288 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
It lias been truly said of the medical man that— 
He alone can become a sound and successful practitioner 
who has been a dilij^ent student of those sciences which in¬ 
vestigate our structure and functions in their healthy and 
natural state ; namely, anatomy, chemistry, and physiology. 
Each should learn as much of them as he could, bearing 
always in mind the great object for which they are studied, 
and never neglecting the purpose to which they were to be 
applied. It should be remembered, too, that medicine and 
surgery were founded and raised upon the natural sciences. 
All that they were beyond mere empirical arts they owed to 
their dependence upon and their association with these. It 
would be difficult to find a man in our profession who had 
attained to any great eminence in the practice of his pro¬ 
fession, or who by his writings and precepts had advanced our 
knowledge of disease or our power over it, who did not lay 
the foundation of his success on the distinction which he 
earned by his labours in the natural sciences.’’ 
It might perhaps by some be thought that from ours being a 
subordinate art it does not call for the same aids as the higher 
division demands. This is a fallacy ; the reasons for which 
have been already assigned. 
It is true the lower animals, in a certain sense, cannot 
be compared with man; and yet there is another sense in 
which a comparison may be allowed. The duty of both 
professions is, however, the same. 
Their study is that of truth, the glorious truth of nature, 
as revealed in the Creation ; their aim beneficence, to al¬ 
lay misery, and to assuage suffering. Viewed as an edu¬ 
cational agent—as a means for cultivating the highest and 
best faculties with which a man is endowed—the studv of 
medicine and the collateral sciences is unrivalled in the 
whole range of human knowledge. 
Then, again, it may without much fear of contradiction 
be asserted that the powers of observation as to the nature 
of many diseases are more frequently called upon by the 
practitioner of veterinary medicine than those of the human 
practitioner, since the like facilities are not afforded him of 
diagnosing disease, and he is altogether unable to avail him¬ 
self of the many advantages derivable from instituting those 
pertinent inquiries which are so necessary to the ascertaining 
