PREFACE.
The admirable Lectures on the Diseases of Bone, with which Mr. Abernethy commenced his Anatomical and Physiological course, first incited me to the study of this subject. Observation, continued with some diligence through many years, and, in a large field of experience, has enabled me to accumulate the materials upon which the present volume is founded. The size of the volume bears no proportion to the number of the facts out of which it is constructed. For in this, as in other scientific investigations, the first object has been to obtain the facts, and the second to interpret them rightly for the conclusions they warrant. This I have endeavoured to do, but with the result, I am aware, of leaving some of the morbid phenomena of bone uninterpreted, even unnoticed, for the reason that they were to me unintelligible.
