The tonsils have attracted many investigators, but the results of the investigations are unsatisfactory and often contradictory. Connected by many in a very direct way with local disease elsewhere as well as with systemic disturbances, it is especially necessary because of the incompleteness of our knowledge that we should have our attention directed at times to their functional side lest we rashly assume that the tonsils are to be regarded as a constant menace to health. It will therefore not be out of place to restrict my remarks chiefly to the relation of their function, so far as we at present know it, to disease, and along these lines to indicate the general principles that should underlie our treatment, rather than to specify the particular treatment adapted to any special variety of disease which they present. We may regard disease as a condition of disturbed or imperfect function or of