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

  • Gully, James Manby, 1808-1883.
Date:
[1847?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    to the symj^toins in tlie organ itself; they may be few or many, so far as the sensation is concerned, according to the organic connection between it and the brain. But m diseased sensations, secretions, and movements, there is always a sutheient number of symptoms to determine the existence of indigestion, mucous or nervous. Which of these kinds of disorder it is, may be in great measure ascertained by reference to the above detail of signs, where I have marked the head under which each symptom comes. But it may be profitable to jdace the distinction in a more concentrated form under the eye of the reader ; the rather, as it has an important bearing on the treatment of each. Around, and especially underneath the stomach, there is a thickly-meshed network of nerves of organic life {see frontispiece engraving), from which, after infinite subdivi- sions, myriads of twigs proceed into the substance of the stomach, and endue its inner or mucous membrane with organic sensibility and secretorial ])Ower. Intertwined with this network are nerves from the spinal cord and brain, whose office is suj)posed to be the conveyance of sympathy and animal sensation to and from those organs and the stomach ; the quantity of these nerves of commu- nication varies in individuals. Now, by nervous indigestion I mean those symptoms which indicate irritation of the nervous network about the stomach ; and by mucous indi- gestion, those which point at the lining membrane of the stomach as the seat of the mischief. Such a distinction unquestionably exists, and influences the treatment and the result; but, as may be readily conceived, where in one case the roots of the nerves, in the other the extremities, are iKunts of disorder, one ofttimes runs into the other, and each at all times more or less affects the other, the nervous irritation occasionally disordering the mucous surface, and the latter, when exasperated, involving the whole plexus of nerves, and, by the junction, exciting a most formidable si)ecies of dyspepsia. Such is the organic distinction; the functional one will be best expressed in the following parallel table ;— NERVOUS DYSREPSIA, MUCOUS DYSREPSIA, Occurs in persons of vivid nervous Occurs in persons of slow animal system; large heads and active sensations, medium heads, steady habits ; in women and youth. minds ; in middle age.