use.

Perhaps the reader will better understand how it ought to be given,
from the following detail of my own improvement, than from precepts
peremptorily delivered, and their source veiled in obscurity.

At first I thought it necessary _to bring on and continue the
sickness, in order to ensure the diuretic effects_.

I soon learnt that the nausea being once excited, it was unnecessary
to repeat the medicine, as it was certain to recur frequently, at
intervals more or less distant.

Therefore my patients were ordered _to persist until the nausea came
on, and then to stop_. But it soon appeared that the diuretic effects
would often take place first, and sometimes be checked when the
sickness or a purging supervened.

The direction was therefore enlarged thus--_Continue the medicine
until the urine flows, or sickness or purging take place_.

I found myself safe under this regulation for two or three years; but
at length cases occurred in which the pulse would be retarded to an
alarming degree, without any other preceding effect.

The directions therefore required an additional attention to the state
of the pulse, and it was moreover of consequence not to repeat the
doses too quickly, but to allow sufficient time for the effects of
each to take place, as it was found very possible to pour in an
injurious quantity of the medicine, before any of the signals for
forbearance appeared.

_Let the medicine therefore be given in the doses, and at the
intervals mentioned above:--let it be continued until it either acts
on the kidneys, the stomach, the pulse, or the bowels; let it be
stopped upon the first appearance of any one of these effects_, and I
will maintain that the patient will not suffer from its exhibition,
nor the practitioner be disappointed in any reasonable expectation.

If it purges, it seldom succeeds well.

The patients should be enjoined to drink very freely during its
operation. I mean, they should drink whatever they prefer, and in as
great quantity as their appetite for drink demands. This direction is
the more necessary, as they are very generally prepossessed with an
idea of drying up a dropsy, by abstinence from liquids, and fear to
add to the disease, by indulging their inclination to drink.

In cases of ascites and anasarca; when the patients are weak, and the
evacuation of the water rapid; the use of proper bandage is
indispensably necessary to their safety.

If the water should not be who