Hæmoptysis, then, I would consider, as very seldom, perhaps, never, being the cause of Consumption; but in all those cases in which it is assigned as the cause, merely a symptom of the incipient stage of the disease. The symptoms accompanying hæmorrhage from the lungs, are no other than those of incipient Phthisis. They are thus accurately described by Dr. Reid. “When subsequent to a sense of weight and oppression in the breast, which scarcely amounts to a feeling of pain, together with cough, difficult respiration, and general lassitude, a quantity of blood is suddenly, and in a convulsive manner, discharged from the mouth, there can remain small doubt respecting the part from which it proceeds. If the discharged blood be of a florid colour, and together with the above symptoms, a saltish taste be perceived in the mouth, and the patient become sensible of a degree of irritation in the upper part of the trachea, the nature of the affection is rendered altogether unequivocal.” Every symptom here enumerated, occurs in the early periods of Consumption. Nor have we any better reason for believing tubercles to be an exciting cause of Phthisis. These appearances are indeed very frequently found in dissections of the lungs of those who have died of Consumption. Of the nine hundred patients examined by Bayle, 624 had tuberculated lungs. Tubercles were formerly considered as indurated glands, and generally attributed to a scrophulous constitution; but we are assured by Baillie, in his morbid Anatomy, “that there is no glandular structure in the cellular connecting membrane of the lungs; and on the inside of the branches of the trachea, where there are follicles, tubercles have never been seen.” These tubercles are roundish bodies, of a firm consistence, and frequently a cartilaginous structure, but often containing decidedly purulent matter. By the union of several of them, vomicæ are formed, which are only larger tubercles. May not the formation of these bodies be sufficiently accounted for by the preceding inflammation, and they be considered therefore a consequence, rather than a cause of Consumption? Dr. Rush insists that tubercles are the effects, and not the cause of pulmonary Consumption; and remarks as a farther evidence of this opinion, that similar tumours are suddenly formed on the intestines by dysentery, and on the omentum by a yellow fever. He refers to cases of the former in the dissections of Sir John Pringle, and one of the latter mentioned by Dr. Mackittrick, in his inaugural dissertation on the yellow fever, published in Edinburgh, in the year 1776. Dr. Hosack, in his Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Physic, advocates the same doctrine, and enforces it, by remarking, that similar tubercles are formed in the parenchyma of the brain, the liver, and the kidneys, in which no small glands have yet been detected, and where, as in the lungs, there is nothing but cellular membrane and vessels. It is his opinion, that it is an union