EDITORIAL. 
489 
iu its aims. The veterinary profession is yet small in number. 
These can therefore be easier harmonized and as—after the exam¬ 
ination of the few that are yet without certificates—examinations 
which, according to the word and spirit of the law, must take 
place with six months from the passage of this bill, the Board of 
Examiners will cease to have reasons to exist. No new crop of 
self-made veterinarians will rise. The final result for the State of 
New York will be that none but regular graduates will be engaged 
in the practice of veterinary medicine. This happy time may be 
far off, but the importance of the result is worth waiting for for 
the few years necessary to pass before it is realized. 
POST-PHARYNGEAL ABSCESS. 
Under this name we publish this month the report of a case 
which we have seen in consultation with the author of the report, 
Ur. Osgood. The length of the disease, its peculiar features, 
its fatal termination, and the post mortem examination will no 
doubt render it most interesting to our readers. 
The definition of post-pharyngeal abscess as given in Williams’ 
Surgery, will probably not cover the lesion found in this subject, 
but that which we generally found in works of human surgery 
proved beyond a doubt the correctness of the diagnosis. Ac. 
cording to Quain, “it is a collection of pus which connects the 
pharynx with the muscles lying upon the vertebral column, namely 
the longus colli and the vastus anticus-major.” One of its com¬ 
mon causes being a caries of the cervical vertebrae or of their 
cartilages. 
If we bear in mind the anatomy of that region in our solipeds, 
the position that the pharynx occupies, the presence of the mucous 
membrane which forms the guttural pouches, and the distance 
between this organ and the cervical vertebrae, it can be easily 
approciated that simple iodiopathic caries of some of the bones 
of the base of the cranium must also be, as in this very case, 
considered as one of the principal factors in the development of 
that affection. The treatment which is recommended in the clas¬ 
sical work in surgery, viz.: the puncture of the abscess through 
