*In practical medicine the term *anæmia* has not quite the restricted sense that scientific investigation gives it. The former regards certain striking symptoms as characteristic of the anæmic condition; pallor of the skin, a diminution of the normal redness of the mucous membranes of the eyes, lips, mouth, and phar ynx. From the presence of these phenomena anæmia is diagnosed, and according to their greater or less intensity, conclusions are also drawn as to the degree of the poverty of the blood. It is evident from the first that a definition based on such a frequent and elementar y chain of symptoms will bring into line much that is unconnected, and will perhaps omit what it should logically include. Indeed a number of obscurities and contradictions is to be ascribed to this circumstance.*