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1. A study has been made in the anaesthetized cat of the stimulation parameters required to separate the vasodilator and vasoconstrictor responses evoked in the nose by stimulating the cut peripheral end of the Vidian nerve.

In a lecture delivered by Dr. T. Clifford Allbutt, regius professor of physics in Cambridge University, England, before the Johns Hopkins University in October, 1898, occur these words1 : "The study of origins, then, is not only the new method of modern criticism, of modern history, of modern anthropology, of our reading of the evolution of the universe itself from elements which even themselves are falling under the same analytic inquiry, but the study of origins is leading to a revolution in our conceptions of therapeutics, as all of these other studies : a revolution which as yet we have not fully understood."Never were truer or more profound words uttered than these. The revolution to which Prof. Allbutt refers is one so momentous that but few have scanned the horizon of modern therapeutics closely enough to duly appreciate its far-reaching consequences and importance.

1. A flow of watery nasal secretion can be induced in the anaesthetized cat either by electrical stimulation of the brain stem or by the simpler procedure of stimulating the cut peripheral end of the Vidian nerve. In both instances the rate of flow of secretion was dependent on the stimulation frequency. Because brain stem stimulation caused an increase in arterial blood pressure, nasal secretion was evoked in subsequent experiments by Vidian nerve stimulation.