Disputationis medicae de hydrope theses inaugurales LXV

humor is collected in the whole body, or disseminated through the whole body, as Aetius says, so that the whole flesh appears completely soaked and swollen like a sponge or paper.

27. The conjunct cause of it, therefore, is a crude phlegmatic humor, as Galen also left attested (Book 3, On Symptom Causes).

28. A narkeia numbness/heaviness from phlegm troubling the whole body also precedes this, whence the Greeks in their language named it leukophlegmatian white phlegm; also, an immoderate evacuation of the bowels, hemorrhoids, menstruation, or even any manner of suppression of accustomed ones. It also not rarely happens after long-term and phlegmatic or quartan chronic fevers, as Aegineta also asserts.

29. Its proper signs and symptoms are: a soft inflation of the whole body, as if it were fattened, when it is filled only with phlegm without tumor of the belly; for this reason it also whitens, and when it is pressed by a finger, a cavity or pit is left for a time; sanguineous bowel flow; a pulse that is wave-like, soft, and wider; much urine, for the most part pale white and gross, with crude sediment, as Actuarius also teaches.

30. Nor should this be passed over in silence, where the differences of this disease are spoken of, which Galen also noted while comparing them: Ascites is stirred up by greater cold than Tympania, because wind must necessarily be generated from heat, albeit a weaker heat; whence it is pleasing to reason that Anasarca is made from greater cold than Ascites, even if Galen did not explicitly pronounce this.

31. From what has been enumerated so far, it can now easily be gathered that simple species of dropsy are rarely found, but for the most part they are entangled with one another, whence also the indications for curing depend.

32. Although, with Aetius as witness, the cure of this affection is difficult and needs much help from the art, which also is from