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That diminished absorption, and the consequent accumulation of serous fluids in the cellular texture, and different cavities, frequently depends upon general debility is very obvious, whence fevers, whether of the intermittent, or continued kind, which have been long protracted, are followed by œdematous swellings. In states of extreme debility the exhalant vessels would seem, from their laxity, to permit the thinner parts of the blood to pass too readily through them; this is proved by the circumstance that palsied limbs, in which such a laxity may be presumed to exist, are frequently affected with œdema, and the truth of this explanation is still farther corroborated by the advantages which accrue on these occasions from the mechanical support of pressure from bandages. In such cases, those remedies which are capable of renovating the vigour of the body can alone prove of any signal service. Dr. Blackall presents us with an illustrative case of this nature, on the authority of Mr. Johnson of Exeter, in which the tonic powers of well fermented bread occasioned in the space of a few hours an effect so powerfully diuretic, as to have cured sailors on board of the Asia East Indiaman, who had been attacked with Dropsy, in consequence of the use of damaged Rice.