In issuing this portion of Rokitansky's "Pathological Anatomy," it is necessary to offer, on behalf of the Council of the Sydenham Society, some apology for the delay which has attended the completion of this important and voluminous work. In his interesting preface to the second volume, Dr. Sieveking has recorded one reason for the order in which the volumes have been published; but he has not adverted to the main consideration by which the Council was influenced, namely, the apparently well-founded hope that they might be enabled to' present the Association with the histological portion of the work in a new and revised edition. Encouraged from time to time in this hope by the author himself, the Council did not hesitate to defer, from year to year, the publication of the first volume, until they felt that it would be improper to tax the patience of the members any further. The new edition is still promised, but with no surer pledge for its early completion than heretofore! The editor has, however, availed himself to a considerable extent of certain papers read by the author before the Imperial Academy of Sciences at Vienna; namely, On the Structure and Growth of Cyst and of Cancers, etc. He has even found it not at all incompatible with the general unity and concordance of the work to substitute, almost bodily, the author's more recent essay on "Cyst and Alveolus," for the comparatively brief and imperfect article on the same subject in the original. These papers, there is reason to believe, contain the principal results of the author's more recent investigations, and therefore, in all probability, the most important of the additions that might be anticipated in a new edition. The Council has also sanctioned the introduction of two plates in illustration of the newly added matter.

At the conclusion of the work will be found a copious Index to the four volumes collectively. To this each editor has contributed his respective share, thus offering to the English reader facilities altogether wanting in the original work.

On the other hand the editor has felt the necessity of abridging somewhat the author's general introduction, partly because, totally unlike the general tendency of the work, it is of too "transcendental" a character either to suit the English language or to harmonize with English ideas; but more particularly because it is interwoven with a train of speculative reasoning upon the relation between power and matter, which might, in this country, very possibly give rise to misinterpretation and rebuke.

What Dr. Sieveking justly alleges of the general peculiarities of Rokitansky's style, and of the difficulty of rendering his writings intelligible in English, is, by all who are conversant with the original, admitted to apply with especial force to the first volume. Upon this ground the editor ventures to urge his claim for a fair measure of indulgence on the reader's part.

In conclusion, the editor, having been disappointed of a promised autobiographical sketch, takes leave to subjoin a few extracts from a short account of the career of this great pathologist, copied by a friendly hand from the last edition [1854] of Brockhaus's "Conversations Lexicon."

"Charles Rokitansky, the founder of the German [it should rather have been called Austrian] medico-anatomical school, was born at Konigsgraetz, in Bohemia, was educated at the Gymnasium of Leitneritz, and graduated, at Vienna, in 1828. Shortly afterwards he was appointed Assistant in the pathologico-anatomical department of the University, and, in 1834, Professor of Pathological Anatomy. At the same time he was instituted Prosector at the General [united Civil and Military] Hospital at Vienna, and also sole medico-legal Anatomist for the examination of all doubtful cases of death throughout that metropolis.

"The immense fund of materials thus placed at his disposal [the number of corpses dissected by him is summed up at 30,000] was almost entirely reserved for the elaboration of that grand work on pathological anatomy, which, in the consciousness of having thoroughly mastered the subject, he gave to the world between the years 1842 and 1846; which has passed, unaltered, through three reimpressions; and which, under the auspices of the Sydenham Society, has been translated into the English language".

"In 1849, Rokitansky was appointed Dean of the Medical Faculty, and, in 1850, Rector of the University, of Vienna".

York, January, 1855.