The story of O'Dwyer's death serves to illustrate some of the weaker points of modern medicine. During the nearly ten years after his wife's death he had never been quite the same man, but had succeeded in doing a large amount of work and had continued to care for a very large practice. In December, 1897, he began to develop some anomalous symptoms, pointing to a serious pathological condition within the skull. He seemed to have had what are known as "Ménière's symptoms," that is, a tendency to vertigo, some ringing in the ears and other unpleasant feelings. Toward the end of that month some hemiplegia, or at least some weakness of one side of his body, developed. He was rather neglectful of his personal health, as most physicians are, and until this time had paid very little attention to his symptoms. Most of the prominent New York consultants and nervous specialists were called in, but there was a marked disaccord as to the cause of the symptoms. After some days in bed, comatose symptoms began to manifest themselves, and on January the seventh following, after having been lethargic for some days, Dr. O'Dwyer died. The _antemortem_ diagnosis of his case was dubious, lying amid the possibilities of tubercular meningitis, {355} secondary infection after otitis media, and secondary infection from some external cause. During the previous December, O'Dwyer had been treating a patient with carbuncle, and developed himself a small carbuncle on his chin. By some it is thought that infectious material from this lesion had been carried by emissary veins or their accompanying lymphatics to the inside of the skull, affecting the meninges, and perhaps portions of the brain-substance itself. The _postmortem_ examination did not entirely clear up the doubts of diagnosis. The lateral sinus was found thrombosed, while there were some suspicious signs in the middle ear, but no distinct inflammatory condition. Just how the infection took place, then, is not clear, but O'Dwyer's condition of lowered resistive vitality was evidently at fault, to an important degree, in permitting infection to take place and in not throwing it off afterward.