That in certain cases a full blood-letting modifies or cuts short symptoms, I agree with Dr. Richardson in thinking is just as manifest a truth now, as it was to Galen or Cullen. But I claim for the modern physician a knowledge and a power far beyond that of alleviating symptoms: viz., a true knowledge of the lesion which causes the symptoms, and the power of conducting the disease to a rapid favourable termination, notwithstanding what appears to the inexperienced or uninformed the most alarming and fatal phenomena. He is enabled to watch with accuracy by means of his stethoscope the removal of the consolidation of the lung, to favour the resolution of the exudation, and to assist the excretion of the absorbed products from the economy. These are the aims of the modern practitioner—not so much the alleviation of symptoms as the removal of the morbid state—not soothing his patient, but saving his life. That he is capable of doing this by studying pathology and disregarding the authority of the ancients is no longer a matter of opinion, but is positively demonstrated, by attending to the other principle, which also is not referred to by Dr. Richardson. 2. In all the circumstances which Dr. Richardson thinks blood-letting still useful, we have no solid foundation on which the practitioner can repose with confidence as a general rule of practice. To refer to the opinions of the ancients is, as we have seen, useless; and to support their notions by citing one or two exceptional cases is of no advantage whatever. Indeed the quotation of successful cases, without also stating the failures that have been experienced, is the chief cause of the imperfection of practical medicine. It has been demonstrated that when the practice of bleeding in acute pneumonia was universal, the result was one death in three cases. That was what occurred in the carefully diagnosed and picked cases of M. Louis, as well as what happened in our best hospitals. In those days practitioners triumphantly pointed to the two cases out of three that they snatched from what was then considered a fatal attack of illness. Indeed it might easily be shown that the worst practice might be defended by what are called successful cases. So far from two survivors out of three being good practice, we have seen that the abandonment of blood-letting and the adoption of a restorative plan of treatment has resulted in diminishing the mortality to one in twenty-seven or thirty cases.