It has been said, and is generally believed, that Consumptions are incurable. This fact cannot be established. Moreover, the doctrine involves the most fearful consequences; for cases, which in themselves are hopeful, are rendered hopeless from the neglect of proper means, from the groundless apprehensions that no medicines can succeed, and death inevitably ensues. The patient afflicted with cough, expectoration, shortness of breath, and other pectoral symptoms, is calmly consigned to the slow ravages of hectic fever and Consumption. After a few weeks or months of suffering, he dies: this is regarded only as a matter of course. An inspection takes place—the lungs are found studded with tubercles, and an ulcer of more or less extent in some part of them. The pathologist immediately asks, in significant triumph, what possible good could medicines have done in such a case? by what mode of treatment could an organ so diseased have been restored? But another case occurs, the invalid complains precisely of the same symptoms: he has cough, expectoration, wheezing in the chest, and difficulty in breathing—he gradually falls away in flesh, and the hectic fever increases. Palliatives are resorted to, as in the former case, not to cure, which is considered impossible, but simply to alleviate his suffering—he also dies. On inspection, the lungs are found generally sound; no tubercles are discovered; but there is found to be an ulcerated spot of more or less extent in the bronchial membrane. We are forthwith informed, that an ulcerated or thickened condition of the bronchial membrane, with purulent secretion, is a fatal disorder, even although the lungs are otherwise perfectly sound: that in fact, in this case, as there was no difference in the symptoms from the former, and none in the result, so there could have been none made in the method of treatment—that remedies were alike unavailing in both. Without under-estimating the importance of morbid anatomy, we must observe, that when it is carried to the unwarrantable length of introducing such paralysing and disheartening scepticism into medical science, it is productive of extensive and serious practical evils that counterbalance the benefits which would otherwise result from it. Hundreds, nay, thousands of cases of death are day by day occurring, exactly as above described. Indeed, it is a well-established fact, that in this country alone, the annual number of deaths by pulmonary consumption greatly exceeds 50,000. When it is considered, further, that in every individual case of the above solemn catalogue of deaths in disease, medical skill has been resorted to, and found unavailing; the practitioner is reluctantly constrained to pronounce every similar case as equally hopeless, and beyond the power of remedies to cure. This is manifestly a fallacious mode of reasoning, leading to an erroneous conclusion.