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THE VETERINARIAN, MAY 1, 1864. 
Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat.— Cicero. 
THE RECIPROCITY EXISTING BETWEEN THE DIVISIONS OF 
MEDICAL SCIENCE ; THEIR VARIETY, ORIGIN, AND 
PROGRESS. 
It does not derogate from our position as a profession by 
our borrowing from time to time from the older and more im¬ 
portant division of medical science, the human, as by so doing 
we advance in common with it. Moreover, all that in it 
appertains in reference to the higher creature, man, in 
degree applies to those animals that are placed lower in the 
scale of creation than he is; both being subject to the influ¬ 
ence of the same physical laws, and similar effects being pro¬ 
duced on both by the operation of certain causes. Of course, 
such positions as these will be accepted with limitations, 
as they are general in their application. To give an 
illustration:—a medicinal agent that is productive of a 
certain effect in one animal may not excite the same action 
in another, because there are modifying circumstances that 
alter its influence : the structures may also differ—as, for 
instance, the stomach—and likewise their susceptibility of 
being acted upon. 
It is this knowledge which principally makes the dif¬ 
ference in the practice of human and veterinary medicine. 
This, too, renders the last named often far more complicated 
and perplexing than the former, since the so-called medical 
man receives far greater and more numerous aids in his in¬ 
vestigations than the veterinary surgeon is able to obtain in 
his. On the other hand, the comparative value of the two 
classes of animals must be taken into account—if so be a 
money value can be put upon the first-named animal, man, 
which we much more than doubt—as well as the fact 
that, “ a dead horse tells* no tales.” Nevertheless, “ a 
merciful man is merciful to his beast,” and selfishness, if 
