

OLASS III. 1. f. 10. OF VOLITIONS 



remove the cause of the disease, are not properly convulsions, 

 but exertions immediately caused by sensation; but in this kind of 

 asthma they are only efforts to relieve pain, and are frequently 

 preceded by other epileptic convulsions. 



These two kinds of asthma have so many resembling features, 

 and are so frequently intermixed, that it often requires great at- 

 tention to distinguish them; but as one of them is allied to ana- 

 sarca, and the other to epilepsy, we shall acquire a clearer idea 

 of them by comparing them with those disorders. A criterion 

 of the humoral or hydropic asthma is, that it is relieved by copi- 

 ous sweats about the head and breast, which are to be ascribed 

 to the sensitive exertions of the pulmonary vessels to relieve the 

 pain occasioned by the anasarcous congestion in the air- cells; 

 and which is effected by the increased absorption of the mucus, 

 and its elimination by the retrograde action of those lymphatics 

 of the skin, the branches of which communicate with the pul- 

 monary ones; and which partial sweats do not easily admit of 

 any other explanation. See Class I. 3. 2. 8. Another criterion 

 of it is, that it is generally attended with swelled legs, or other 

 symptoms of anasarca. A criterion of the convulsive asthma 

 may be had from the absence of these cold clammy sweats of the 

 upper part of the body only, and from the patient having occa- 

 sionally been subject to convulsions of the limbs, as in the com- 

 mon epilepsy. 



It may thus frequently happen, that in the humoral asthma 

 some exertions of the lungs may occur, which may not contri- 

 bute to discharge the anasarcous lymph, but may be efforts simply 

 to relieve pain; besides those efforts, which produce the increased 

 absorption and elimination of it; and thus we have a bodily dis- 

 ease resembling in this circumstance the reverie, in which both 

 sensitive and voluntary motions are at the same time, or in suc- 

 cession, excited for the purpose of relieving pain. 



It may likewise sometimes happen, that the disagreeable sen- 

 sation, occasioned by the congestion of lymph in the air cells in 

 the humoral or hydropic asthma, may induce voluntary convul- 

 sions of the respiratory organs only to relieve the pain, without 

 any sensitive actions of the pulmonary absorbents to absorb and 

 eliminate the congestion of serous fluid; and thus the same 

 cause may occasionally induce either the humoral or convulsive 

 asthma. 



The humoral asthma has but one remote cause, which is the 

 torpor of the pulmonary vessels, like that which occurs on going 

 into the cold bath; or the want of absorption of the pulmonary 

 lymphatics to take up the lymph effused into the air-cells. 

 Whereas the convulsive asthma, like other convulsions, or epi- 



