292 DISEASES CLASS HI. 1. 1. 10, 



lepsies, may be occasioned by pain in almost any remote part of 

 the system. But in some of the adult patients in this disease, as 

 in many epilepsies, I have suspected the remote cause to be a 

 pain of the liver, or of the biliary ducts. 



The asthma*, which have been induced in consequence of the 

 recess of eruptions, especially of the leprous kind, countenance 

 this opinion. One lady I knew, who for many years laboured 

 under an asthma, which ceased on her being afflicted with pain, 

 swelling, and distortion of some of her large joints, which were 

 esteemed gouty, but perhaps erroneously; And a young man> 

 whom I saw yesterday, was seized with asthma on the retroces- 

 sion, or ceasing of eruptions on his face. 



The convulsive asthma, as well as the hydropic, is more lia- 

 ble to return in hot weather; which may be occasioned by the 

 less quantity of oxygen existing in a given quantity of warm air, 

 than of cold, which can be taken into the lungs at one inspira- 

 tion. They are both most liable to occur after the first sleep, 

 which is therefore a general criterion of asthma. The cause of 

 this is explained in Sect. XVIII. 15. and applies to both of them, 

 as our sensibility to internal uneasy sensation increases during 

 sleep. 



When children are gaining teeth, long before they appear, 

 the pain of the gums often induces convulsions. This pain is 

 relieved in some by sobbing and screaming; but in others a la- 

 borious respiration is exerted to relieve the pain; and this con- 

 stitutes the true asthma convulsivum. In other children again 

 general convulsions, or epileptic paroxysms, are induced for this 

 purpose; which, like other epilepsies, become established by ha- 

 bit, and recur before the irritation has time to produce the pain- 

 ful sensation, which originally caused them. 



The asthma convulsivum is also sometimes induced by \vorms, 

 or by acidity in the stomachs of children, and by other painful- 

 sensations in adults; in whom it is generally called nervous 

 asthma, and is often joined with other epileptic symptoms. 



This asthma is distinguished from the peripneumony, and 

 from the croup, by the presence of fever in the two latter. It 

 is distinguished from the humoral asthma, as in that the patients 

 are more liable to run to the cold air for relief, are more subject 

 to cold extremities, and experience the returns of it more fre- 

 quently after their first sleep. It is distinguished from the hy- 

 drops thoracis, as that has no intervals, and the patient sits con- 

 stantly upright, and the breath is colder; and, where the pericar- 

 dium is affected, the pulse is quick and unequal. See Hydrops 

 Thoracis,!. 2. 3. 14. 



M. M. Venesection once. A cathartic with calomel once- 



