When, as a result of swallowing caustic lye or other similar substances, the gullet (the œsophagus) becomes contracted to such an extent that no food can be swallowed, we now establish an opening into the stomach through which a tube is inserted at meal-time, and the patient has his breakfast, dinner, and supper poured into his stomach through the tube. If the stricture of the œsophagus is from malignant disease, of course this only prolongs life by preventing a horrible death by starvation, but in cases in which it is non-malignant life is indefinitely prolonged. The mortality of such an operation is very small. By a freak of nature or by disease the stomach sometimes is narrowed in the middle, forming what is called an “hour-glass stomach.” In such a case we open the abdomen, make an opening into the two parts of the stomach and unite the two so that we re-establish the single cavity of the stomach. The mortality of the operation is very slight, eight per cent. Again, sometimes the stomach becomes unduly dilated, thus interfering seriously with its function. A number of surgeons in such cases have simply folded over the wall of the stomach upon itself and have sewed the two layers together, taking a plait or “tuck” in the stomach wall, and have restored it to its normal capacity and function. One of the most important advances has been made in the treatment of gall stones. The bile in the gall bladder is in a state of quiescence, which is favorable to a deposit of crystals from the bile. These crystals become agglutinated together into larger or smaller solid masses called gall stones. Sometimes the number of these is very small, from one to four or five; sometimes they accumulate in enormous numbers, several hundreds having been reported in a number of instances. When they are small they can escape through the duct of the gall bladder into the bowel and create no disturbance, but when they are large, so that they cannot make their escape, they not uncommonly are causes not only of serious discomfort and prolonged ill-health, but often prove fatal. Nowadays one of the safest operations of surgery is to open the abdomen and the gall bladder and remove this menace to life, and the great majority of such patients recover without any untoward symptoms. Even large abscesses of the liver, and, what is still more extraordinary, large tumors of the liver, are now removed successfully. A year ago all of the reported cases of tumor of the liver were collected which had been operated from 1888 to 1898, seventy-six in all. The termination in two cases was unknown, but of the other seventy-four, sixty-three recovered and eleven died, a mortality of only 14.9 per cent.