784 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
tion of the bistoury was hair-raising ; how that artery was 
avoided, how this nerve was taken np, and how those veins were 
left untonched, while not a drop of the sanguinary fluid lent its 
nerve-rasping line to detract from the beauty, the expert¬ 
ness—in a word, the surgical magnificence of the bloodless, se¬ 
rious, and never-to-be-forgotten operation. What a sickening 
sensation used to hover around onr epigastric region when, after 
reading these things, we began to think we were not in it, that 
the fellow at the other end had the business by the terminal 
portion of the large intestines, and a downhill pull on it at 
that ; how we used to grab onr Chanvean and go through him 
like a dose of sulphate of magnesia, in a wild effort to discover 
what it was we had missed, and began mentally to abuse‘the 
“ Old Man” for allowing ns to graduate, knowing so little. And, 
then, on the next page how the fellow cured the most serious of 
diseases with a simple hypodermic injection of some newly dis¬ 
covered alkaloid, while we were compelled to sit up nights 
rnminating: on the benefits to be derived from the constant and 
continuous use of aqnse bull., which, by the way, doesn’t mean 
the urine of that animal ; and what agony possessed onr pro¬ 
fessional ego when we cut veins, arteries, and nerves in the 
identical operations ; how we had to fall back on the old-time 
ligatures and compress, and how we discovered later on that in 
onr hands the much-landed alkaloid wasn’t worth two hurrahs 
in Dante’s Inferno. When it came down to straight business, 
and onr client anxiously awaiting results with that peculiar ex¬ 
pression on his countenance that tells yon as plainly as w^ords 
that he has a mind to hire a man to kick him around the block j 
for having: called von in the first nlace. 
What wonderful things happen in the case-report columns ! 
What miraculous recoveries ! What sudden and unexpected 
uprisings and outgoings ! Verily, the days of miracles have \ 
returned, and the veterinary profession has a barbed-wire fence \ 
around the same. | 
The “ devil a word ” do we hear of the failures ; the anguish I 
of souls, manifested when the brazen-hearted knight of the | 
bucket and pitchfork who presides o’er the destinies of the | 
stable, and tells you with a pitiless voice when you inquire 
next morning, “ Well, how is he this morning, Mike ? ” “ Well, 
docthor, I giv him the last dose at twinty-wan and a haluf 
minites afther tin, as ye tould me, and he died at tin thirty, 
without sayin a word. I don’t think it was the plnmonia at 
all, but sumthing the matter wid his wather works.” Not a 
