SURGICAL RELIEF FOR BILIARY OBSTRUCTION.Read in the Section of Surgery and Anatomy, at the Forty-first Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association, at Nashville, Tenn., May, 1890.

The surgery of the gall-bladder opens another and an extremely important field for operative interference. Biliary obstruction has been, from the earliest times, recognized as a cause of most severe suffering attended with the gravest dangers. With very few exceptions, operations for its relief have been considered beyond thepaleof surgical domain, until within a few years, and even now, although abdominal surgery is almost universally accepted as justifiable, in a multitude of varying conditions, only a very few surgeons have attempted operation upon the gall-bladder. My own experience is limited to the following cases which, inasmuch as they illustrate a variety of conditions, are of sufficient importance to put upon record. Case 1.—Dr. W——, aged 72, a physician of exceptional intelligence, had clearly diagnosticated repeated attacks of suffering, extending over a number of years, as due to biliary obstruction, a gall-stone. Although somewhat jaundiced, the more prominent and