We so usually connect pain with disease, that, in our haste, we are apt to imagine that it is not merely the worst feature, but the only sign of it. "I am very well, I am in no pain whatever," is a common expression, and yet a person may be irremediably stricken, without suffering any pain. Pain is, in fact, often the best possible monitor, and has saved many thousands of lives by the necessity it has imposed of observing what is the best of all remedies, in a large class of cases. Amongst hundreds of examples, we might cite several affections of joints, wherein pain alone has sometimes exacted the observance of that which surgeons were a long time before they had learned the full advantage of; and which, when they had been taught it by Abernethy, they have often failed, with all their endeavours, to accomplish, but which, when efficiently secured, is of more consequence than any one other remedy; we mean "_absolute repose_" There are plenty of diseases marked by little or no pain, or which, at all events, are not painful; but they are amongst the most fatal and insidious of human maladies. Let us commence the record of some of the numerous improvements we owe to the genius of Abernethy, by mentioning one of them. We have, too many of us probably, observed something like the following, on the assembling of a family of a morning: the usual greetings interchanged, and that cheerful meal, breakfast, fairly begun, our attention has been directed to some fine, comely, perhaps beautiful girl, who, to the hilarious spirits of her laughing sisters, has only contributed a somewhat languid smile. We may, perhaps, have remarked that she is a little more spoken to by her mother than any other of the family circle; we may, too, have observed a tone compounded of confidence and gentleness, somewhat different from that addressed to her sisters. Still, though less hilarious than the rest, she has chatted away with considerable cheerfulness; she has, however, a languor in her manner, which but for the surrounding contrast, might not have occurred to us. On rising from the breakfast-table, we observe that her gait is peculiar. She is not exactly lame; but her step has something between firmness and faltering, that seems to indicate more effort or less power.