The water cure in chronic disease : an exposition of the causes, progress and terminations of various chronic diseases of the digestive organs, lungs, nerves, limbs and skin : and of their treatment by water, and other hygienic means / by James Manby Gully.

James Manby Gully

Date:: 1856

Credit: The water cure in chronic disease : an exposition of the causes, progress and terminations of various chronic diseases of the digestive organs, lungs, nerves, limbs and skin : and of their treatment by water, and other hygienic means / by James Manby Gully. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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$sieall_v impossible that it should: and next, that neither the liver can pour out more bile than usual, nor the diges- tive mucous membrane pour out more mucus than usual, ■^vithout more blood tliau usual bein<^ present, whence to derive those secretions. Accordingly, after the double stimulation of the calomel and the black draught perpe- trated on the membrane of the stomach, there can be no ditficulty in imagining the augmentation of blood in it. Ye/ the disorder to be removed consists essentially in an increase of blood in that very membrane! Yet, again, calomel and black draught do certainly relieve a fit of acute indigestion ! Ho\^' is this ? It is thus. It is found by long experience that a free flow of bile and mucus from the digestive canal and liver is the kind of crisis which Nature chooses in order to relieve the upper organs of digestion. Autumnal diarrhoea is a never-failing instance of this. And as it is certain that, in acute dyspepsia, those upper organs are disordered, (however uncertain or erroneous may be the precise notions of the disorder,) the attempt is made to imitate the natural relief by expediting it. An enormous quantity of blood is attracted to the stomach directly, and to the liver in- directly ; and the vessels containing it relieve themselves by forcing out the bile and mucus in extraordinary quan- tities. A forced, false, and imperfect crisis is thus pro- duced, and all seems cpiiet again. Seems quiet again ; for it is impossible that such un- natural and vehement stimulation can be applied to the organic nerves of the mucous membrane without exhaust- ing tlieir energy : it is the law of all living bodies ; there- fore, although the gorged vessels have relieved themselves by tlieir extraordinary secretions, tlie nerves, by whose energy they should recover their licalthy caUbre, fail to afford such energy. In this state of things, nothing pre- vents the accumulation again of blood in the same vessels -. the very first meal after the physic may do tiiis, or it may be a day or two of feeding, or a f(^w days of mental or pliysical exertion-—for these, too, are causes of acute dys]jej)sia. But whatever tlio exciting cause, tliis second aecumuhition takes place still more readily tlian the first, the organic power of the part having been weakened; and lo! anotiier fit of indigestion, and the same calomel and black draught as before. But this time it is not quite so acute in character as$