A plIca for veterinary surgery. 
159 
view and soundness of practice which has served to rescue their 
names from oblivion, and hand them down to us as th q fathers of 
medicine. 
In modern times a similar course has secured most of the great 
advances in medicine and surgery, and physiology and therapeutics. 
If we open a modern work on physiology, we see that almost 
every step in advance has been gained from observations made on 
the lower animals. To illustrate this would be to furnish a large 
volume. Our knowledge of the functions of the nervous system, 
of circulation, of sanguification, of absorption, of nutrition, of 
secretion, etc., is almost entirely due to observations made on the 
lower animals. As medicine has advanced, this investigation of 
the lower creation has been resorted to more and more, and can 
be traced down from the labors of Harvey, of Haller, of Legallois, 
of Charles Bell, of the Hunters, of Flourens, and of Majendie, to 
the great host that are now engrossed in this profitable field of 
study. 
If we pass to pathology the case is nearly the same. Many 
of the most complex pathological processes owe the elucidation of 
their nature, progress, and results to observations made on ani¬ 
mals. The phenomena of inflammation as a generic morbid pro¬ 
cess have been studied on animals in a way in which it would 
have been impossible to do on man, and the descriptions given of 
inflammation and its products, are descriptions drawn from ani¬ 
mal pathology. Fever, too, presents facilities for study in animals, 
which could not be obtained in the human subject, and these have 
been availed of to elucidate points that would otherwise have re¬ 
mained in obscurity. (See as a single illustration of this, the Eng¬ 
lish Royal Commissioner’s Third Report on the Cattle Plague.) 
The service rendered in regard to the other morbid processes is 
well illustrated by the treasures of the Hunterian museum, and by 
the works of pathologists from Hunter’s day to this. 
In surgery an analogous obligation has been incurred. Plas¬ 
tic operations', the methods of repair in fractures, tenotomy, lisem- 
ostatics, subperiosted section, and a host of other brilliant advances 
in modern surgery, were based upon observations made upon ani¬ 
mals. Some, indeed, like tenotomy, were first practiced by veter- 
