The _frequency_ of the complaint is difficult to estimate. With a view to forming some opinion as to its prevalence in the poorer classes I took advantage of the kindness of Mr. J. Lunn of the Marylebone Infirmary, Mr. Percy Potter of the Kensington Infirmary, Dr. A. H. Robinson of the Mile End Infirmary, and Dr. S. G. Litteljohn of the Central District Schools at Hanwell, to select cases from the large body of patients in the institutions under their control; and in the cases of Kensington and Mile End I had also the privilege of access to the workhouses in connection with the infirmaries. The total numbers of the persons thus open to investigation were 2600 adults, and 800 children under the age of sixteen. All of these were carefully examined, and every example of Dupuytren’s contraction (as well as of the other conditions included in these lectures) was systematically recorded. Of the 2600 adults, of whom about five-sixths were over middle age, 33, or 1·27 per cent., were found to be suffering from various stages of the affection, while in the 800 children no trace of the disease was to be detected. This proportion is very much smaller than that discovered by Mr. Noble Smith, who was fortunate enough to detect no fewer than 70 examples in 700 persons. His facts and deductions have been fully discussed at the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society and in the medical papers. _Sex._—The influence of sex is very noteworthy, but much less than was formerly conjectured. Cases of any degree of severity in the female are rare, but the slighter forms are fairly common. Of thirty-nine non-traumatic cases, twenty-five were in men and fourteen in women, but of the latter number in only eight was there any contraction of the fingers. This proportion is larger on the side of the female sex than that given by Dr. Keen in the valuable series analysed by him in 1882 (20 females to 106 males); but it must be pointed out that most of the cases in my list would have escaped notice altogether without a close examination of the palm.