definite manner. The action on the involuntary muscular I fibres of the heart has already been mentioned. The thin layers I of voluntary muscles found about the body showed great relaxa-I tion. The respiratory muscles acted in a gasping manner, so I that there was a pumping and quick inspiratory effort in the earlier, and a lazy, feeble expiratory effort in the later stage. At all periods there was a sense of impediment to respiration. The muscles of the limbs were inactive. There was

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... of the muscles, and stiffness of the skin of the face, forehead, and upper lip, so that the features fell. This state of the musoular system followed the commencement of the effect upon the .consciousness, and other functions of the brain, and, also, the excited state of the heart. In reference to its cessation, the power of co-ordinating the muscles was first regained, whilst the buzzing sensation and semi-cataleptic state continued, and the disposition to use the muscles was regained the last of all. There is so close a connexion between the nervous and the muscular systems, and complete consciousness is so essential in inquiries of this kind, that it is not easy to isolate the effect upon the muscles; but close attention to all the phenomena, the care taken to note them down at the moment of their occurrence, and the long series of experiments which we have made, assure us that muscular tone and power are greatly lessened; that the effect is not identical upon voluntary and involuntary muscles, and that it is even not identical upon the inspiratory and expiratory set of muscles. (f) The effect upon the mind was also very marked and peculiar, and would have been a valuable study to a psychologist in search of facts. Rum and some other spirit made us very hilarious and talkative in about ten minutes, and during about twenty to twenty-five minutes; so much so, that my friend was altogether a king: but as minutes flew away, so did our joyousness, and little by little we lessened our garrulity, and felt less happy, until at length, having gone down by degrees, we became silent, almost morose, and extremely miserable. Then, indeed, we felt the horrors and the sorrows of the drunkard's lot, and saw, with a clearness which can only be perceived by such experience, how certain it is that he must again drain the intoxicating cup. Never were the extremes of happiness and misery brought so vividly before us, or seemed to be in such close proximity, as on those occasions, and never did we so deeply commiserate the slavish, miserable, and almost ,hopeless condition of the poor wretch who has become a victim to this fearful vice. I In addition to the above, we may mention that every mental perception was darkened, and that the dreaminess, which is not an unpleasant feature of it, is a condition in which neither thought nor imagination acquires power. We suspect very .greatly the statements of those who profess that fancy is then on her most airy wing, or that thoughts spring forth without the efforts of parturition, and our most charitable reply to such statements would be, that it is all a dream. (g) The effect upon the secretions was very marked, and, in addition to its varying effect upon the urine, it is certain that the secretion of the salivary glands and of the mucous membranes, was lessened, as was shown by the dry state of the mouth, and by the sore and dry condition of the tip of the .tongue, which was so often present when rum was taken. (h) The duration of the influence varied somewhat, both with the substances taken, (being usually longer with rum, and shorter with gin,) and with the season of the year. In the spring time, it passed away within an hour and a half or two hours; but at other times the system continued to be disturbed, and we were depressed during the whole morning. (To be eo):t)!:M.) No. III. THE diagnosis of neuralgia is by no means so easy as it would at first sight appear. Often when we hear no complaint made by the patient but that of pain in a given locality, we find, on closer examination, that that pain is accompanied by subjective and objective phenomena which forbid our regarding it as the essential feature of the disease. Nor is it the patient only who s in error; but the medical man himself is apt to be misled by the urgent representations of the sufferer, and he too may thus be induced to overlook the main disease on account of the symptom. Perhaps no more marked instance can be quoted in illustration of these remarks than pain at the stomach. Nobody will be disposed to deny that there is a genuine neuralgia of the stomach; at the same time few medical men of any experience will fail to recall to their memory cases in which what first appeared genuine gastrodynia proved eventually a case of ulcer or perhaps cancer of the stomach; or, again, other cases in which the pain in the stomach drew off their attention from thoracic symptoms of a much more important nature. The coincidence, in young females, of protracted gastrodynia with pulmonary tuberculosis is so frequent, that I never fail to examine the lungs in these cases, even if the patient avows that all thoracic symptoms are absent; and only too often the physical examination of the chest reveals that the lungs have already suffered, and that tubercular deposit has taken place. The diagnosis of neuralgia is generally arrived at per viam exclusionis, rather than by direct evidence. Pain is necessarily the prominent symptom; but the question to determine is whether it is essentially dependent upon perverted nerveaction, or whether it results from inflammation, or disorganizing processes of other textures. To return to the illustrations already borrowed from the stomach. Few affections give rise to more intense suffering than cancer of the stomach; but no one would, on that ground, class it with the neuralgiae, any more than in an acute attack of gout the sharp, gouging pain could be attributed to a simple hypersesthesia of the internal plantar nerve. The neuralgias are essentially a-febrile ; therefore the presence of febricitations, with thirst, rigors, quick pulse, and heat of skin, would induce us to attribute the pain to some other affection. Ve should, however, be careful not to refuse to admit a neuralgia because one of these symptoms is present; a quick pulse, for instance, in itself may indicate an irritable state of the nervous system, without marking an inflammatory condition. It is so universally admitted that pain is the " prayer of the nerve for healthy blood," that the mere term neuralgia is ordinarily a signal for the employment of haematic remedies, or of remedial agents calculated to restore the normal constitution of the blood. In the great majority of cases this is true, as we find that there is evidence of that general want of tone and loss of mental and bodily vigour which accompanies a depraved state of the blood. Anaemia, then, is one of the most fertile sources of neuralgia, and still more so if associated with some poison, either generated in the system or introduced into it from without. It is, however, important not to regard anaemia as an indispensable condition, as we not unfrequently meet with neuralgia in robust and vigorous individuals, in whom treatment, selected upon the assumption of an ansemic basis, would not lead to satisfactory results. In a former paper it has been shown that neuralgia very rarely occurs before the tenth year; that it increases in frequency up to the period intervening between the thirtieth and fortieth years, after which it rapidly declines. These facts will come to our aid in determining the diagnosis in doubtful cases. A difficulty that often embarrasses the inquirer is that which depends upon sympathetic pains--pains excited at a distance from the seat of injury by sympathy or reflex; as in the case of pain at the knee in disease of the hip, or pain in the foot resulting from piles; or as in the case of Dr. Wollaston,* who was seized with intense pain in the ankle, in consequence of eating ice-creams, the pain being instantly relieved on the rejection of the corpus delicti. In all cases, then, the most careful investigation must be made whether in any part of the body a lesion exists to which the pain may be reasonably attributed. A feature of importance in neuralgia is its tendency to intermit ; the intermissions are often complete, and especially so when the neuralgia depends upon the miasmatic poison. Often, however, the pain is only remittent, and may even be continuous for several days at a time. A reasonable period must be allowed to elapse before we consider our diagnosis established, because in some cases the neuralgia is only a forerunner of other affections ; thus herpes zoster is ushered in by severe pains in the course of the intercostal nerves, which disappear when the vesicular eruption has reached its height. This circumstance, however, suggests the fact that neuralgia itself induces symptoms which may be mistaken for inflammatory action ; redness has been observed in the course of the affected nerve, and the secretions are often very materially influenced during a neuralgic attack. Romberg speaks of various forms of critical discharge terminating neuralgic affections. It * L2etui es m'BtratiYe of certain Local Nervous Affections.