Taking the years 1852 to 1868, inclusive, it will be found that the population of Chicago has increased 5.1 times and the deaths from all causes 3.7 times; while the nerve deaths, including the doubtful class labelled in the reports as dropsy of the brain and convulsions, have risen to 20.4 times what they were in 1852. Thus in 1852, '53, and '55, leaving out the cholera year '54, the deaths from nerve disorders were respectively to the whole population as 1 in 1149, 1 in 953, and 1 in 941; whilst in 1866, '67, and '68, they were 1 in 505, 1 in 415.7, and 1 in 287.8. Still omitting 1854, the average proportion of neural deaths to the total mortality was, in the five years beginning with 1852, 1 in 26.1. In the five latter years studied--that is, from 1864 to 1868, inclusive--the proportion was 1 nerve death to every 9.9 of all deaths. I have alluded above to a class of deaths included in my tables, but containing, no doubt, instances of mortality due to other causes than disease of the nerve-organs. Thus many which are stated to have been owing to convulsions ought to be placed to the credit of tubercular disease of the brain or to heart maladies; but even in the practice of medicine the distinction as to cause cannot always be made; and as a large proportion of this loss of life is really owing to brain affections, I have thought best to include the whole class in my statement. A glance at the individual diseases which are indubitably nervous is more instructive and less perplexing. For example, taking the extreme years, the recent increase in apoplexy is remarkable, even when we remember that it is a malady of middle and later life, and that Chicago, a new city, is therefore entitled to a yearly increasing quantity of this form of death. In 1868 the number was 8.6 times greater than in 1852. Convulsions as a death cause had in 1868 risen to 22 times as many as in the year 1852. Epilepsy, one of the most marked of all nervous maladies, is more free from the difficulties which belong to the last-mentioned class. In 1852 and '53 there were but two deaths from this disease; in the next four years there were none. From 1858 to '64, inclusive, there were in all 6 epileptic deaths: then we have in the following years, 5, 3, 11; and in 1868 the number had increased to 17. Passing over palsy, which, like apoplexy, increases in 1868,--8.6 times as compared with 1852; and 26 times as compared with the four years following 1852,--we come to lockjaw, an unmistakable nerve malady. Six years out of the first eleven give us no death from this painful disease; the others, up to 1864, offer each one only, and the last-mentioned year has but two. Then the number rises to 3 each year, to 5 in 1867, and to 12 in 1868. At first sight, this record of mortality from lockjaw would seem to be conclusive, yet it is perhaps, of all the maladies mentioned, the most deceptive as a means of determining the growth of neural diseases. To make this clear to the