Clinical lectures on subjects connected with medicine and surgery / by various German authors.
- Date:
- 1894
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Clinical lectures on subjects connected with medicine and surgery / by various German authors. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.
80/416 page 72
![living human subject were restricted, it is true, to the large intes- tine, the inflation of which was carried out from the rectum (after the inflation the sphincters were kept open by means of a stout tube); since, however, in meteorism, and indeed in the majority of cases, the gas development is in the large intestine, these experi- ments might be expected to produce reliable results. At any rate they explain how it is that once the conditions for gas production are afforded, the great distension of the colon is so persistent and yields so gradually. Especially troublesome to the patient are the so-called displaced inflations, felt in the back under the right or left shoulder-blade; they correspond to collections of gas in the flexures of the colon, which latter represent ob- stacles to the downward passage of the gases. Disproportionately intense as are the sufferings occasioned by the gaseous accumulation, the relief afforded by the collapse of the inflation is just as great. For hours the sufferer from intestinal neurasthesia keeps on hoping for such a displaced inflation to go down; its final collapse is greeted with intense joy, for then only does the mind become clear and the patient capable once more of intellectual exertion. The obstinate consti]jation which so generally accompanies intestinal neurasthenia naturally favours, to an extraordinary extent, the development of gas, and is the more intractable because the usual purgatives, even the mildest, are either not tolerated or act very unequally, and thereby produce new troubles, so that the patients soon hold all cathartics in disgust. As regards the Genital Anomalies which come under observation as symptoms of neurasthenia, they must be divided into those which are to be looked upon as causes and as effects respectively of the neurasthenia. As sole or partial cause, the masturbational hyper-stimulation and debilitation of genital excitability comes into play in the male as in the female sex, with this difference, that the disturbances of intellectual working-power become much more prominent among males on account of the duties incumbent upon them, while women seem to be affected rather in disposition, &c. Impotence of the male, whether complete or incomplete, is a frequent cause of neurasthenic weakness and melancholic depression. Apart from the few who, as old bachelors, do not trouble themselves about their impotence on account of their](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21293855_0080.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
