5. Pain, though it may usher in the abdominal affection, and may even be severe for the first few days, diminishes after a certain time and then ceases altogether, so that it is extremely rare, after the tenth day of fever, for instance, for the patient to complain of pain of the abdomen, even when the abdominal affection is the most intense. Such an event may happen, perhaps when the cerebral affection is more than commonly slight, but it is an exceedingly rare occurrence, and my attention has been particularly drawn to this circumstance from reflecting on the uniformity of the answers which I have obtained from patients obviously labouring under abdominal affection, on my first visit to them in the wards of the hospital. Having commonly been ill from ten to fourteen days, the abdominal affection may by this time be fully developed: on asking them whether they feel any pain in the abdomen, the answer almost invariably received is, “no.” Press gently upon the abdomen, press especially upon the epigastrium, often even in these very cases not the slightest touch can be borne. After pressure has once been made, the patient will frequently do all he can with his hand to prevent its being made a second time. So acutely sensible is he of pain on the least pressure, though wholly unconscious of pain when left to himself. Even when there is not this great degree of tenderness, pain can generally be produced by full pressure. There is thus a remarkable coincidence between the progress of the symptoms in the abdomen and in the head. We have seen that however intense the cerebral affection, the pain of the head which accompanies it diminishes after a certain time, and in a day or two after it has begun to diminish, ceases altogether. In like manner the pain which ushers in an acute abdominal affection diminishes after a certain time, and soon wholly disappears. After this period, therefore, we should have no more indications of abdominal than we have of cerebral pain were the intestines, like the brain, enclosed in a bony case. When an organ can be touched, it gives us an additional and an invaluable means of ascertaining its morbid condition: and this is one reason why that condition is commonly so much more certainly known in surgical than in medical diseases. What the result would be, could we press the brain as we can the abdomen, after its sensibility is so much diminished as to cease to occasion pain, we do not know; but it would be a bad use indeed to make of the additional means afforded us of ascertaining the condition of the intestines, were we to allow the additional information we thus gain, to obscure our perception of the perfect analogy there is in the progress of both affections. We know that, as the disease advances in both, the pain ceases; but, in the one case, we have the means of ascertaining that there still remains preternatural tenderness on pressure, as in ordinary inflammation, which we are without the means