334 
EDITORIAL. 
ing a medium for the expression of private pique or a channel for 
the circulation of offensive personalities. It is, therefore, with 
great regret that we refer to the insertion in our last number—in 
which it found its way by some inexplicable inadvertence—of a 
* 
communication in which our rule in the latter regard is obviously 
violated. 
We wish to say, further, that inasmuch as the discussion of 
the subject of veterinary legislation seems to have become more a 
question of personal feeling and motive than of the general in¬ 
terests of the profession, we feel constrained for the present to 
close our columns against any further communications having that 
for their topic. 
Bacteriology, Hog Cholera and Texas Fever. —All the 
sciences have attractions for the seekers after knowledge, and each, 
separately, possesses some characteristic features which, in the 
view of the student who resolves upon the mastery of its details, 
confers upon it a special interest and a claim to peculiar and para 
mount consideration. Thus, in the view of the anatomist, there 
is no department of medical study possessing an interest or fas¬ 
cination comparable to that of animal structure; and a similar 
claim comes from the pathologist, the surgeon and the obstetri¬ 
cian, each claiming for his favorite specialty the place of foremost 
value and concern. It is to this trait of human character that the 
existence of specialties in medical science and the prominence 
sometimes acquired by specialists in medical study and practice 
must be ascribed, and among these, preeminently, the experi¬ 
mentalists and others who occupy the field of biology and bacte¬ 
riology. The difficulties encountered and the obstacles to be 
overcome in securing anything like the mastery of the matters in¬ 
cluded in the investigations involved in this line of inquiry, joined 
to the zealous and enthusiastic temperament pre-supposed as 
characterizing the ardent and earnest workers among the intrica¬ 
cies and obscurities of such subjects, have naturally generated 
amongst them no small degree of jealousy, and an amount of com¬ 
petitive intolerance quite beyond the bounds of philosophic calm¬ 
ness and scholastic fairness. The feelings of hostility which have 
