412 
ON INCREMENT OF ANIMAL HKAT. 
meet and discuss matters of importance to the interests of 
the profession/^ 
Otiier societies enjoy freedom of action quite inde¬ 
pendent of the existence of restrictive clauses, but we, with a 
fortitude which deserves a happier fate, perpetually sacrifice 
our best interests at the shrine of legal rectitude. Are we so 
overwhelmed with the recollection that our profession is 
legally constituted, as to fail to perceive the necessity for 
acquiring something beyond the barren right to the name 
and title of Veterinary Surgeon, or must we always be con¬ 
tent to remain inactive in order to avoid clashing with the 
provisions of the Charter ? 
Extracts from British and Foreign Journals. 
ON INCREMENT OE ANIMAL HEAT. 
Bj Benjamin W. Richardson, M.H., E.R.S. 
During the past few years we have employed, as prac¬ 
tical Physicians, a precise method of medical research— 
I mean the method of determining the animal tempera¬ 
ture by means of the thermometer, and of estimating 
the value of these thermometrical readings in the natural 
history of disease. The research has crept upon us in an 
insidious way. It has been headed by no single individual 
as the opening of a new system. There is no Harvey in 
the case, no Laennec, no Jenner. In one sense the study 
is, indeed, the oldest in Physic. The w^ord fever and the 
word‘inflammation each alike testify to the antiquity of 
the research. We, therefore, who of late have been ob¬ 
serving the variations of the “ calor vitalis^^ in disease, have 
been doing little more than refine on the past, assisted 
greatly in our work—lifted into it, indeed—by those won¬ 
derful preliminary researches, in respect to the natural tem¬ 
perature of animal • bodies, which John Hunter, Pallas, 
Fisher, Scoresby, Despretz, Metcalfe, and, above all, John 
Davy, have left to us. 
We have learned, however, for ourselves many new facts 
of late years. I may call them facts of precision. We have 
