A milder, but still very useful form of the same kind of action, is produced by veratrine-ointment. I would recommend, however, as a rule, that it be employed, at any rate at first, of weaker strength than that recommended in the Pharmacopoeia, for with some persons it is easy to pass the anæsthetic, and to enter on the irritant, action of veratrine upon the skin. This leads me to give a caution that should properly have come earlier, when I was speaking of skin-stimulants. In aged subjects, especially, we rather frequently meet, in neuralgia, with a specially irritable state of the skin, even although there may be at the same time some loss of common and tactile sensation; and the practitioner must be warned against the danger of producing an amount of skin-irritation which will fearfully annoy his patient. I speak feelingly, having by such an indiscretion lost the richest patient who ever favored my consulting-room with his presence! The inunction of mild veratrine-ointment is extremely useful, as an adjunct to other treatment, in migraine and supra-orbital neuralgias of suckling women, and of chlorotic girls. I have also seen it do much good in mammary neuralgia. The last division of the subject of paralyzing agents in the treatment of neuralgia includes the surgical operations for division or resection of a painful nerve. Upon this question there is much difficulty in speaking decidedly. I admit at once, of course, that surgical interference is evidently indicated when, along with decided and intractable neuralgic pain, there is plain evidence either of the existence of a neuromatous tumor, or the presence of a foreign body impacted, or a tight cicatrix pressing upon a nerve. I admit, also, though with much greater qualifications, that carious teeth may need to be extracted before we can cure a neuralgia; but even here I should put in the decided caveat that we must consider whether the system is in a state to bear the shock, and that in any case we probably ought to mitigate the effects of the operation by performing it under chloroform. And I need hardly tell any one, who is familiar, either practically or from reading, with the subject, that thousands of carious teeth have been extracted from the mouths of neuralgic patients, not only without benefit, but with the effect of distinctly aggravating the disease. And I am yet more doubtful as to the advisability of such surgical procedures as the division or the resection of a piece of the painful nerve. Theoretically, as the reader will understand from the strong opinion I have given as to the mainly central origin of neuralgias, I never could anticipate that such a procedure would be more than temporarily successful; on the contrary, the mischief in the central end of the nerve remaining, I should suppose that the trying process of the reunion of the nerve (which always takes place) would be almost certainly attended with a revival of the neuralgia, too probably in an aggravated form.