The researches of scientific men within the last few years have brought to light very many facts relating to the physiology of woman, the diseases to which she is subject, and the proper means to prevent those diseases. Such information, if universally possessed, cannot but result in great benefit to the individual and the commonwealth. The difficulty is to express one's self clearly and popularly on topics never referred to in ordinary social intercourse. But as the physician is obliged daily to speak in plain yet decorous language of such matters, the author felt that the difficulty was not unsurmountable. He is aware that a respectable though diminishing class in the community maintain that nothing which relates exclusively to either sex should become the subject of popular medical instruction. With every inclination to do this class justice, he feels sure that such an opinion is radically erroneous. Ignorance is no more the mother of purity than she is of religion. The men and women who study and practise medicine are not the worse, but the better, for their knowledge of such matters. So it would be with the community. Had every person a sound understanding of the relations of the sexes, one of the most fertile sources of crime would be removed. A brief appendix has been added, directed more especially to the professional reader, who may desire to consult some of the original authorities upon whom the author has drawn. And here he would ask from his fellow-members of the medical profession their countenance and assistance in his attempt to distribute sound information of this character among the people. None but physicians can know what sad consequences are constantly occurring from the want of it. * * * BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF GEORGE HENRY NAPHEYS, M.D. Were man's life measured by his deeds, as the poet suggests, how brief would be the long years of many an octogenarian, and how extended the short span which has been allotted to not a few of the world's famous heroes! This oft-repeated thought strikes us forcibly in considering the biography of the subject of this sketch. Closing his life at an age when most professional men are but beginning theirs, he had already studied broadly, had traveled widely over two continents, had gained credit and fame by the sword and the pen, and had amassed a fund of erudition and experience which the more lethargic lives of most men fail to approach after twice his length of days. It is eminently appropriate that a record of his busy career should be attached to the works on which his celebrity is chiefly bound, and in which he most conspicuously displays that command of language and happy facility of imparting instruction for which he was so remarkable.