But the existence of too much action in the arterial system in certain dropsies, will appear more fully from the history of the effects of the remedies which have been employed either by design or accident in the cure of these diseases. I shall first mention the remedies which have been used with success in tonic or inflammatory dropsies; and afterwards mention those which have been given with success in dropsies of a weak action in the arteries. I have constantly proposed to treat only of the theory and cure of dropsies in general, without specifying any of the numerous names it derives from the different parts of the body in which they may be seated; but in speaking of the remedies which have been used with advantage in both the tonic and atonic states, I shall occasionally mention the name or seat of the dropsy in which the remedy has done service. The first remedy that I shall mention for dropsies is _blood-letting_. Dr. Hoffman and Dr. Home both cured dropsies accompanied by pulmonic congestion by means of this remedy. Dr. Monroe quotes a case of dropsy from Sponius, in which bleeding succeeded, but not till after it had been used twenty times[37]. Mr. Cruikshank relates a case[38] of accidental bleeding, which confirms the efficacy of blood-letting in these diseases. He tells us that he attended a patient with dropsical swellings in his legs, who had had a hoarseness for two years. One morning, in stooping to buckle his shoes, he bursted a blood-vessel in his lungs, from which he lost a quart of blood; in consequence of which, both the swellings and the hoarseness went off gradually, and he continued well two years afterwards. I have known one case in which spontaneous hæmorrhages from the hæmorrhodial vessels, and from the nose, suddenly reduced universal dropsical swellings. In this patient there had been an uncommon tension and fulness in the pulse. [37] Treatise on the Dropsy. [38] Treatise on the Lymphatics. I could add the histories of many cures of anasarca and ascites, performed by means of blood-letting, not only by myself, but by a number of respectable physicians in the United States. Indeed I conceive this remedy to be as much indicated by a tense and full pulse in those forms of dropsy, as it is in a pleurisy, or in any other common inflammatory disease. In those deplorable cases of hydrothorax, which do not admit of a radical cure, I have given temporary relief, and thereby protracted life, by taking away occasionally a few ounces of blood. Had Dr. Zimmerman used this remedy in the case of the king of Prussia, I cannot help thinking from the account which the doctor gives us of the diet and pulse of his royal patient, that he would have lessened his sufferings much more than by plentiful doses of dandelion; for I take it for granted, from the candour and integrity which the doctor discovered in all his visits to the king, that he did not expect that dandelion, or any other medicine, would cure him.