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BOURGELATS INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 639 
The state of disease, then, is an intermediate one between life 
and death, and sometimes bordering more upon the one, and 
sometimes upon the other : for, health consisting in the exact and 
regular accomplishment of all the proper functions of the ma¬ 
chine, or the actual and unfettered faculty of exercising them 
perfectly, and death being the total annihilation of that faculty, 
and consequently the entire and absolute cessation of these func¬ 
tions, we cannot admit or conceive of any other .idea, in the in¬ 
terval which separates these two extremes, than that of an alter¬ 
ation or derangement which subverts more or less essentially, 
and in a manner sufficiently evident in the whole frame, or in cer¬ 
tain portions of it, the order and harmony of these movements. 
In other words, the alteration of structure or function opposed to 
a state of health, but more or less distant from the fatal termi¬ 
nation of life, constitutes precisely that which we denominate by 
the general name of disease. 
To preserve, then, domesticated animals from diseases to which 
they are liable, either by subjecting them to proper and salutary 
treatment, or preventing them from being exposed to the frequent 
causes of mischief—to palliate, in many cases, the evils with 
which they are actually attacked, evils obstinate and insurmount¬ 
able, and which render them less valuable, but not absolutely 
useless—or to conquer and remove other complaints by all the 
means that science and experience can suggest; these are the 
proper objects which veterinary medicine proposes to itself. 
These objects differ not from those of human medicine; and the 
same paths which lead to the knowledge of the maladies of man 
necessarily conduct to an acquaintance with those of brutes. The 
exact development of their form, and particularly that of the 
internal portions of the frame—the consideration of the situation, 
structure, shape, connexion, and usage of each—their corre¬ 
spondence and sympathy with each other—the laws by which 
they are moved and governed—and also the powers, and proper¬ 
ties, and effects, of the different agents and substances which the 
earth prodigally produces; these are the source, the base, the 
true foundation of all medical theory, with whatever kinds of ani¬ 
mals we have to do. 
