494 NORTH OF ENGLAND VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
of our transactions and papers on various subjects. It is 
thus that profit must become mutual in proportion to our 
estimate of the worth, and as our ideas are made known and 
commented upon by others. Only by close investigation, 
comparison of facts, and carefully dealing with them, to¬ 
gether with the priceless assistance which is to be obtained in 
fellowship, and the operations of minds determined on good, 
can such results as are wished for be definitely obtained. 
Professor Dick is well known to portray to his class a 
succinct but lucid description of these affections as they have 
occurred on almost an indefinite field of practice extending 
over a lifetime, the value of which is too great to be forgotten. 
Mr. Barlow, too, under whom I had the honour and likewise 
the privilege to graduate, developed a priceless eloquence on 
their nature and peculiarities. It was during the summer of 
1851, when almost alone in Clyde Street, I experienced an 
inexpressible delight in assisting him at dissection and draw¬ 
ings of diseased specimens, which are still fresh in my 
memory, together with the profitable remarks which always 
attended such pleasant occupations, and since have borne so 
effectively on subsequent proceedings. 
From cases which now and then occur a great deal might 
be gathered,—and here I would suggest the urgent propriety 
of chronicling faithfully the details, not merely in our private 
case-hooks, but in our recognised periodicals , for the interest and 
benefit of brethren at a distance. But I am digressing, and 
to resume, would remark again how great a difference has 
been found to exist in the character of some of the cases 
not widely different in their real nature—as, for instance, 
those in which softening, or “ ramollissement ” as preferred 
by erudite authors, exists alone, and those w T here the prevailing 
signs are dependent on the presence of atheromatous, fibrous, 
or other tumours within the organ, separate or in conjunc¬ 
tion with softening. 
A large black Hanoverian horse, which from his manner 
was unapproachable, and pronounced by several to be 
phrenitic, being destroyed in consequence, the brain came 
into my possession, and fully occupying each lateral ven¬ 
tricle, attached by a pedicle to the choroid plexus, was a 
pyriform tumour of a fibrous nature. Here the brain was 
perfectly healthy in appearance, but pressure by increase of 
size in the tumours causing the mischief had also produced 
considerable absorption, and consequent obliteration of the 
various objects usually described as forming the ventricles. 
A bay cart-mare, whose peculiar exhibition of symptoms 
had gained for her the title of et A Shiverer,” after death 
showed softening of the brain and the presence of pulpy matter 
