Vomiting was also present in many cases. Cough, with mucus or muco-purulent sputa, sometimes with hæmoptysis, was a very common symptom. Many of the patients lost flesh and strength and became anæmic. COURSE OF THE DISEASE.--There is a great deal of similarity in the histories of patients who suffer from the combination of cardiac and renal disease. There is first the history of the heart disease. A patient goes on for a number of years, sometimes apparently perfectly well and unconscious that his heart is diseased, sometimes more or less troubled with cough, cardiac dyspnoea, and palpitation. But after a longer or shorter time there is a marked change for the worse. Either gradually or rapidly the cough becomes worse, the dyspnoea greater, the functions of the stomach are disturbed, the patient loses flesh and strength, dropsy is developed, and finally cerebral symptoms. Some die suddenly, some with exhaustion, some with dropsy, some with dyspnoea, some comatose. It is always possible for the patient to recover from the first attack of this kind, sometimes even from a second, but eventually there comes an attack which proves fatal. The most striking cases are those in which cardiac disease exists for many years without giving any symptoms, and then the symptoms are developed rapidly. Such persons, although they have organic disease of the heart, may seem to enjoy perfect health. They may even be able to take long walks, climb mountains, or perform laborious work. On some day they suddenly become sick. Sometimes the exciting cause of the attack is a pleurisy or a pericarditis, sometimes there is no apparent cause. The first symptom is usually dyspnoea, and this is not an ordinary cardiac dyspnoea. It is a very distressing and constant dyspnoea, which does not allow the patients to lie down. They pass days and nights sitting in a chair, fatigued, ready to sleep, but kept awake by the constant dyspnoea. Some of these patients will die at the end of a few days; others live longer and develop dropsy, anæmia, and cerebral symptoms. When the chronic congestion of the kidneys is secondary to emphysema of the lungs, the course of affairs is much the same. The patient goes on for a number of years with the ordinary symptoms of emphysema, and then gradually or suddenly becomes worse. Dyspnoea, dropsy, {72} anæmia, cerebral symptoms make their appearance, and the case terminates in the same way as the cardiac cases. DURATION.--How long congestion of the kidneys may exist without producing symptoms it is hard to say. Certainly it may exist for a number of days without any apparent disturbance of the functions of the kidney. Whether it may exist for a time, give symptoms, and then disappear, is uncertain; the rule seems to be that the lesion, when once well established, persists up to the death of the patient.