In support of this opinion, Dr. AYRE remarks, that all the phenomena belonging to cases of watery effusion, met with under one or other of the forms of inflammation, are common to those of dropsy. Thus the fluid, discharged under the cuticle in erysipelas or in inflammation induced by heat or a blister, or in cases of pemphigus, is a secretion, and resembles in all respects the fluid found in dropsy. In some cases of acknowledged inflammation, the fluid effused is found to vary greatly in its degree of tenuity, so as to be sometimes of quite a viscid nature. The same circumstance is met with in dropsy; the fluid of which varies sometimes in different forms of the disease, and at different periods in the same patient. With regard to the absence of pain, in ordinary cases of local or general dropsy, which, in the minds of many physicians, might seem to militate against this view of the subject,--since pain accompanies the inflammation of a blister, Dr. A. very justly says, that the difference is referrible to a different degree of sensibility of the parts affected; that, moreover, in pemphigus there is no pain, and that chronic inflammation of the serous membranes is little painful. That the morbid action producing the effusion is only a modification of inflammation, our author thinks may be further shown by the fact that it obeys the same laws--being translated occasionally, like it, from one part of the body to another. On this subject, Dr. AYRE makes the very pertinent remark, that in these cases, the fluid alone has been thought to be translated; but that the metastasis, is without doubt, exclusively of the action which produces the serous discharge. Analogous also to what occurs in inflammation, especially of the erysipelatous kind, the action occasioning the effusion, as seen in anasarca, commences at a given point, and gradually extends from thence in a continuous course. It ought also to be noticed, that the results of common inflammation vary according to the intensity of the cause; the lowest degree of it, occasioning an increase in the quantity of the proper fluids of the part,--a higher degree, yielding for its product coagulable lymph, and a still higher one producing pus. All these several products of common inflammation, are more or less remedial of their cause; or in other words, are the immediate means of the cessation or abatement of the inflammation which produces them. This same power is likewise a property, though in a much less degree, of the hydropic effusion, when the inflammation which produces it, is idiopathic; or in other words, not created by a visceral or other disease, or some particular excitement of the general system, as is seen in cases of anasarca.