After the use of much medicine, on the 6th of November, the effused fluids began to be absorbed, and passed out through the urinary organs with such rapidity, that on the 12th the dropsical enlargements had nearly disappeared. The pulse was much reduced, in hardness and frequency, by the medicine, and, as it fell, he became more easy. On the 10th the state legislature convened, and the call of business roused, like magic, the vigor of his mind; and the symptoms of his disease almost disappeared. During this session he made little complaint, dictated many important communications, and attended to all the duties of his office, without neglecting the most minute. As soon as the legislature adjourned, he declared, that his work was finished, and that he had no desire to remain longer in this world. He entreated that no farther means should be used to prolong his existence, and immediately yielded himself to the grasp of disease, which appeared waiting with impatience to inflict its agonies.
From this moment the distressing difficulty of breathing had very slight remissions. The consequent disposition to incline the superior part of the body forward, for the purpose of facilitating respiration, increased so much, that he frequently slept with his head reposed on his knees. The cough became occasionally very violent, and was always attended with an expectoration of a brown coloured mucus, sometimes tinged with blood. The abdominal viscera lost their activity. The face was sometimes turgid and high coloured, at other times pallid and contracted. A gradual abolition of the powers of the mind ensued, with a low delirium, and two short fits of phrenzy. The state of the circulation was very variable; the pulse at the wrists principally hard and vibrating, rarely soft and compressible; the less pulsations becoming more indistinct, and at length scarcely perceptible. No perfectly distinct beat of the heart was felt, but a quick undulating motion, not corresponding with the pulse at the wrist. Three days before death the arteries assumed this undulatory motion, corresponded with the motion of the heart, and, for forty-eight hours, lost the irregularity of pulsation[3].
[Footnote 3: The celebrated Morgagni has recorded some cases of organic disease of the heart discovered by dissection, the symptoms of which do not exactly accord with those observed in this and the succeeding cases. It should be remembered, however, that many of the subjects of those cases were not examined by him, while living, and others but a very short time before death. But it appears, that, in the last stage of this disorder, some of the most important symptoms may be materially changed, especially the state of the pulse, dyspnoea and palpitations. Thus in the case related above, and in some others, the pulse became regular, the palpitations subsided, and the dyspnoea was less observable. The cases of that accurate anatomist, therefore, are not so contradictory of those related here, as might at first be imagined.]