On the other hand, if this formidable disease cannot be stopped in its progress, does it follow that we should not treat it at all? Certainly not! Far be such a heresy from our thoughts. What would be the consequence, if we left to their fate the sufferers from the small-pox, from typhoid fever, and from typhus itself, instead of watching over them with the utmost solicitude? If the physician, the enlightened interpreter of morbid phenomena, did not direct them with a bold and fearless hand, but abandoned Nature to her helpless course, why, necessarily, every patient would die, whereas a large number are now saved.
That which is true in the case of man, is likewise true in the case of animals: we are bound to treat them when they are ill. If to-day we think it more expeditious and more profitable to exterminate them, we certainly neglect our duty. We are the sovereign masters of animals; they are the companions of our toils and pleasures, their lives must be given to preserve our own; but on their well-being and their happiness our own well-being and happiness also depend. They will return to us the sufferings and diseases of which they die a hundred times over. Like ourselves, they die of consumptive, tubercular, cancerous, eruptive, typhoid, and parasitical diseases. And who can tell whether they have not communicated these disorders to man, who was, perhaps, originally exempt from them; and whether they do not continually communicate them to him?
What noble pages might be written on the close connexion which exists between all organized beings, both physically and morally! Let us love these animals, let us treat them with kindness, and all our other qualities will be raised by so doing.
But as a man must belong to the time he lives in, we will take up for a moment with the doctrines of the economists; we will tolerate the extermination of diseased animals, as a painful necessity. Our duty is to seek in the study of the diseases of animals _and in their cure_, the cure of the disorders which afflict the human species. We shall, therefore, now proceed to consider the subject of the treatment of horned cattle, both as relates to preventive and curative medication.
[O] Mr. Simonds has for three months had under his observation a cow which has lived with impunity among animals sick and dying of the typhus. And a young calf did not contract the disease for more than three weeks.