Of all the means at our command in combating the neuralgic condition, the regulating and increase in the quantity of rest and of the food supply should stand first. These facts have been known and recognized for a long time; but it is due to an American, Dr. Weir Mitchell, of Philadelphia, to have intelligently systematized their use. The principles of his treatment of nervous prostration, spinal irritation, and allied disorders, in which pain is often a prominent symptom, consists in a system of rest and forced feeding by which a larger quantity of nutriment is gotten into the system, and the waste eliminated by means of artificial exercise, by massage. It is evident that in this process the increased food absorbed into the blood goes indifferently to nourish all the tissues; but inasmuch as the muscles are not the seat of the trouble, if left alone unexercised, they would become diseased under the very stuffing process. That is where the kneading and shampooing, and movements supplied from without, are so valuable; the muscles get their healthy action without drawing on the forces of the enfeebled nervous system to set the process going. And so the nervous system has a chance to lie idle and grow fat. Similar remarkable results have been obtained in another disease whose hereditary relations to pain I have spoken of, namely consumption, by a process of forced feeding. The recent results obtained, more especially in France, by stuffing phthisical subjects, have constituted by far the greatest advance in the treatment of this disease in recent years. But in these cases the massage is entirely inapplicable because the waste of tissue is already too great. The lessons taught by the treatment of these two classes of diseases are invaluable in combating the more inveterate forms of pain. The next acquired condition to which I would invite your attention, which may act as a cause of pain, is the presence of certain poisonous compounds in the blood or system. These are more especially the poisons of malaria, of syphilis, of gout and rheumatism, of alcohol, of certain drugs, and lastly of certain metallic poisons, as mercury, phosphorus, lead and arsenic. Although this group includes a tolerable number of members all together, it is less important than either the preceding division of nontoxic malnutrition of the nervous tissues, or of our first class, in which heredity plays the main role. Still the toxic cases are sufficiently common. What we have already said as to treatment here holds good, but we must superadd the means of combating the particular poison.