CtASS I. 2. 3. 15. OF IRRITATION. 91 



the paracentesis? Does this dropsy of the chest often come on 

 after peripneumony? Is it ever cured by making the patient sick 

 by tincture of digitalis? Could it be cured, if on one side only, 

 by the operation of puncture between the ribs, and afterwards 

 by inflaming the cavity by the admission of air for a time, like 

 the cure of the hydrocele; the pleura afterwards adhering wholly 

 to that lobe of the lungs, so as to prevent any future effusion of 

 mucus? 



I suspect the anasarca of the lungs, as well as the hydrops 

 thoracis, to be most frequently a disease of those membranes only, 

 and not to depend on the general paralysis of the absorbent 

 system; and that they are then not accompanied with swelled 

 legs, till the patient becomes universally weak; and that they 

 have for their cause a rheumatic or gouty peripneumony or pleu- 

 risy; that is, that the lungs or pleura have been inflamed from 

 their sympathy with some other viscus, and have deposited much 

 coagulable lymph on the surface of their inflamed membranes, 

 which could not readily become absorbed, and has thus caused 

 the dropsy of the cavity of the chest, like the coagulable lymph 

 or chalky matter left after the gout and rheumatism in other 

 parts; or that the cellular membrane of the lungs becomes filled 

 with a fluid from the present inaction of their absorbent ves- 

 sels, which had previously been excited too violently; and that 

 the anasarca of the lungs is thus produced like the anasarca 

 which, frequently in weak constitutions, exists after the gout in 

 the feet and knees, and after rheumatic inflammations of the 

 joints. See Peripneumonia, Class II. 1. 2. 4. whence it appears, 

 why the hydrops thoracis and anasarca pulmonum so generally 

 occur in gouty constitutions. 



1 5. Hydrops ovarii. Dropsy of the ovary is another encysted 

 dropsy, which seldom admits of cure. It is distinguished from 

 ascites by the tumour and pain, especially at the beginning, 

 occupying one side, and the fluctuation being less distinctly per- 

 ceptible. When it happens to young subjects it is less liable to 

 be mistaken for ascites. It affects women of all ages, either 

 married or virgins; and is produced by cold, fear, hunger, bad 

 food, and other debilitating causes. I saw an elegant young lady r 

 who was shortly to have been married to a sensible man, with 

 great prospect of happiness; who, on being overturned in a 

 chaise in the night, and obliged to walk two or three miles in 

 wet, cold, and darkness, became much indisposed, and gradually 

 afflicted with a swelling and pain on one side of the abdomen; 

 which terminated in a dropsy of the ovary, and destroyed her in 

 two or three years. Another young woman I recollect seeing, 

 who was about seventeen, and being of the very inferior class 



