§ 20. This combination is very frequent, and, I believe, may always be cured by the Digitalis.
§ 21. Dropsies in the chest either with or without anasarcous limbs, are much more curable than those of the belly. Probably because the abdominal viscera are more frequently diseased in the latter than in the former cases.
INSANITY.
§ 22. I apprehend this disease to be more frequently connected with serous effusion than has been commonly imagined.
§ 23. Where appearances of anasarca point out the true cause of the complaint, as in cases [XXIV]. and [XXXIV]. the happiest effects may be expected from the Digitalis; and men of more experience than myself in cases of insanity, will probably employ it successfully in other less obvious circumstances.
NEPHRITIS CALCULOSA.
§ 24. We have had sufficient evidence of the efficacy of the Foxglove in removing the Dysuria and other symptoms of this disease; but probably it is not in these cases preferable to the tobacco.[12]
OVARIUM DROPSY.
§ 25. This species of encysted dropsy is not without difficulty distinguishable from an ascites; and yet it is necessary to distinguish them, because the two diseases require different treatment and because the probality of a cure is much greater in one than in the other.
§ 26. The ovarium dropsy is generally slow in its progress; for a considerable time the patient though somewhat emaciated, does not lose the appearance of health, and the urine flows in the usual quantity. It is seldom that the practitioner is called in early enough to distinguish by the feel on which side the cyst originated, and the patients do not attend to that circumstance themselves. They generally menstruate regularly in the incipient state of the disease, and it is not until the pressure from the sac becomes very great, that the urinary secretion diminishes. In this species of dropsy, the patients, upon being questioned, acknowledge even from a pretty early date, pains in the upper and inner parts of the thighs, similar to those which women experience in a state of pregnancy. These pains are for a length of time greater in one thigh than in the other, and I believe it will be found that the disease originated on that side.