The patient was twenty-eight years old, and of a lymphatic-bilious temperament. When twelve years of age, he became addicted to masturbation, and then began to perceive tremblings in the arms and legs, vertigo, and pains in the head. He continued his fatal habit till twenty-two years old. At the beginning of August, 1824, he was attacked with a tertian intermittent, but for this he took no medicine. On the 20th of the same month, while cutting wood in Sesia, and while in a profuse perspiration, he went in swimming. He soon felt a sensation of shivering, followed by cold, spasms, vertigo, pain in the head, and thirst; aversion to food, difficulty of respiration, sensation of oppression in the sacrolumbar region, constipation, pains, and trembling in the lower extremities. These latter symptoms became so urgent, that the patient was obliged to have advice. In this state, he was carried to the hospital of Vercelli; and in a few days he was bled eleven times, and drastic purgatives were administered without success. A month afterward, he left the hospital; and since that time, the man has become a beggar and an object of public commiseration. The 18th of October, at which time he came under the charge of Dr. Bertini, he presented the following symptoms: he had no fever, nor pains in the head, nor derangement in the intellectual faculties; but he had a pain in the two sides of the sacrolumbar region, which was increased by pressure. The patient complained, also, of a kind of formication in the legs and feet, which parts, as also the rest of the body, trembled constantly: the agitation was so great, that the patient could not rest in bed, nor sit without support. Twenty-five leeches were applied to the lumbar region, and these drew about twelve ounces of blood. The trembling diminished, and the patient could soon rise and walk without a stick, and in fact without assistance. From this time, he felt no pains nor trembling, and he left the hospital eight days afterward. Dr. Bertini has since seen him, and he was well. (_Revue Med._, Dec. 1825.) The tetanic form of the disease of the spinal marrow has rarely been observed as arising from onanism. Tissot saw a case of it in a young man:--“The disease commenced with rigidity of the neck and spine; this extended successively to all the limbs; and the patient, for some time before death, was obliged to lie in bed on his face, unable to move either his feet or hands. All motion was impossible; and he was obliged even to be fed. He lived several weeks in this sad state; and died, or rather sunk away, almost without suffering.”