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 reaching a condition which would enable the most skilful physicians and surgeons to locate them, or decide positively their cause. The converse of this is true, that swellings have been supposed to be caused by abscesses, incisions made, and a totally different and comparatively harmless condition found. Hence it is by no means certain that an external disease is properly named. The patient and his attending physicians may be in serious error as to the exact character of what at a first glance it might be supposed easy to identify.

I have already spoken of the power of hysteria to simulate the symptoms of any internal disease. It may be new to some that it can produce very remarkable external developments. On the authority of Dr. Marvin R. Vincent, of this city, I give the following. Says Dr. Vincent: "I was told of a case at St. Luke's Hospital in this city: a woman with a swelling which was pronounced by the physicians to be an ovarian tumor, but which disappeared on the administration of ether, and was discovered to be merely the result of hysteria."

Consumption is a subject of painful interest to almost every family in the country. The peculiarity of this disease is that it advances and retreats. In the more common form there comes a time when what is commonly called softening of the tubercles takes place. The patient is then very ill; hectic fever with the succeeding chill occurs every day, and sometimes several times a day; night-sweats, profuse expectoration, and other evidences and causes of debility complicate the situation, and the end is thought to be not far off. To the surprise of the friends, in a few days he greatly improves. Night-sweats cease, the fever greatly diminishes or disappears, the cough lessens; he rejoices, perhaps resumes his business and