The peculiar life of the bones is composed then of only two vital properties, organic sensibility and insensible organic contractility. From these two properties are derived all the vital phenomena that these organs exhibit, inflammations, formation of tumours, cicatrization of solutions of continuity, &c. This peculiar life is remarkable in general, as I have just observed, when compared with the peculiar lives of the other organs, by its slowness, by the tardy concatenation of its phenomena. All things being equal as to ages, and the different proportions of the earthy and cartilaginous substances, inflammation is more slow there than in the other parts. Callus is remarkable among the other cicatrices by the length of its formation; compare an exostosis in its origin, its progress and its development, with a tumour of the soft parts, a phlegmon for example, and you will see the difference. Who does not know, that whilst suppuration often requires only a few days in the other organs, it is whole months in forming in the middle of the bones? Observe the difference that there is between a gangrene of the soft parts, in which death takes place in a short time, with caries and necrosis of the bones, in which a long period elapses between disease and death of the part. In general we can say, when inflammation exists in a bone, that it is chronic. _Sympathies._ This character of the vital properties imprints an analogous one upon the sympathetic relations of the osseous system with the other systems. At first the animal contractility and the sensible organic contractility cannot be put in action in these relations, as they do not exist in the bones. The animal sensibility being developed in them with difficulty and slowly by the diseases that essentially affect them, the sympathies can be brought into action in them only in an obscure manner. These sympathies then should act essentially upon the organic sensibility and upon the insensible organic contractility, and as these two properties are developed slowly, the different sympathies should not be connected with the acute affections of the other organs, and this is what is clearly proved by observation. In fact observe that whilst many other systems respond with great quickness to the acute diseases of an organ, this, as well as the cartilaginous, fibro-cartilaginous systems, &c. remain then almost always in inaction. Let the stomach, the lungs, the brain, &c. be the seat of a severe acute disease, you see immediately many sympathetic phenomena arise in the nervous, vascular, muscular, glandular, cutaneous, mucous systems, &c. &c.; all seem to feel the trouble of the affected organ; each, according to the vital forces that predominate there, exhibit different phenomena, which are only aberrations, irregular developments of these forces; in the animal muscular system, it is the animal contractility which is especially raised; hence spasms and convulsions; in the