he increased absorption of the mucus, and its elimination by
the retrograde action of those lymphatics of the skin, whose branches
communicate with the pulmonary ones; and which partial sweats do not easily
admit of any other explanation. See Class I. 3. 2. 8. Another criterion of
it is, that it is generally attended with swelled legs, or other symptoms
of anasarca. A criterion of the convulsive asthma may be had from the
absence of these cold clammy sweats of the upper part of the body only, and
from the patient having occasionally been subject to convulsions of the
limbs, as in the common epilepsy.

It may thus frequently happen, that in the humoral asthma some exertions of
the lungs may occur, which may not contribute to discharge the anasarcous
lymph, but may be efforts simply to relieve pain; besides those efforts,
which produce the increased absorption and elimination of it; and thus we
have a bodily disease resembling in this circumstance the reverie, in which
both sensitive and voluntary motions are at the same time, or in
succession, excited for the purpose of relieving pain.

It may likewise sometimes happen, that the disagreeable sensation,
occasioned by the congestion of lymph in the air-cells in the humoral or
hydropic asthma, may induce voluntary convulsions of the respiratory organs
only to relieve the pain, without any sensitive actions of the pulmonary
absorbents to absorb and eliminate the congestion of serous fluid; and thus
the same cause may occasionally induce either the humoral or convulsive
asthma.

The humoral asthma has but one remote cause, which is the torpor of the
pulmonary vessels, like that which occurs on going into the cold bath; or
the want of absorption of the pulmonary lymphatics to take up the lymph
effused into the air-cell. Whereas the convulsive asthma, like other
convulsions, or epilepsies, 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 asthmas, 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