KEEPING A CASE BOOK AND REPORTING CASES. 
475 
Second. It renders the veterinarian more alert to detect 
new forms of disease. 
Third .—Other practitioners will find careful reports of in¬ 
calculable value to them in their treatment of cases which they 
meet in their practice. It gives them a “ lamp of experience ” 
to guide them. They are thus relieved of the necessity of re¬ 
sorting to makeshift methods, the efficiency of which they can 
only conjecture. It is well to have the power of original device 
in case of need, but no one should be compelled to depend upon 
his own untried inventions because he is deprived of the ex¬ 
perience of his predecessors and contemporaries. 
Fourth .—It affords writers of articles on technical medical 
subjects data which they may use for the purpose of substantia- 
ing some principle they have evolved, or gives them facts from 
which they may make original inductions. 
Fifth. It is only through the agency of reports of cases that 
we will be able to build up a national veterinary medical litera¬ 
ture. These reports will furnish to those who write our books 
the larger part of the material which is necessary to bookmak¬ 
ing. Writers, in order to produce a valuable scientific work, 
must have a large collection of reliable records which have been 
contributed by the rank and file of the profession for a long 
period of years. A celebrated surgeon of Philadelphia recently 
wiites on this point: u The report of cases bears the same rela¬ 
tion to a national medical literature as does the farmer to the 
body politic, viz. : it is the foundation—the backbone. There 
is scarcely a single important contribution to medical science 
which is not based on the report of cases. The student collects 
these cases from general literature and draws from this collec¬ 
tion deductions which are useful to the whole profession. Case 
reports may be considered the springs, which if sufficiently nu¬ 
merous make the mighty river of progress of medical science.” 
The entile fabric of science is but the recorded experience 
of individuals. In the words of another : “ Science is ‘ knowl- 
edge gained by systematic observation, experiment, and reason¬ 
ing coordinated, arranged, and systematized.’ ” 
