The following diagram shows the bladder and its muscular coats, and also its neck imbedded in the prostate gland. The bladder is seen distended, and, of course, as detached from the body. The kidneys are also seen—one in its natural state, the other divided to show its inner structure: the kidneys and their ureters are crossed to save space in the sketch. [Illustration: 1. The entire kidney. 2. Its cortical, or secreting part. 3. The papilla. 4. The pelvis. 5. The ureter. 6. The bladder. 7. The detrusor muscle. 8. The sphincter muscle. 9. Prostate gland. 10. Neck of the bladder.] The bladder and adjacent parts are seen more fully in the diagram at the top of the succeeding page. [Illustration: 1. Corpus cavernosum. 2. Bulb of urethra. 3. Membranous portion of ditto. 4. Prostate gland surrounding urethra. 5. Seminal vesicles. 6. The two vasa deferentia. 7. The ureters. 8. The bladder.] It is a very common observation with patients, that they never were in better health in their lives than at the moment of consulting their medical adviser, except in the very particular malady, such as an ulcered limb, a teazing cough, a gleety discharge, or an irritable bladder, that they are seeking relief for; “they are quite well,” they say, “in every other respect.” When illness attacks an individual, it does not always announce its arrival by sound of trumpet. It does not always come on like an apoplectic shock: some minor organization is generally the first to indicate disturbance in the healthy economy by even so simple a presage (I will take for example, more especially as the ensuing remarks bear upon the subject) as excretion of disordered urine. To resume; the patient will content himself, that the only fault in his system is the disordered condition of his urine, and he earnestly seeks for something to touch that particular symptom, forgetting that trifling as he may fancy it, it is not merely owing to the office of the kidneys and bladder, but to the blood itself, whence the urine is formed, and to other circumstances in the economy that influence it. Therefore, it is not merely the urine which is at fault, but the state of it is a pretty good indication of the general state of health; and when it becomes vitiated, the urine is generally, unless restored to a healthy condition, a forerunner of some more serious evil. Still there are many variations in the character and quality of the urine, and each depending upon different causes—some upon a disordered state of the fluids of the body, some upon one remote cause or another, deranging the balance of the circulation, and inducing excessive perspiration, and the like; and certainly not the least important, nor the least influential, exist in the very structures that make (as it were) and receive the urine, namely, the kidneys and bladder. I may observe here, that chymists have detected upward of twenty different substances, animal and saline, in its composition,