IMPORTANCE OF BOTANY TO VETERINARY MEDICINE. 659 
Instructions likewise are now given on the Anatomy, 
Physiology, and Pathology of the Horse ; on the Comparative 
Anatomy of the Ox, Sheep, and Dog ; — their physiology, and 
the diseases to which they are subject. On Chemistry and 
Materia Medica; Veterinary Jurisprudence; the Principles and 
Practice of Surgery, and the art of Shoeing. Structural anatomy, 
as the foundation of a correct knowledge of disease, has of late 
received its fair share of attention, and ere long I hope to see 
Botany added to the list. Surely these are great improvements. 
Whatever may be thought by some, who pride themselves, 
I suppose, in being ranked with the obstructives, I feel assured 
that Botany cannot be long excluded. Most of our patients 
are herbivorous animals, and very many of their diseases are 
traceable to the plants on which they feed. In the case of sheep, 
in particular, we often see the devastating results that follow 
the placing of these animals on grasses surcharged with mois¬ 
ture, and deficient of those nutritive and elementary matters 
which are necessary to the support of the system. The effects, 
in certain seasons, of what has been called “ artificial food,” 
are even more destructive. Diarrhoea sets in, as a consequence 
of a vitiated condition of the blood, and which, from a con¬ 
tinuance of the cause, although in a modified form, assumes 
a chronic type. The alvine dejections are fluid, the patient 
wastes, becomes a prey to intestinal and other parasites, and 
at length dies in a state of almost complete inanition. 
In the present day, a knowledge of Botany is far more 
needed than in times gone by, as the system of raising a large 
product from the soil by the use of artificial manures, has 
forced itself on the attention of the agriculturist. Thus the 
plants finding themselves surrounded by an excess of matter, 
rich in elements that can be appropriated to their develop¬ 
ment, take up, as it were, more than a due proportion, and 
are thereby charged with materials prejudicial to animal life, 
because unassimilated by the vegetable tissue. It needs 
hardly to be pointed out that the food of herbivorous animals 
being thus raised, becomes converted into a “kind of poison,” 
and as such produces its deleterious consequences on the 
animal organism. We may explain the circumstance, in part, 
by remarking that we have here a direct violation of that 
harmonious balance established by nature’s law r s in effecting 
the mutual dependence of the animal and vegetable kingdoms 
on each other. Many other examples, as illustrative of this 
point, might be given, but on an occasion like the present, 
it is unnecessary to multiply instances of the kind. I cannot, 
therefore, refrain from again expressing my conviction, that 
Botany will prove as useful an adjunct to veterinary science 
as chemistry has been found to be. 
