Mr. Berlioz uses a steel needle, three inches in length, which has a head given to it of melted sealing wax. This needle is introduced to such a depth as the operator thinks proper, depending on the part in which it is used, as well as the nature of the disease which it is intended to remedy. If it be intended to puncture any of the viscera, such a needle will indeed be wanted; but it will be seen by the practice of the French physicians, that though they have sometimes thought it right to penetrate the visceral cavities to the whole depth of this needle, yet it is but seldom that more than one inch of it has been sunk into the part. I have not, in my own practice, ventured to use needles of greater length than one inch, and one inch and a half; and the instrument which I use is an ingenious adaptation of a common sewing needle to an ivory handle, constructed by Mr. Edward Jukes, Surgeon Accoucheur to the Westminster Medical Institution (see plate, fig. 1 and 2.) Dr. Haime, and I believe the French surgeons who practice acupuncturation, use this long needle (three inches) and Mr. Demours, who appears to be a man of considerable mechanical genius, has lately invented a new apparatus for this purpose. An exhausting syringe is fitted to the side of a cupping glass, which can be unscrewed and removed after the exhaustion has been effected by a few strokes of the piston, leaving the glass affixed to the part. From the top of the glass proceeds a hollow staff, in which slides (the tube being air tight) a handle, armed with a three inch needle, which is inserted to any depth the operator chuses. The theory which Mr. Demours gives in defence of this instrument is, that the sensibility of the part is so much lessened by the conjestion occasioned by the suction of the pump, that the instrument passes without producing the least pain, whilst at the same time it penetrates deeper, and more readily, through the tumefaction occasioned by the turgescence of the sanguineous capillaries and lymphatics. These advantages, he says, being only obtained by the operators ability of passing the needle whilst the surface of the body remains in the state of tumefaction, he contends they cannot possibly be derived from the simple process of affixing a common glass by the flame of a taper, as the tumor subsides the instant the glass is removed. I do not think it, however, a matter of any moment, whether a cupping glass be applied or not; it may, certainly, lessen the sensibility of the part, and consequently diminish the pain occasioned by the needle; but this is in general so trifling, that no preparatory steps are required to mitigate it; in fact, it deserves so little the name of pain, that the patient is often unconscious of the needle having penetrated.