Healing a man with dropsy Healing a man with dropsy Healing a man with dropsy is one of the miracles of Jesus in the Gospels (Luke 14:1-6). According to the Gospel, one Sabbath, Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, and he was being carefully watched. There in front of him was a man suffering from dropsy, i.e. abnormal swelling of his body. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law: But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way. Then he asked them: And they had nothing to say.
Epidemic dropsy oil is the prime edible oil by culture. The earliest reference to argemone oil poisoning was made by Lyon, who reported four cases of poisoning in Calcutta in 1877 from the use of this oil in food. Since then, epidemic dropsy has been reported from Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Assam, J&K, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Delhi and Maharashtra, mainly due to consumption of food cooked in argemone oil mixed with mustard oil or occasionally by body massage with contaminated oil. The epidemic in 1998 at New Delhi, India is the largest so far, in which over 60 persons lost