a spontaneous disease, that is to say, may arise from other causes than infection. It may exist independently of gonorrhœa, and be the result of cold, of intemperance, and of general or of local excess. Its long continuance and neglect, however, renders it infectious, and it also gives rise to ulceration, excrescences, and stricture: and when, from other causes, ulceration, or excrescences, or stricture, are set up, gleet is in return generally one of their consequences. Gleet, despite these various occasions, is, after all, most frequently a remnant of gonorrhœa; and it is very difficult to define the time or point where the one ends and the other commences. Pathologists draw this distinction between the two:—they say that gonorrhœal discharge consists of _globules_, mixed with a _serous_ fluid, while gleet is merely a mucous secretion. I confess it difficult for a non-professional person to decide which is which, the resemblance, in fact, being so great—a gonorrhœal discharge being one day thick and yellow, a few days afterward thin and whitish, and at one time in quantity scanty, and the next profuse. Gleet assumes nearly the same changes. The best test for distinguishing them is, by regarding the accompanying symptoms. Where there is pain on passing water, bladder-irritability, tenderness in the perinœum or neighboring parts, and the discharge plentiful and offensive, staining the linen with a “foul spot,” it may, without much fear, be decided to be clap; but where the discharge is next to colorless, like gum-water, for instance, and where there is no other local uneasiness than a feeling of relaxation, and where it has existed for a long period, and was, or was not, preceded by a gonorrhœa, it may fairly be called a gleet. Now where does the discharge of gleet come from? Let us recapitulate its causes; first from clap, which is a specific inflammatory affection. It may therefore be a chronic inflammatory state of the lining membrane of the urethra, of greater or less extent; in which case we would call it chronic gonorrhœa, and which would be owing to a relaxed state of the secretive vessels. We know that when a disease exists for a long while, and is one not positively destructive to life, a habit of action is acquired that renders its continuation in that state as natural as its healthy condition. This is the state of the secretive vessels in gleet, arising from gonorrhœa; and hence the discharge is poured forth, instead of the secretion natural to the urethral passage in its healthy order. Secondly, such may have been the severity of a clap, that ulceration of some portion of the urethra may have taken place. The disease may have got well except in that identical spot which, owing to the constant irritation occasioned by the urine passing over it, struggles with the reparative intention and effort of nature, and exists even for years. Thirdly, when stricture is brewing, which