Perhaps, of all known torments, there is none that can be compared, either in intensity or duration, with that curious disease which has been called Tic Doloreux. Like the term Neuralgia, it is merely a hard word to express a violent pain in a nerve. Conventionally, the term neuralgia, or nerve-pain, is generally used to express a case where the suffering is of a more or less diffused character. The term "tic" is more usually applied in cases where the seat of pain is found in some superficial nerve. Neither term has much claim to the character of scientific nomenclature; they are merely equivalent to saying that we know very little of the matter. This obscurity, however, may be soon lessened, if not entirely cleared, by any one who will go to work in the way suggested by Mr. Abernethy's principles, and in which, to a certain point, they will conduct him. He must, however, recollect that the pain, though a most distressing symptom, is still a _symptom_, and not the _disease_ which gives rise to it. This disease teaches us how beneficently framed we are in relation to all around us; and how small a deviation from a healthy condition of our sensations converts all usual sources of pleasure into so many elements of agony. The breeze, of late so grateful and refreshing, may produce more suffering than would be excited by the most intensely-heated furnace. In other cases, the cool spring, or the most delicious fruit, become causes of torture. We should exceed all reasonable limits if we were to enumerate all the usual sources of pleasure which, in different cases, are converted into so many instruments of suffering. Tic doloreux is indeed a horrible malady; but one which, when properly considered, becomes very instructive. It admirably illustrates the views of Abernethy; and how ready he was to concede all that examination of the views of others which modesty and common sense require, as well as how superior his own were, both in philosophical acumen and practical value; first examining the views of others, and finding them defective, he, with the true philosophical spirit which first discovers what is wrong— "Primus gradus est sapientiæ falso intelligere," then proceeds to develop his own. The nerves are the organs from which we receive all our impressions from without; and when their ordinary sensibility is thus morbidly augmented, we may be persuaded that there is _something_ very wrong within. The tic doloreux is one of the examples showing how cautious and circumspect, and how modest withal, Abernethy was in advancing to his own comprehensive views of disease; and how entirely antithetical the method he pursued in arriving at them was to that which attempts to cut the knot of difficulty by gratuitous hypotheses.