When hydrothorax occurs after scarlatina, and is combined with anasarca, its course is generally rapid, and the cure difficult; partaking, as it often does, of the two-fold state of debility and excitement. When detected early, the lancet must be promptly used. Cups and leaches, followed by the warm bath, blisters, and cathartics, must also be resorted to. "Diuretics, which are so beneficial in the less acute forms of dropsy, are commonly too inert and slow in this, unless given in doses to act immediately upon the vascular system, when the infusion of digitalis, as given by many practitioners in all the other states of the disease, may be resorted to; since the treatment here is not so much to remove the water, as to prevent, if possible, its farther effusion; for when a discharge suddenly takes place into the chest after scarlet fever, it will generally prove fatal, even though the quantity collected be inconsiderable, and only such as would occasion, if gradually effused, a moderate degree of inconvenience to the lungs." In respect to tapping, our author remarks, that the circumstances calling for this operation are, where, from the very considerable accumulation of water, and the consequent distension it occasions, a permanent and morbid stimulus is given to the peritoneal membrane, by which its serous inflammation is perpetuated or increased; or where so much pain and irritation are produced, as to risk inducing a similar disease in the chest, and of bringing on likewise an ulcerative form of inflammation in the peritoneal lining of the abdomen. "Whilst the objections to its employment consist in the danger which is incurred, where there is much visceral disease, of its causing a destructive form of inflammation in the peritoneum; and the probability of its occasioning, under the most favourable condition of the disease, a more rapid renewal of the serous accumulation." Our limits not allowing us to enter on the treatment of ovarian dropsy, we proceed to offer a few remarks on the means recommended by Dr. A. for the cure of anasarca. As in the treatment of every other form of dropsy, it is necessary, in attempting the cure of anasarca, to advert to the nature and causes of the disease. "If it be idiopathic, and unconnected with any dropsy of a circumscribed cavity, and the pulse at the same time be soft, and the urine free from serum, it may be treated solely with the view of procuring the absorption of the effused fluid, as in such cases, the watery discharge in all probability will have removed, in a considerable degree, the excitement which caused it."