as to its truthfulness, this hesitation only shows that long observation and study are necessary to place this, like all other new doctrines, on a sure and stable foundation.

My principal purpose, therefore, in bringing the subject before the profession is not only to strengthen the original facts by fresh instances, but to point out how Addison had somewhat overstepped his own boundaries, by including, amongst his cases, some which did not present the true features of the disease ; and thus I hope, by purging his treatise of these examples, to place this remarkable affection on a much surer basis than it has hitherto had. The disease, in fact, will have more unique and special chracters of its own, and may be regarded with more justice in the light of a true discovery than Addison himself conceived, and even more worthy to be honoured with his name than would a disease having the undefined nature which he himself assigned to it. I may at once admit that this want of definition and precision as to its true pathological character has constituted the great hindrance to the progress of the discovery ; the belief of Addison being, at the time of the publication of his work, that any disease which affected the integrity of the supra-renal capsules would be attended by the remarkable phenomena which he described ; and consequently his cases include a variety of morbid conditions of these organs which are clearly not true forms of the disease. Dr. Addison was, I believe, beginning to see the truth of what is now evident, that some of the cases which he had published have only stood in the way of the full development of his discovery ; for all subsequent observations have shown that, so far from his early conclusions being correct, we have no recorded instance of the affection being connected with cancer, or indeed, with any other kind of disease of the organ than the one which was found in the genuine cases which he first described, and which all true subsequent experience has shown to constitute the true form of the malady.

Unfortunately, too, Addison had placed in his work the drawing of a patient in whom no necropsy was made to reveal the true nature of the disease, and that illustration has, in all probability, misled many, by giving a false representation of the usual character of the discoloration of the skin.