Book 1
13
In the dropsy, provided there is a copious discharge of thick urine, having much re-crementitious sediment, there is a hope that the dropsical swelling may run off; but if the urine be thin, without sediment, and scanty, it conspires with the dropsy. But if nature change to her pristine state, and burst upon the bowels, along with copious watery discharges, it has also sometimes cured the dropsy. This mode of cure, however, is dangerous; for what from the copious evacuations, and the extreme prostration, the patients have sometimes died of weakness, as from hemorrhage. Sweating, if copious, carries off the disease with less danger, for dropsical persons generally have not a moist skin. Such is the termination of the affections in the liver.
13
But if the liver suppurate . . . . . children, and those till manhood; women less so. The causes are intemperance, and a protracted disease, especially from dysentery and colliquative wasting; for it is customary to call these persons tabid who die emaciated from ulcers of the liver.
CHAPTER XIV. ON THE SPLEEN.
