1. Two ounces of nitre dissolved in a pint of water, and a wine-glass full of it taken three times a-day have performed perfect cures, in two cases of ascites, which have come under my notice. I think I have cured two persons of anasarca, by giving one scruple of the same medicine three times a-day for several weeks. The two last cures were evidently dropsies of violent action in the arterial system. Where nitre has been given in atonic dropsies it has generally been useless, and sometimes done harm. I have seen one instance of an incurable diarrh[oe]a after tapping, which I suspected arose from the destruction of the tone of the stomach and bowels, by large and long continued doses of nitre, which the patient had previously taken by the advice of a person who had been cured by that remedy. To avoid this, or any other inconvenience from the use of nitre in dropsies, it should be given at first in small doses, and should always be laid aside, if it should prove ineffectual after having been given two or three weeks. 2. I can say nothing of the efficacy of _cream of tartar_ in dropsies from my own experience, where it has not acted as a purge. Perhaps my want of decision upon this subject has arisen only from my not having persisted in the use of it for the same length of time which is mentioned by Dr. Home. 3. There are different opinions concerning the efficacy of foxglove in dropsies. From the cases related by Dr. Withering, it appears to have done good; but from those related by Dr. Lettsom[41] it seems to have done harm. I suspect the different accounts of those two gentlemen have arisen from their having given it in different states of the system, or perhaps from a difference in the quality of the plant from causes mentioned in another place[42]. I am sorry to add further, that after many trials of this medicine I have failed in most of the cases in which I have given it. I have discharged the water in three instances by it, but the disease returned, and my patients finally died. I can ascribe only one complete cure to its use, which was in the year 1789, in a young man in the Pennsylvania hospital, of five and thirty years of age, of a robust habit, and plethoric pulse. [41] Medical Memoirs, vol. II. [42] Inquiry into the Causes and Cure of Pulmonary Consumption. Where medicines have once been in use, and afterwards fall into disrepute, as was the case with the foxglove, I suspect the cases in which they were useful, to have been either few or doubtful, and that the cases in which they had done harm, were so much more numerous and unequivocal, as justly to banish them from the materia medica.