262 LIVERPOOL VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
six years of extensive public practice and close observation in my 
profession, I feel justified in reading this paper before you; not that 
I am producing an elaborate and scientific thesis, the time having been 
very short, since your respected president solicited my assistance. 
I do assure you, by appearing before you in this position, I am, though 
feeby, fulfilling the call of duty, and endeavouring to cement still closer 
the bonds of brotherly love and professional friendship. 
The tendency of the present day is, I fear, to jump to conclusions 
upon insufficient practical observation and clinical experience. The 
most important part in a veterinary surgeon’s education is, undoubtedly, 
to be gained of the sick box, where every feature of disease can be 
watched and noted; and in order that the observations of disease may 
be profitable, it must be complete. The termination of a case is 
especially instructive, and not the less so when it results in death, since 
we may then mark the way which the patient succumbed, and learn to 
guard against such an event in similar examples for the future. 
If I were to believe in Professor Williams’s treatment, as published in 
his work, on diseases of the respiratory organs, I should not have ap¬ 
peared before you in the position I do this night, though, at the same 
time, I am pleased to give him my warmest thanks for the great 
meritorious and noble works he has given to the veterinary profession, 
the result of much thought and great labour. I shall read you his 
remarks on counter-irritation, so as to give you the most recent opinion 
of one of our ablest writers upon its effects as applicable to the relief 
of acute inflammatory action of the respiratory organs, before I open 
to you the result of my experience (Mr. Taylor here read the extract 
referred to). 
Gentlemen, in all serious cases let me impress upon you the necessity 
and great utility, and particularly in acute diseases of the pulmonary 
organs and their coverings, that the first duty of a careful practitioner is 
to take an accurate, quiet, and collected observation of the suffering 
patient, so as to ascertain the structural and the functional derange¬ 
ment, the peculiar symptoms, the painful or irritable countenance, the 
temperature by the thermometer, and the pulse, and make himself 
acquainted whether the patient is a nervous and irritable one, or on 
the other hand, a quiet, subdued, and plethoric one ; and in addition 
to all this we must never lose sight of the fact that we are treating 
a living and a most vital complex organism, endowed with beautifully 
arranged and complicated nervous and circulating systems. The latter 
organism is set into active motion at the birth of the animal, and con¬ 
tinues in motion day and night, never ceasing one moment its action 
during the allotted period of its earthly existence. Interfere with this 
activity and disease results; arrest it and life ceases. How wonderful, 
how beautiful, are the works of the Great and Almighty Creator ; in 
wisdom has He made them all, even to the tiniest insect. 
Gentlemen, what mighty progress have these societies throughout our 
land given to our scientific advancement and our social status. Much has 
been done, much there is yet to do. Therefore I implore you to be 
earnest, to watch, work, and do your duty to your own Society, and then 
you will immediately advance your profession scientifically and practically, 
and to endeavour truthfully to solve some of our complex problems, 
which our most learned and scientific men have not as yet done for us. 
It is, I think, a disputed point and matter of opinion whether the 
primary cause of acute disease in the respiratory tract is a poison or an 
irritant impression made upon the nerve centres, or whether it is from 
the imbibing of a diseased germ into the blood, or from some chemical 
