Kitap 2
CHAPTER I. ON DROPSY.
1
DROPSY is indeed an affection unseemly to behold and difficult to endure; for very few escape from it, and they more by fortune and the gods, than by art; for all the greater ills the gods only can remedy. For either the disease lurking in a vital organ has changed the whole system to cachexy, or the general system from some plague that has gone before has changed the viscera to a Cacochymy, when both co-operate with one another to increase the illness, and no part is uninjured from which even a slight assistance might be rendered to Nature. It is a cold and dense vapour converted into humidity, resembling a mist in the universe; or, it is the conversion of a humid and cold cause which changes the patient to such a habit. For a fluid rolling about in the lower belly we do not call Dropsy, since neither is the affection situated in that place; but when the tumour, swelling, colour, and the habit melting down to water, conspire in the disease, it both is, and is called Dropsy. For, even should the water at any time burst outwardly, or should one give vent to it, by making an incision in the hypochondrium, the dropsical affection will still remain confirmed; wherefore the primary cause of it is cachexia.
