The most important diseases have their seat in the organs of the body; an accurate acquaintance with their situation is, therefore, absolutely necessary, in order to ascertain the seats of disease; but for the reasons already assigned, their situation cannot be learnt, without the study of anatomy. In several regions, organs the most different in structure and function are placed close to each other. In what is termed the epigastric region, for example, are situated the stomach, the liver, the gall bladder, the first portion of the small intestine (the duodenum) and a portion of the large intestine (the colon); each of these organs is essentially different in structure and in use, and is liable to distinct diseases. Diseases the most diversified, therefore requiring the most opposite treatment, may exist in the same region of the body; the discrimination of which is absolutely impossible, without that knowledge which the study of anatomy alone can impart. The seat of pain is often at a great distance from that of the affected organ. In disease of the liver, pain is generally felt at the top of the right shoulder. The right phrenic nerve sends a branch to the liver: the third cervical nerve, from which the phrenic arises, distributes numerous branches to the neighbourhood of the shoulder: thus is established a nervous communication between the shoulder and the liver. This is a fact which nothing but anatomy could teach, and affords the explanation of a symptom which nothing but anatomy could give. The knowledge of it would infallibly correct a mistake into which a person who is ignorant of it would be sure to fall: in fact, persons ignorant of it do constantly commit the error. We have known several instances in which organic disease of the liver has been considered, and treated as rheumatism of the shoulder. In each of these cases, disease in a most important organ might have been allowed to steal on insidiously until it became incurable: while a person, acquainted with anatomy, would have detected it at once, and cured it without difficulty. Many cases have occurred of persons who have been supposed to labour under disease of the liver, and who have been treated accordingly: on examination after death, the liver has been found perfectly healthy, but there has been discovered extensive disease of the brain. Disease of the liver is often mistaken for disease of the lungs: on the other hand, the lungs have been found full of ulcers, when they were supposed to have been perfectly sound, and when every symptom was referred to disease of the liver. Persons are constantly attacked with convulsions--children especially; convulsions are spasms: spasms, of course, are to be treated by antispasmodics. This is the notion amongst people ignorant of medicine: it is the notion amongst old medical men: it is the notion amongst half-educated young ones. All this time these convulsions are