"In most of the cases of this disease, which have hitherto fallen under my own immediate observation, the subjects have been middle-aged men, of thin and spare habit, with a sort of hollow-eyed anxiety of expression in their countenance, free from gout and constitutional disease in general, and, as far as could be ascertained, from any organic defect in the urinary organs. In every instance they had been induced to apply for medical advice, not so much from the pain, as from the inconvenience of the disease, and the dread of its ending in something worse; and, what may be worth remarking, in several instances confessed, that they had been addicted to masturbation from very early youth," p. 41, et seq. The remedy for this morbid derangement in the urinary secretion, most successful in the hands of Dr. PROUT, was opium, either administered alone, or in conjunction with alkaline medicines. It is rather a rare affection. When not arrested, it is liable, according to Dr. PROUT, to pass into diabetes. In his chapter on diabetes, our author makes many interesting remarks; but the space we are enabled to devote to this analysis, will permit us only to make an extract, which seems to prove a close connexion between the disease characterized by an excess of urea, and diabetes. "It has been mentioned in the preceding pages, that an excess of urea frequently precedes the appearance of saccharine matter in the urine. Now it is a remarkable fact, that in diabetes, in proportion as the saccharine matter diminishes, that of urea generally increases; and in such instances, the presence of the former principle can not only be no longer distinguished by the sensible properties of the urine, but scarcely be demonstrated by the utmost skill of the most experienced chemist, though the specific gravity of the urine may at the same time be nearly 1.040. I have recently been favoured by Dr. ELLIOTSON with the most complete and remarkable change of this description that has yet occurred to me. The patient, besides being diabetic, was in the last stage of phthisis, of which he died shortly afterwards. The quantity of urine passed daily, when I first examined it, was six or eight pints; its specific gravity was 1.038, and it contained a large proportion of very white sugar and very little urea. Dr. ELLIOTSON under these circumstances gave opium, beginning with gr. i, and increasing the dose to gr. iii, thrice a day. The opium produced stupor, and was obliged to be discontinued; but the effects produced upon the urine by its means were most remarkable. _In about 60 hours, the quantity of urine diminished to two pints, its specific gravity was reduced to 1.0174, the saccharine matter had apparently disappeared, and was superseded by urea, the