The patient soon develops dropsy, the extent of which varies in the different cases. Sometimes it involves only the face, sometimes the hands and feet, or there may be general subcutaneous oedema, serum in the serous cavities, oedema of the lungs and of the glottis. The patients lose their appetite; often there are nausea and vomiting. As a rule, there are cerebral symptoms--headache, drowsiness, stupor, delirium, muscular twitchings, convulsions, and coma. In the milder cases there will be only headache and periods of drowsiness, alternating with periods of irritability. In the severe cases there will be dyspnoea, delirium, repeated convulsions, and coma. These are the regular symptoms of the disease--symptoms varying in their number and development with the intensity of the nephritis. In the worst cases the cerebral symptoms are developed early and the patients die at the end of a few days. In other cases the symptoms continue for months, and at the end of that time terminate either in the death or recovery of the patient. Albumen and casts in the urine may persist long after all other symptoms have disappeared. In other cases the disease runs a very mild course; the patients are not at any time seriously ill, and they recover completely at the end of two or three weeks. In still other cases the acute inflammation is succeeded by {83} chronic diffuse nephritis. Relapses and repeated attacks of the disease occur in some persons. The course of the disease may be modified by complicating inflammations. Pericarditis, pleurisy, peritonitis, pneumonia, cystitis, and inflammations of the joints and muscles are not uncommon. PROGNOSIS.--In the larger number of cases the prognosis is good. The milder cases recover after two or three weeks; more severe cases last for several months. The bad cases die at the end of a few days with cerebral symptoms, or all the symptoms continue and the patient dies at the end of several months, or they pass on to the lesions and symptoms of chronic diffuse nephritis, or they die from some complicating inflammation.