PROVERBS OF THE VETERINARY REFORMERS.
The merciful man is merciful to his domestic animals.
"Avoid blood-letting and poisons, for they are powerful depressors of the vital energies. There are two medical fulcra—reason and experience. Experience precedes, reason follows; hence, reasoning not founded on experience avails nothing. He who cures by simples need not seek for compounds."—Villanov.
"The physician destitute of a knowledge of plants can never properly judge of the power of a plant."—Whitlaw.
"The vegetable kingdom is the most noble in medicines."—Ibid.
"Innocent medicines, which approach as near to food as possible, preserve health, while chemical compounds destroy it. Heroic medicines (such are antimony, copper, corrosive sublimate, lead, opium, hellebore, arsenic, belladonna) are like the sword in the hands of a madman.
"Nature unassisted by art sometimes effects miracles."—Whitlaw.
"It is the part of a wise physician to decline prescribing in a lost case."—Ibid. Whenever there is free, full circulation of blood, there is animal heat. If the heat of a part becomes deficient, the circulation is correspondingly diminished. As soon as voluntary motion in a part ceases, so soon the circulation becomes enfeebled; and if continued, the part will wither and waste away.
The strength and health of an animal depend on a due share of exercise, pure air, and suitable food. Deprive an animal of these, and he will cease to exist. We believe in the great doctrine that the duty of the physician is to aid nature in protecting herself in the enjoyment of health, by proper attention to breeding, rearing, ventilation, and proper farm and stable management.
"The tinsel glitter of fine-spun theory, or favorite hypothesis, which prevails wherever allopathy hath been taught, so dazzles, flatters, and charms human vanity and folly, that, so far from contributing to the certain and speedy cure of diseases, it hath, in every age, proved the bane and disgrace of healing art."—Graham, p. 15.
"Those physicians generally become the most distinguished who soonest emancipate themselves from the tyranny of the schools of physic."—Rush.
"Availing ourselves of the privileges we possess, and animated by the noblest impulses, let us cordially coöperate to give to medicine a new direction, and attempt those great improvements which it imperiously demands."—Ther., vol. i. p. 51.
"It has been proved by allopathists themselves, that 'a physician should be nature's servant;' that 'bleeding tends directly to subdue nature's efforts;' that 'all poisons suddenly and rapidly destroy a great proportion of the vitality of the system;' that whatever be the quantity, use, or manner of application, all the influence they inherently possess is injurious, and that they are not fatal in every instance of their use only because nature overpowers them."—Curtis.