ese exacerbations recur sometimes every two or three hours, and are
relieved by opium, a grain every hour for two or three doses, with ether
about a dram in cold water; and seem to be a convulsion of the muscles of
respiration induced by the pain of the dyspnea. As in Class III. 1. 1. 9.

M. M. A grain of dried squill, and a quarter of a grain of blue vitriol
every hour for six or eight hours, unless it vomit or purge. A grain of
opium. Blisters. Calomel three grains every third day, with infusion of
senna. Bark. Chalybeates. Puncture in the side.

Can the fluctuation in the chest be heard by applying the ear to the side,
as Hippocrates asserts? Can it be felt by the hand or by the patient before
the disease is too great to admit of cure by the paracentesis? Does this
dropsy of the chest often come on after peripneumony? Is it ever cured by
making the patient sick by tincture of digitalis? Could it be cured, if on
one side only, by the operation of puncture between the ribs, and
afterwards by inflaming the cavity by the admission of air for a time, like
the cure of the hydrocele; the pleura afterwards adhering wholly to that
lobe of the lungs, so as to prevent any future effusion of mucus?

15. _Hydrops ovarii._ Dropsy of the ovary is another incysted dropsy, which
seldom admits of cure. It is distinguished from ascites by the tumour and
pain, especially at the beginning, occupying one side, and the fluctuation
being less distinctly perceptible. When it happens to young subjects it is
less liable to be mistaken for ascites. It affects women of all ages,
either married or virgins; and is produced by cold, fear, hunger, bad food,
and other debilitating causes. I saw an elegant young lady, who was shortly
to have been married to a sensible man, with great prospect of happiness;
who, on being overturned in a chaise in the night, and obliged to walk two
or three miles in wet, cold, and darkness, became much indisposed, and
gradually afflicted with a swelling and pain on one side of the abdomen;
which terminated in a dropsy of the ovary, and destroyed her in two or
three years. Another young woman I recollect seeing, who was about
seventeen, and being of the very inferior class of people, seemed to have
been much weakened by the hardship of a cold floor, and little or no bed,
with bad food; and who to these evils had to bear the unceasing obloquy of
her neighbours, and the persecution of parish officers.

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