ON THERAPEUTICS. 
581 
contain a small quantity of fat. Beneath the cartilage the 
bone was, as in other places, soft, and the lamellae very thin; 
but the interspaces were filled with a greasy and white-look¬ 
ing substance—fat. Compared with the opposite extremity, 
it was non-vascular, and, as would be inferred from this, it was 
likewise very pale in colour. This description, however, does 
not apply to this bone alone, the other long bones being 
similarly affected. 
A very peculiar change was also going on at the head of 
the humerus, irregular-shaped cavities existing in the bony 
tissue, which were filled with a deposit of fat-cells. These, it 
will be remembered, are described by Dr. Hailey, and are 
shown in Fig. 2, b. 
[To be continued .) 
ON THERAPEUTICS. 
By Professor Brown, M.R.C.Y.S., 
Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester. 
There is something curious in the fact that organized 
bodies, apparently self-sustaining, possessing the power of 
assimilating the elements of food, and thereby repairing their 
wasted structures, should be subject to disease. We cannot 
at first comprehend their liability to disturbance, and even 
decay, until we ascertain that nutrition, or the pow r er of 
supplying the loss of tissue, does not constitute the perfec¬ 
tion of organization, nor afford an immunity from those 
disturbing causes which are capable of producing modifica¬ 
tions that the nutritive functions are powerless to rectify. 
The phenomena of organization are complex: w aste of 
tissue, inevitable where motion occurs, necessitates a digestive 
system; circulation is indispensable to convey new r matter 
to distant parts; respiration, secretion, exhalation, are pro¬ 
cesses of purification; while the nervous system conveys 
impressions and excites actions in all the animal structures. 
Disturbance of any of these suffices to destroy the natural 
balance, and constitutes disease. This lost balance the 
science of therapeutics proposes to restore, by the use of 
means more or less complicated, according to the dictates of 
reason or experience, only legitimate when based on a know- 
