Mr. Abernethy examined the bile by submitting it to various tests; and comparing the results with those obtained from ordinary bile, he found them to be the same. His remarks are, as usual, ingenious and to the point, and very characteristic of the penetrative perception with which he seized on the proximate and practical relations of facts. "When we see the unusual circumstance," says he, "of secretion taking place from a _vein_[18], we are apt to conclude that the properties of such a secretion require that it should be made from venous blood. But, in this case, we see that bile could be prepared from _arterial_ blood; and we are led, therefore, so far to modify our conclusion as to infer, not that venous blood is _necessary_, but that it can be made to answer the purpose." We must not omit that these remarks are supported by comparative anatomy. As we descend in the scale of creation from the more complicated organizations to those which are more simple in their structure or their relations, the arrangement which I have stated as usual in man no longer obtains, but the bile is secreted from the arteries as the other fluids of the animal—showing, in fact, that the inference drawn by Abernethy was the legitimate conclusion. Since the discovery of this case, one or two others have been observed; and the opinions of several eminent men, in relation to the bearing such cases have on the ordinary sources of bile, are described in Mr. Kiernan's interesting paper on the Anatomy and Physiology of the Liver, in the "Philosophical Transactions." It is very interesting, particularly to a professional reader, to peruse that discussion, in order to estimate Mr. Abernethy's comparatively simple, ready, and, as it would seem, correct view of the subject. One other thing we learn from these cases—the extreme importance of examining bodies whilst their histories and symptoms can be recorded. It might have been highly useful to science, had the histories of these cases been known; and the circumstance should be mentioned, as, in some measure, tending to counterbalance in the public that not unnatural but (as regards their real interest) not less to be lamented aversion to the inspection of the dead—a branch only, it is true, but a very important one of physiological inquiry. It is the only means of which we can have the comfort of knowing that, however unable we may have been to arrest disease, we were at least right in the seat we had assigned to it; but it is infinitely more valuable in disclosing to us affections of organs which _had given no sign_, and in thus impressing on us the necessity of taking a wider range in our investigations, and comprehending in them all _those injurious influences_ which have, _at various periods_, acted on the body; for we _thus_ obtain an insight into the nature of disease which _no mere present symptoms_ can ever afford us.