The limits of this article compel me to stop with the story very imperfectly told, but yet, perhaps, it has been sufficient in detail to show somewhat of the astonishing progress of surgery within the century, but especially within the last quarter of the century. About two decades ago one of the foremost surgeons of London, Mr. Erichsen, said, in a public address, that “surgery had reached its limits.” How short was his vision is shown by the fact that surgery at that time was just at the beginning of its most brilliant modern chapter. We have reached, in many respects, apparently, the limits of our success, but just as anæsthesia and antisepsis and the Röntgen rays have opened new fields wholly unsuspected until they were proclaimed, so I have no doubt that the twentieth century will see means and methods devised which will put to shame the surgery of to-day as much as the surgery of to-day puts to shame that of thirty years ago, and still more of a century ago. The methods by which this will be attained will be by the more thorough and systematic study of disease and injury, so as to better our means of diagnosis, and so prepare us for immediate surgical interference, instead of delaying it, as we now do in many cases, for want of certain knowledge; by the use of new chemical and pharmaceutical means to perfect our antisepsis and possibly to introduce other methods of treatment; but, above all, we shall obtain progress by the exact experimental methods of the laboratory. We can never make progress except by trying new methods. New methods must be tried either on man or on animals, and as the former is not allowable, the only way remaining to us is to test all new methods, drugs, and applications first upon animals. He who restricts, and, still more, he who would abolish our present experiments upon animals, is, in my opinion, the worst foe to the human race, and to animals, as well, for they, as well as human beings, obtain the benefit derived from the method. He may prate of his humanity, but he is the most cruel man alive. W. W. KEEN. ELECTRICITY