Book 2
1
All the species, indeed, are unfavourable; for dropsy, in all its forms of disease, is bad. But of these, leucophlegmatia is the more mild; for in it there are many and various chances of good fortune, such as an evacuation of sweat, of urine, or from the bowels, by which the dropsical habit is carried off. But tympanites is of a difficult nature, and still more so anasarca; for in this affection the physician would require to change the whole person, a thing not easy for the gods themselves to accomplish.
1
Sometimes the dropsy forms in a small space, such as the head in hydrocephalus; or in the lungs alone; or in the liver, or the spleen; or the womb in women; and this last is easier to cure than any of the others, for provided its mouth relax from its former constriction, if it contains a fluid, it discharges the same outwardly, and if a flatus, it is dissipated. But if the uterus suffer at all in anasarca, for the most part the whole woman becomes dropsical.
