_Age._—True Dupuytren’s contraction is almost essentially a disease of middle or later life at its onset. It was estimated by Dr. Keen that about five-sixths of the cases began after the age of thirty, but his examples included some of the traumatic form, which may of course originate at any period of life. In my own series only one, a man of thirty-two, was below the age of forty when the disease first appeared, and in the number seen in hospital practice before I began to keep notes of the cases, I do not recollect one in which the symptoms commenced in youth or early adult life. My friend Surgeon-Captain A. H. De Lom, has kindly obtained for me some statistics that bear very directly upon this point. He finds by reference to the Army Reports that in a force averaging 203,000 soldiers, between the ages of seventeen and thirty-five, only three cases of contraction of the fingers came under treatment in five years (1885-89), and it is not certain whether these were of the traumatic or of the specific variety. It is of course possible that some incipient cases escaped attention, but the magnitude of the figures gives a value to the record in spite of this source of fallacy. It is stated, however, that exceptions to the rule do occur, and that conditions bearing a resemblance to true Dupuytren’s contraction have been seen in childhood, and some of these are even believed to be congenital; but it is probable that a closer examination of such cases would prove them to be of a different pathological nature. There appears to be no limit to the period of onset in the other direction. In eighteen cases in my list the disease was unnoticed until after the age of sixty, and in six of these it did not appear until the eighth decade; and it is significant that the majority of these patients, a portion of whom were women, had given up laborious employment before the symptoms appeared.