Although I have performed this operation many times, and been present when others have performed it, I have never seen a case, in which its efficacy was so decided, or in which the relief afforded was more unquestionably attributable to the action of the needles. ANALYTICAL REVIEWS. ARTICLE VII.--_Researches into the Nature and Treatment of Dropsy in the Brain, Chest, Abdomen, Ovarium, and Skin, in which a more correct and consistent Pathology of these Diseases is attempted to be established, and a new and more successful method of treating them, recommended and explained._ By JOSEPH AYRE, M. D. &. London, 1825. We have read the present work with the liveliest pleasure, and we dare hope with considerable benefit, and hasten to lay a review of its contents before our readers. Dr. AYRE is already advantageously known in this country, where his Essay on Marasmus has had an extensive circulation; but we are disposed to think, that, however he might be esteemed for the talent he displayed in his former composition, he is entitled to much more credit for his able researches into the nature and treatment of dropsy. We confess that we enter upon our editorial duties on the present occasion, with the two-fold intention of offering to our readers what we regard, on the whole, as a very correct view of the pathology of dropsy, and of showing to some of our medical friends, who shudder at the mere mention of what they denominate _hunch theories_, that the English physicians, or at least some of the most intelligent among them, so far from considering these theories as dangerous and unphilosophical, are beginning to entertain similar views with their Gallic brethren, in respect to the inflammatory nature of many diseases too long regarded as resulting from a state of debility, and classed by nosologists among the Cachexiae. By most writers upon the subject, dropsy has too long been considered as a _disease_,--constituted into a separate class, and divided into many species. Dr. AYRE entertains, however, a very different and, we believe, a much more correct view of the pathology of this complaint; regarding it as only one in a series of effects of a disease, and not always the last of that series. He remarks, that the true disease is to be sought for in that particular condition of the solids by which the effusion is produced; and that to appreciate justly the nature and treatment of dropsy, it is necessary to understand the nature of that condition, which constitutes the disease, and of which the serous and watery effusion is merely the result.