Constipation : its theory & cure embracing the physiology of digestion and the injuries inflicted by the employment of purgatives / by John Epps.

  • Epps, John, 1805-1869.
Date:
[1854]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Constipation : its theory & cure embracing the physiology of digestion and the injuries inflicted by the employment of purgatives / by John Epps. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    56/486 (page 28)
    CHAP. III. introduced into the stomach in a state unfit for the next series of changes connected with the process of Digestion, and thus becomes instead of a healthful stimulus to the stomach, a matter productive of injury, an injury manifesting itself in mdigestion. i. The fact, of the intertwining plaited arrangement of the lining membranes of the gullet by wliich they become closely applied and folded to each other, demonstrates that any hard, unchewed portions of ^^'^^ ''f food, carried down into and through the eullet, must swallowing ' t3 S ' unchewed tend, by inducinsr an unnatural condition of the food. • ^n • ' gullet itself, to injure these plaited membranes, and thus become, by frequent repetition, the fomidation of many of those pains in the centre of the back, and of the chest, which torment many dyspeptics: and further may give origin, in persons of an unhealthy (cachectic) habit of body, to that thickening of the iinmg membrane of the gullet, Avhich ends not mi- frequently, in permanent difficulty of swallowing, (dysphagia, Svq dus, bad, <payu>, phage, to eat,) which, when proceeding to its ultimate, ]3roduces death by inanition, the passage of the gullet becoming closed. j. This fact, the folded structure of the Hning mem- brane of the gullet, demonstrates the quackery and the injuriousness of the common surgical practice of Absurdity of attempting to force down the gullet bodies, fish bones .pttlicidng for instance, which have been mcautiously swallowed, down tilr'' This practice exhibits a lamentable ignorance both of throat. physiology and of the anatomical structure of the o-uUet. Physiological pathology ought to have taught surgeons that a foreign body retained mduces a perpetually recurring spasmodic contraction of the gullet, wliich contraction they, in attempting to force tiie body down the gullet, must overcome by the force