The possible relation between a muscle-bound chest and dyspnoea is easily understood, but those of us who watched him could not see a clear connection between the muscle-bound chest and pneumonia or phthisis. However, in some later paper I will return to this part of Dr. Metcalfe's work. To return to asthma, Dr. Metcalfe used to say that he thought there was some way of relieving the tight muscles better than by manipulation and regretted his unfamiliarity with electricity, which he thought might be that better way. I gave him a spare battery that we had around the office, but the old dog cannot easily learn new tricks and the old doctor stuck to what he knew and had relied on for so many years, his own fingers. He treated hay fever by manipulating the eyes, nose, and both the inside and the outside of the throat, wherever the itching appeared. About this time a patient applied for relief of attacks of asthma that were brought on by inhaling dust. Every time he stirred the papers on his desk--and being an artist, his desk was always dusty--he had a disagreeable attack of asthma. Here was an opportunity to test the Metcalfe theory of tight muscles. As I was much more familiar with the faradic battery than with manipulation and it was more agreeable to use, I placed one sponge on the back of the neck and with the other twitched the muscles over the chest. To include all the respiratory muscles, I exercised those of the neck and throat, the abdomen and back, as well as the pectorals and the muscles about the scapulæ. Until one stops to think of it, he does not realize the extent of the respiratory muscles. Almost every muscle from the base of the skull to the brim of the pelvis is directly concerned in respiration. With the faradic current just as with the manipulating fingers, there are sore spots that the patient describes as bruised. They may be extremely tender, though the patient is not aware of them until you find them with the battery sponge or the finger. These sore spots may be found anywhere over the chest or abdomen, but are particularly common at the attachment of tendon to bones, the joints between the ribs and the costal cartilages and the joints of the sternum, especially the joint between the ensiform and the gladiolus. My idea was that if there were any stiff or tight muscles restraining the action of the ribs, the faradic exercise would limber them up. I treated this patient twice a week for three months and had the satisfaction of seeing this asthmatic sensitiveness entirely cured; for he has remained free from it ever since, now twenty years. This case lead me to try the current on hay fever patients, passing the current over the eyes and nose and sometimes inside of the throat, wherever there was itching, just as Dr. Metcalfe had done with his manipulating finger. If cough or asthma were present, I treated them as in the case of the artist just described.