EXTRACT LI. B. 



ON THE TONGUE, AND WHAT IT INDICATES TO 

 THU CLINICIAN. 



" PUT out your tongue, please," is a request familiar ta 

 the ears of the frequenters of clinical establishments, and 

 at the bedsides of the seekers of relief and cure ; and why ? 

 Because information is sought, by the addresser of the 

 request, which can only be elicited from this source, and can 

 only be read in the light of inherited and acquired know- 

 ledge, by the descendants of ^sculapius and Hippocrates. 



Viewed as a clinical tell-tale organ alone, the professors 

 of the healing art are much indebted to it for the passive 

 information which it is able to afford, apart from that 

 which they seek from it in other directions; it behoves 

 these professors, therefore, not to be satisfied with mere 

 " habit and repute " routine and empirical methods of 

 eliciting the information which they require, and which 

 can be obtained from this source alone, but to enquire 

 more deeply, more exhaustively, and rationally into the 

 structural foundations and functional conditions in which 

 these sources of information " take their origin," and from 

 which the abnormal morbid characters and signs observable 

 on this organ are evolved. 



The tongue, when thus considered, is found to have an 

 individual as well as a collective character, which must 

 always be recognised and allowed to have its weight when 

 the important procedure of diagnosis is in progress, and 

 which on all hands is found, more or less, to illumine that 

 most important proceeding, as well as to indicate the lines 

 of treatment and future trend of morbid progress, besides- 



