Dr. Addison, at the request of the President, proceeded to describe a remarkable form of anæmia, which, although incidentally noticed by various writers, had not attracted, as he thought, by any means the attention it really deserved. It was a state of general anæmia incident to adult males, and had for several years past been with him a subject of earnest inquiry and of deep interest. It usually occurs between the ages of twenty and sixty ; sometimes proceeding to an extreme degree in a few weeks, but more frequently commencing insidiously, and proceeding very slowly, so as to occupy a period of several weeks, or even months, before any very serious alarm is taken either by the patient or by the patient’s friends. Its approach is first indicated by a certain amount of languor and restlessness, to which presently succeed a manifest paleness of the countenance, loss of muscular strength, general relaxation or feebleness of the whole frame, and indisposition to, or incapacity for, bodily or mental exertion. These symptoms go on increasing with greater or less rapidity ; the face, lips, conjunctivæ, and external surfaces of the body, become more and more bloodless ; the tongue appears pale and flabby ; the heart’s action gets exceedingly enfeebled, with a weak, soft, unusually large, but always strikingly compressible pulse ; the appetite may or may not be lost ; the patient experiences a distressing and increasing sense of helplessness and faintness ; the heart is excited, or rendered tumultuous in its action, the breathing painfully hurried by the slightest exertion, whilst the whole surface bears some resemblance to a bad wax figure ; the patient is no longer able to rise from his bed ; a slight œdema perhaps shows itself about the ankles ; the feeling of faintness and weakness becomes extreme, and he dies either from sheer exhaustion, or death is preceded by signs of passive effusion or cerebral oppression. With all this, the emaciation or wasting of the body, though sometimes considerable, is not unfrequently quite disproportionate to the failure of the powers of the circulation - relaxation and flabbiness, rather than wasting of the flesh, being one of the most remarkable features of the disorder.

Dr. Addison next proceeded to give the details of several cases which had fallen under his own immediate observation. In only two of these did the patients recover ; the one, a man below the middle period of