822 
W. H. DALRYMPLE. 
ailment which had some semblance to charbon, or perhaps to a 
genuine case which would have recovered, as many do towards 
the end of an outbreak from the virus becoming weakened, ad¬ 
vertises his drug, or condition powder, or stock food, as a sure 
cure, and to which the ignorant and unsuspecting stock owner 
“ catches on.” The second, is the would be benefactor, who has 
been similarly deceived into the belief that he has hit upon a 
specific which has never failed with him, recommends it to his 
neighbor in adversity. And the third, is the professional fakir, 
who neither knows nor cares what the disease is so long as he 
can rake in the shekels from his credulous and confidence re¬ 
posing victim. 
The first of these is to be excused ; the second to be com¬ 
mended, but the third should be criminally prosecuted. The 
great danger lies not in any harm that may accrue from the rem- 
edy (?) per se^ but in the liability of the disease to spread, through 
the absence of any virtue—so far as this disease is concerned— 
in the quack medicine, and the total neglect of any sanitary 
measures whatever, which are in reality the only rational means 
by which to control the malady. 
How, then, is the stock-owner to release himself from the 
thraldom of this ignorance and empiricism ? He must avail of 
every means of educating himself along such lines ; have re¬ 
course to the most reliable and authentic literature on the sub¬ 
ject, which in this advanced age is quite voluminous; and, I 
hope I may be pardoned for this suggestion, give more encour¬ 
agement to the educated veterinarian to locate in his midst, to 
render the assistance of valuable experience gained as the result 
of years of hard and patient study. Then such a disease as 
charbon wonld soon be shorn of its terrors, and then would the 
errors of the “ empiric ” who served his day and generation as 
best he could, according to his light, be relegated to the archives 
of a past age, and the light of reason and intelligence beam 
forth to obliterate the dark doings of empiricism, superstition 
and doubt. 
So far, then, we have said something about what has been 
