The liver is especially apt to affect them. It is engaged, like the lungs, in throwing off large quantities of carbon or charcoal from the system, and has been not very improperly termed the "abdominal lung." It is constantly also sending through the medium of the heart a large quantity of blood to the lungs. Now, if this blood have not the proper quantity of carbon extracted from it by the liver, or if even the blood be excessive in quantity, why the lungs must have more to do; and many diseased lungs have been produced in this manner in cases where the chest has been well formed. There are, however, many intimate relations between organs which do not depend on mere community of function. It is very important that the public should have clear views on this subject; and if they would only give a little of that attention which they so often bestow on things infinitely more difficult, there is no doubt many lives would be saved that are irremediably damaged, as Abernethy says, sometimes even before any symptoms have suggested that there is anything the matter. But if there be a shadow of truth in Mr. Abernethy's views, and still more in those extensions of them to which they have naturally led, we may learn how necessary is that discrimination which traces disease to _primarily_ affected organs; and how little success we may expect by treating the lungs, as the integral seat of disease, by specifics, or such remedies as tar, naphtha, cod-liver oil, various gases, &c. which come in and go out of fashion in a manner sufficiently significant of the claims they can have in a scientific point of view. Mr. Abernethy also remarks on the comparatively restricted influence of scrofula in constituting consumption. "At one time," he observes, "I examined the bodies of many people who died of consumption." After describing other appearances which he found, he says, "the greater number were bestudded with larger or smaller tubercles, or _made uniformly dense_ (consolidated)." He says, this disease (consolidation) is _very insidious_, that it is often established beyond the possibility of removal before it is suspected; but, he says, he thinks it might be known, for the capacity of the lungs is diminished; and suggests that this should be tested, by allowing a suspected case to _breathe into a glass vessel over water_, by which the quantity of air they can receive is rendered perceptible. His remarks, too, on the treatment are highly interesting and discriminative, and will not only well repay attentive perusal, but that study which is necessary to the perception of their full force and beauty. When we have to sum up the various influences of the views of Abernethy, we may probably find space for a few facts on that which they exert on the treatment of the lungs and skin; and this not merely as affecting the health in general, but also complexion, and other conditions of these curious and important organs.