442 
ON CACTUATION. 
actual wants of the system, while during the existence of 
disease the necessity for such arrangement is increased in 
proportion to the extent of the disturbance. 
Popular ignorance of the laws which regulate the organism 
leads to certain fallacies in the arrangement of the dietary; for 
example— 
The allowance of stimulating food to a patient suffering 
from an acute disease. 
The use of a highly nutritious and probably indigestible 
kind of food for an animal prostrated by long-continued or 
severe exertion. 
The system of supplying an abundance of azotised mate¬ 
rial in preference to carbonaceous in the cure of a debilitated 
and emaciated subject, whose respiratory function is gradually 
ceasing for want of fuel. 
The practice of giving an excessive quantity of food when 
the object is to improve the condition, the system at the time 
probably not being equal to the appropriation of more than 
a third of the quantity of aliment supplied. 
A proper appreciation of the principles of dietetics would 
lead the practitioner to estimate the arrangement of his 
patienPs food as second only in importance to the surgical or 
medical treatment, and, instead of leaving the matter to the 
decision of the groom, to insist upon a rigorous adherence 
to his dietetic system as an essential part of the science of 
therapeutics. 
{To be continued .) 
ON CASTRATION. 
By H. Daws, M.R.C.V.S., London. 
The time was when the motto of The Times was, “ Tem- 
pora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis,” and possibly the 
same may be applied to the observations of the once enthu¬ 
siastic individual who pens these few lines 
As age advances, science rapidly oversteps empiricism, in¬ 
humanity, and barbarity, more especially in some of the 
principal operations which the professors of that art, said to 
be second to that of human medicine, but which I respect¬ 
fully maintain to be pre-eminent to it, find frequently necessary 
to be performed upon their patients. 
I would allude, in the present instance, to the operation of 
castration, which has for many years engrossed my attention. 
