale of probability and of 
truth. 
It is a common and well-known law in mechanics, that the 
more complicated a machine is in its formation, so much the more 
easily are its operations deranged or suspended ; but that, in the 
generality of cases, it only requires a trifling effort of the scien¬ 
tific mechanic to restore the deranged apparatus to its (if I may 
be allowed the term) healthy functions: so in cattle, it is to 
complexity of formation, and not of function, that we are to trace 
the many apparent difficulties in remedying their disordered sto¬ 
machs; for they must be deranged if not disordered, before rumi¬ 
nation can be suspended : and which occurrence having naturally 
ensued, our efforts ought to be directed to the recalling of these 
parts to their natural action. 
-With respect to the three first named cases, Mr. F. very justly 
observes, that Nature was exerting her utmost efforts upon the 
alimentary canal, in order to relieve the oppressed stomachs; and 
he attributes my failure in those cases, not to the remedies em¬ 
ployed by me, but to their inefficiency in purgative property. 
It is inexplicable to me why he so strenuously urges the necessi¬ 
ty of strong purgatives when he himself acknowledges that Na¬ 
ture was doing her best, by having increased the action of the 
intestines to such a degree ; and, with the perfect knowledge 
that the stomachs, and not the intestines, are the actual seat of 
the disorder, why will he administer strong purgatives at all ? 
Is he not spurring his hobby too hard, and thereby unwittingly 
blinding his reason against the absurdity, nay, cruelty, of ad¬ 
ministering strong purgatives when he very well knows that their 
stimulus is spent, not upon the paunch and manifolds, where it is 
wanted, but upon the intestines, which are simply deranged in 
their functions from sympathy, and are consequently more sinned 
against than sinning ? 
Mr. F. also appears to have forgotten the injury he would do 
