Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A lecture on dropsy / by George Gregory. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![drinking was formerly said to cause an atony of the exhalants. Discarding this suppo- sition as altogether gratuitous, I would desire to put you on your guard when you have reason to believe hard drinking to be the source of the mischief. Such cases are the most formidable of any that occur. They are generally found to be connected with one of two very unman- ageable conditions of abdominal disease—either a tuberculated state of the liver, or a true schir- rous hardening, thickening, or ulceration of the coats of the stomach. Strong measures will almost inevitably accelerate the death of a patient under such circumstances. On the other hand it is to be remembered, that hard drinking has a very strong tendency to increase the action of the heart and arteries, and in con- sequence to bring on some low chronic state of inflammation about the lungs, heart, or interna] coats of the great vessels. In this latter case Dropsy would be of the arterial, in the former of the venous kind. Your object therefore, when you suspect hard drinking to be the origi- nal cause of disease, must be to watch for other symptoms. Examine the region of the liver, look at the tongue, and the state of the excretions. If there are no decided marks of disease there, feel the pulse narrowly, observe if it is compres- sible, or if it bears a great force of the finger be-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21055245_0037.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
