t conveyed to the
thoracic receptacle, as it ought to be, but to the bladder, or lower
intestines; whence the chyle, blood, and whole system of glands, are robbed
of their proportion of humidity.

8. There is a third species of diabetes, in which the urine is
mucilaginous, and appears ropy in pouring it from one vessel into another;
and will sometimes coagulate over the fire. This disease appears by
intervals, and ceases again, and seems to be occasioned by a previous
dropsy in some part of the body. When such a collection is reabsorbed, it
is not always returned into the circulation; but the same irritation that
stimulates one lymphatic branch to reabsorb the deposited fluid, inverts
the urinary branch, and pours it into the bladder. Hence this mucilaginous
diabetes is a cure, or the consequence of a cure, of a worse disease,
rather than a disease itself.

Dr. Cotunnius gave half an ounce of cream of tartar, every morning, to a
patient, who had the anasarca; and he voided a great quantity of urine; a
part of which, put over the fire, coagulated, on the evaporation of half of
it, so as to look like the white of an egg. De Ischiade Nervos.

This kind of diabetes frequently precedes a dropsy; and has this remarkable
circumstance attending it, that it generally happens in the night; as
during the recumbent state of the body, the fluid, that was accumulated in
the cellular membrane, or in the lungs, is more readily absorbed, as it is
less impeded by its gravity. I have seen more than one instance of this
disease. Mr. D. a man in the decline of life, who had long accustomed
himself to spirituous liquor, had swelled legs, and other symptoms of
approaching anasarca; about once in a week, or ten days, for several
months, he was seized, on going to bed, with great general uneasiness,
which his attendants resembled to an hysteric fit; and which terminated in
a great discharge of viscid urine; his legs became less swelled, and he
continued in better health for some days afterwards. I had not the
opportunity to try if this urine would coagulate over the fire, when part
of it was evaporated, which I imagine would be the criterion of this kind
of diabetes; as the mucilaginous fluid deposited in the cells and cysts of
the body, which have no communication with the external air, seems to
acquire, by stagnation, this property of coagulation by heat, which the
secreted mucus of the intestines and bladder do not appear to possess; as I