There is one remedy for this pain which I have myself seen used in only a few cases, but which I believe promises exceedingly well for the treatment of obstinate myalgia; viz., acupuncture. I have not even mentioned it as a remedy for neuralgia, for I believe it to be totally useless in true cases of that disease, whether applied in the simple form or in that of galvano-puncture. I think very differently of its use in myalgia; and I venture to believe that it is entirely to cases of this disease that the exceedingly interesting observations of Mr. T. P. Teale, in a recent number of the _Lancet_, apply. Where (after the usual remedies for myalgia have been applied) we are unable to get rid of a deep-seated and fixed muscular pain, I believe it to be excellent practice to plunge two or three long needles deeply into the muscle near its tendinous attachment. CHAPTER II. SPINAL IRRITATION. I retain this phrase, not because it is an absolutely good one, but because it has become so familiar that it is difficult to dispense with it. We have taken a useful step, however, in separating the true neuralgias from the somewhat indefinite group of diseases to which this title has been given. I think the reader who has carefully studied Part I. of this work will not deny that the latter disorders present a very clear and definite common outline which distinguishes them essentially from the vaguer affections to be described under the present heading. Spinal irritation, in my sense, includes all those conditions in which, without any special mental affection, and without any single nerve being definitely affected, there are sensations varying between mere cutaneous tenderness, often of a large and irregular surface, and acute pain approaching neuralgia in character, together with fixed tenderness of certain vertebræ on deep pressure. A very large majority of the phenomena are such as would be popularly included (now that they are known not to be of an inflammatory character) under the term "hysterical." That unhappy word crosses our path at every turn in a most embarrassing manner, and yet it can hardly at present be said that we could afford to do without it.