THE ALFORT SCHOOL. 
445 
of the horse. If the disease is serious, and the animal is in 
good condition, the butcher is sent for rather than the veterinary 
surgeon. If the disease continues, the owner is daily losing 
something in the loss of condition in the animal : and if the 
patient dies, all is lost. The horse may generally be led for a 
considerable distance to the hospital of the veterinary surgeon ; 
but the ox, the cow, the sheep, and the pig, in many cases, can¬ 
not be moved, and certainly cannot be sent far. The mala¬ 
dies which attack them are often so rapid in their progress, 
and they would arrive at their termination ere the patient could 
reach the infirmary. These are circumstances which necessarily 
limit the extension of the practical study of the maladies of 
cattle and sheep in a public infirmary—they are undeniable, and 
difficult to surmount. 
The advocate of Alfort properly insists on these points, as offer¬ 
ing some excuse for the comparatively few number of cases of 
disease in these animals which come under treatment in that 
veterinary school; but he adds, that the directors of the institution 
were aware that this must be the case, and, partly on this ac¬ 
count, there always were in the pastures belonging to the school 
at least 400 sheep, 100 swine, and a variable but considerable 
number of horned cattle. We can attest the truth of this, for 
we saw there a flock of not-very-good Leicesters—a much better 
one of Merinos—a well-filled piggery, and several cows. The 
institution was also in relation with the owners of the principal 
dairies in the neighbourhood of Paris, and they afforded a great 
many subjects in the course of every year. 
M. Delafond next gives the programme, and at very great 
length, of the course of lectures delivered at Alfort with reference 
to the diseases of these animals, and he had previously referred 
to some of the most valuable works that France possessed on 
the management and medical treatment of all the domesticated 
animals as emanating from the Alfort school: among them were 
those of Bourgelat, Chabert, Gilbert, Flandrin, Girard, sen., and 
last, but not least, the monthly ** RecueiF’ of veterinary litera¬ 
ture. 
He has thus far carried his point, that the Alfort school ha5 
nobly struggled against the disadvantages entailed on it by its 
VOL. XI. .3 N 
