Dropsy

Dropsy — the older English name for the swelling caused by abnormal fluid retention — appears once in scripture, as the affliction of a man placed in front of Jesus on a sabbath.

The man before him

The scene is set at a meal in the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees, where Jesus has been invited and is being watched. Into that watching attention is brought a sufferer whose condition the narrator names plainly: "And look, there was before him a certain man who had the dropsy" (Lu 14:2). The verse fixes the patient's location ("before him") and his diagnosis in a single sentence, setting up the sabbath-healing question that follows.