bourgelat’s introductory lecture. 645 
weakened some parts more or less essential; the symptoms by 
which the present malady may have been early characterised ; 
the appearances by which it was first detected; the seat, the 
species, the continuance or interruption, the intensity, the mo¬ 
bility, the fixidity, the extent of the suffering that the animal 
may endure ; in a word, we have no recognition of these things on 
the part of the proprietors of beasts, too blind themselves to en¬ 
lighten us; no indications derived from the grooms, the herds¬ 
men, the shepherds, or swineherds, men who are often most 
interested in deceiving us, and in concealing from our knowledge 
the causes, which may be traced to their brutality or negligence); 
so that, wandering incessantly in the midst of testimonies of the 
most suspicious nature, and of a multitude of equivocal indica¬ 
tions, or abandoned to those indications only by the silence of 
the witnesses we interrogate, and who are sometimes as dumb 
as our patients themselves, it is only by a sort of divination, that 
we disperse the clouds that surround us, and arrive at a know¬ 
ledge of the real evils with which we have to combat. 
What opinion, then, ought to be formed of those men who at 
the first glance, and without any enquiries that might conduct 
to the source of the disease, decide at once on every case pre¬ 
sented to them, and designate every disease by its name, and 
hasten to prescribe and administer remedies, generally opposed 
to the cure which they announce, and which they rashly promise 
to perform? The public, sooner led away by those who wish to 
impose upon them than supporting those whose honest wish is 
to serve them, may form a wrong j udgment of these men; but to 
obtain a proper estimate of them, it will suffice to consider, that 
no difficulties can stop them, and that they have not one of 
those habitual doubts which restrain the enlightened practitioner. 
Let us follow the man of real science attentively, and we shall 
never find him disposed either to astonish the assistants by the 
recital of miracles which he never performed, nor cruel towards 
his patients, nor inconsiderate, nor cowardly. 
At first he listens with some mistrust to the reports which he 
receives; from these he passes to the examination of all the 
symptoms and exterior appearances he can collect; he afterwards 
