Of this work of Morgagni's, Professor Benjamin Ward Richardson, said: "To this day no medical scholar can help being delighted and instructed by the study of this wonderful book. To move into it from the midst of a body {41} of current medical literature, is like passing from the periodical flux of current general literature to the perusal of a Shakespearean drama, the _Pilgrim's Progress_, or _Paradise Lost_. It is a transition from the mediocrity of incessant repetition of well-known truths told in long and hackneyed terms, back to descriptions derived direct from nature and fresh from her treasury. It matters not where the book is opened, it is always good and instructive reading, full of suggestion and rich in original narrative." Some of Morgagni's work in clinical medicine and in pathology, as detailed in these volumes, remains of perennial interest and is often referred to. Many an after-time discovery, proclaimed loudly by its author, will be found, at times only in embryo but often enough in entirety, in its pages. There are frequent surprises to the reader in the anticipation of what are supposedly much later thoughts in medicine. Some of these passages of more general interest I venture to present here. It was Morgagni who first realized that minute connections between parts of the nervous system might very easily provide the basis for symptoms quite distant from the site of actual disease. He gives, for instance, a detailed account of a curiously interesting case in which the patient, a man somewhat beyond middle life, was annoyed on a number of occasions by violent sneezing. These attacks of sneezing became more and more frequent and finally were accompanied by difficulty of breathing and a sense of pressure over the chest. These symptoms became more and more marked, until finally, during an especially violent attack of sneezing, the man suddenly died. Up to this time anatomists generally had declared that there was no direct nervous connection between the mucous membrane of the nose and the diaphragm. Sneezing is {42} due to a violent contraction of the diaphragm and is almost invariably caused by the presence of an irritant in the nose. This is, in fact, nature's method of getting rid of irritant material on the sensitive nasal mucous membranes by an explosive expulsion of air through the nose. This expulsion of air is brought about by a convulsive contraction of the diaphragm. It had always been supposed that the sneezing was due to irritation transmitted through the brain to the diaphragm.