Celiac disease is a condition in which although there is marked disturbance of function resulting in certain very characteristic symptoms, morbid anatomy cannot produce any explanation. For this reason alone it should prove an interesting subject for discussion, but there is another and more important reason which emboldens me to think that I need not apologize for choosing this disorder as the subject for the first Rachford Memorial Lecture. The outstanding feature in celiac disease is the inability of the child suffering from it properly to absorb fat from the intestine, and remembering the classic researches of Dr. Rachford on the action of pancreatic juice and bile, I cannot help feeling that a review of the present condition of the knowledge of celiac disease would have proved of special interest to him. Two years before Dr. Rachford started his researches on the bile and pancreatic juice, Samuel Gee wrote a