EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS.. 475 
opinion must be guided by medical opinion, and medical 
opinion must be founded upon broad bases, and safe, or at 
all events plausible, deductions. Until we have made up our 
minds what rabies is, and how it is produced, we are no 
more in a situation to frame laws thereon than we are to 
regulate influenza or any other pestilent visitor of which we 
really know so little, notwithstanding we talk about them as 
though they were familiar acquaintances. 
Mr. Gavin asks us—“ Of all the different methods of 
castration, which do we prefer?” Twenty years ago this 
question might have been answered at once, without hesi¬ 
tation ; since that, new operations, or operations new to us, 
have started up among us, leaving it matter of some hesitation, 
as facts stand at present, which we ought to prefer. The old 
actual cautery still stands its ground with “ gelders” in the 
country; but then their subjects are so young, so unstabled, 
and consequently so little liable to take harm from operation, 
that it is not matter of any very great deal of import what 
modus operandi they are made to undergo. The operation by 
ligature, as practised in the human subject, we learnt from 
Coleman, and have always ourselves, (though acknowledgedly 
without fair trial of it,) held to be the most objectionable 
mode of procedure; and yet M. Mace, a French Y. S.—whose 
translated paper on the subject we unfortunately lost a few 
days ago out of our pocket—speaks strongly in favour of it. 
We have never, in our own practice, lost ahorse from the use 
of the cautery; though we have been of opinion, since we 
employed the clams, that they were to be preferred to the 
cautery, from their exciting less inflammation, and apparently 
altogether annoying or inconveniencing the animal less. 
We have ever entertained a favorable opinion of the twisting 
operation as performed by the torsion forceps, but have no 
experience of our own to speak from. As matters stand, 
therefore, we practice the operation with the wooden clams, 
a convert or a decouvert , according to circumstances. 
Mr. Gavin likewise asks us, “to what we attribute the 
