passed off the stage of life. Such suggestions, however, will rarely be urged in cases of consumption, the sinking of the powers in this disease being so commonly painless and gradual, sometimes, indeed, not only calm but cheerful. I remember a young woman, whose physical powers were thus failing, saying, “Mother, I am going to sleep, and if I do not wake I shall be in heaven." Her expectation we may trust was realized, and thus she glided into rest, not fearing death, because not doubting of heaven: and furnishing an instance in which you would not have been surprised to see depicted on the countenance of the departed more than what the poet fancied, when he wrote of “the rapture of repose." Am I passing beyond becoming bounds in suggesting the reflection that, while witnessing such transitions from languor and decay into an undying life, we may ourselves realize the truth that death is not the end of existence;-that it is something grander than human skill defeated;-that, when art can do no more, and friends "weep at the vestibule as the spirit passes out of doors," we may win glimpses of brighter scenes, where the cares and passions of this lower life shall cease to engross, and the germs of opening science shall expand into the fulness of infinite Truth. EXPLANATION OF PLATES. PLATE I. FIG. 1.-Granular expectoration (magnified 600 diameters), referred to in page 48, as indicating tubercular deposit. a. Scale of tesselated epithelium, probably from the month. A few oil globules are also apparent. FIG. 2 exhibits the changes described on pages 138, 139, as often occurring rapidly in the blood discs of consumptive individuals. a. The blood discs as first observed. b, c, d. The discs of strawberry-like shape, crenate, stellate, and corrugated. e. Discs forming a rouleaux; also three large colourless corpuscles, which frequently abound in the blood of the phthisical. PLATE II. This Plate represents the curved, coloured margin of the gums, strongly indicative of the consumptive diathesis. See page 145, Lecture X. |