Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Lectures on the theory and practice of physic (Volume 1). Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![ment of the warm douche or spout-bath — preferably to applying these means to the limbs themselves. This last practice has been followed by a metastasis to the bowels and renewal of all the urgent symptoms. At times, if the habit be full or decided symptoms of irritation be manifested at particular spots between the vertebra;, a few leeches, or cups to draw blood from these parts, will properly precede the employment of the other local means. As an agent of power over the muscular system, strychnia might be used with bene- fit in this stage of vegetable or West India colic, as it is in the similar one of painters' colic. LECTURE XXXV. DR. BELL. ]LEUS—AfTinity between ileus and colic—Symptoms of ileus — Causes—Anato- mical characters—Volvulus, or intussusception,—Invagination of intestine—How formed ; its varieties and termination—Diagnosis of intus-susception—Treat- ment—Preliminary inquiry into the existence of hernia—Localization of intus- susception—For this last, bloodletting, opium and tartar emetic, and enemata— Venesection generally called for in ileus—Blisters—Turpentine epithem—Dry cupping—Purgatives—Stimulants in last stage—Other remedies—cold—tobacco injection—Other narcotics externally and internally—Injections of linseed oil— Crude mercury in quantity—Operation of gastrotomy—its doubtful propriety and dangerous consequences. To a certain extent embarrassed by the nosological divisions of colic, and the ideas still entertained by some of there being several kinds of the disease, I have not been as free as I could wish to present the whole subject in a condensed shape. Early, however, in my penultimate lecture, I warned you not to look for any broad line of distinction between these alleged different kinds, but really only varie- ties, of one disease; differing not so much in the organ or organs impli- cated, as in the extent of the affection. I told you, that colic, beginning as nervous or flatulent, might soon become inflammatory ; and you will have seen that, between stercoraceous colic and bilious colic the traits are hardly differential, any more than between bilious colic and vegetable colic. There is a general community of causes of them all. In all, the stomach is irritable ; often ejects yellow or bilious matter; there is pain, spasm, flatus, and constipation. Fever and inflammation, more manifest in bilious colic, are not always wanting in stercoraceous and vegetable colic, or dry belly- ache ; and venesection, so commonly necessary in the former, cannot always be dispensed with in the latter. Opium and purgatives are the chief remedies in vegetable colic; they will often suffice for the cure of stercoraceous colic, and may be mainly relied on in some cases of bilious colic. I shall now advance a step farther, and give you a description of the most aggravated form of colic disease, the highest grade of the series of morbid phenomena the beginning of which was manifested in nervous or flatulent colic. This close affinity is distinctly affirmed by Dr. Abercrombie ; and I cannot better introduce the present subject to you, than by using](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21156955_0333.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
