Ourselves, our food, and our physic / by Benjamin Ridge.

  • Ridge, Benjamin
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ourselves, our food, and our physic / by Benjamin Ridge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    98/220 (page 86)
    Never forget that the vital gases are generated in those bowels Avhich all lovers of aperients most mercilessly purge away. Persons who are supposed to suffer from what are called heart-diseases, I have often fomid to havo nothing the matter with the heart at all: they want simply the stomach and upper works attended to. Gravel and Stone arise from an excess of acid in the system ; and full doses of soda when the tongue is furred or loaded will often dissolve the base of these concretions (Nos. 3 and 4). Colics generally arise from flatulence distending the calibre of the gut, or from emptiness of the large intestine; and many of these most serious disorders originate from the natural two-thirds stuffing being constantly removed. In jijtnkrs’ colic, the transverse arch of the large gut is almost always deranged ; its calibre being distended and contracted, alternately ; the contents, hardened sometimes like a stone, have a difficulty to pass the contracted parts, hence the intense pain : castor oil is one of the most valuable remedies for this state. hlany women suffer with large pendulous abdomens, from the habitual use of aperients ; these medicines having emptied the tube of solid matter, leave yet enough fascal deposit to generate a vast amount of gas, which distends its calibre. The consequence of this is, tliat no solid or consistent fpeces can aggregate ; all the neighbouring pai’ts become enlarged ; a fatty disease ensues; the abdominal walls become jiendu- lous, and in such states, large livera, dro])sies, timiours, and other evils arc suggested to bo jirescut during life; but after death their livers are discovered to be small, with some inches of fat in the abdominal walls, and quantities of fluid between them and the intestines, and these latter are foimd to lie distended with wuud enough to fill a balloon. Persons of sedentary habits who eat little, such as dressmakers and sempstresses, suffer from costiveness, which is in fact their salvation. Nature hero retaining the scanty fasces in the colon to generate vital gases : but this is quite sufficient to provoke the usual work of jiurging, or the mse of clysters. These cases should first bo treated by good fresh air and diet, and then the bowels will act for themselves. Persons who suffer from Asthma often live long; some