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THE VETERINARIAN, FEBRUARY 1, 1861. 
Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. — Cicero. 
VETERINARY MEDICINE AND THE ALLIED SCIENCES. 
It would simply be an act of presumption were we to 
arrogate to ourselves any other position than that of second 
to human medicine. Here, however, we boldly take our 
stand ; and as the study of the last-named, demands an ac¬ 
quaintance with several of the allied sciences, so it is with our 
division. The reason of this is easily assigned : the powers 
of life are alike in all animals; they are subject to the in¬ 
fluence of the same physical agents; growth, endurance, and 
decay are governed by the same laws, differing it may be in 
degree, while the maintenance of health, and the consequence 
of its disturbance, or the production of disease, call for a corre¬ 
sponding observance of those principles that are based upon 
science. Hence the union that subsists between the two 
divisions of medicine, although the time was when they were 
but one. Hence, too, the mutual support yielded by one to 
the other, when they are pursued by minds rightly constituted; 
for all organized beings are but parts of one stupendous chain, 
each ministering to the good of the whole. 
Here we speak not of the immaterial, the immortal part: 
that we exclude as foreign to our present consideration. We 
have nothing to do with psychology, it being altogether a 
far higher and a nobler study—one worthy of the most ex¬ 
panded thought and deepest reflection ; but here altogether 
uncalled for, and consequently out of place, since we have to 
do with matter, not mind. 
It has been, with some persons, a question if the so-called 
physical forces really exist in the organism ; and whether 
there is not a force independent of and superior to them, 
ter med the vital. This surely is an interesting, an important 
