THE CHAIR OF PHYSIOLOGIC CHEMISTRY IN MEDICAL COLLEGES.

What produces the symptoms of epilepsy, of hysteria, of gout, lithemia, uremia and rheumatism? What is the nature of antitoxin and how is the morbific agent of acute infectious diseases destroyed by its action? We are beginning to know something about pathology, therapeutics, and physical diagnosis, and we know a great deal about anatomy, surgery and bacteriology. A system of diseases has been built up from the knowledge of micro-organisms. We have reached that point of knowledge in bacteriology, where it becomes possible to extract wax from the tubercle bacillus, to stain its spores and the flagellæ of the bacillus icteroides Sanarelli. We believe that typhoid fever is due to the Eberth bacillus and that its introduction into the small intestines gives rise to manifold symptoms. But we do not know to what all these symptoms are due. When there is a disturbance of the metabolic activity of the liver,