First lines of the practice of physic (Volume 2).

  • William Cullen
Date:
1805
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First lines of the practice of physic (Volume 2). 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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    arise from one and the same cause ; that is, from an imbe- cility, loss of tone, and weaker action in the muscular fi- bres of the stomach : and I conclude, therefore, that this imbecility may be considered as the proximate cause of the disease I am to treat of under the name of Dyspepsia. 1194.] The imbecility of the stomach, and the conse- quent symptoms, (1190.) may, however, frequently de- pend upon some organic affection of the stomach itself, as tumor, ulcer, or schirrosity ; or upon some affection of other parts of the body communicated to the stomach, as in gout, amenorrhcea, and some others. In all these cases, however, the dyspeptic symptoms are to be considered as secondary or sympathic affections, to be cured only by curing the primary disease. Such secondary and sympathic cases cannot, indeed, be treated of here : but as I presume that the imbecility of the stomach may often take place without either any organic affection of this part, or any more primary affection in any other part of the body ; so I suppose and expect it will appear, from the consideration of the remote causes, that the dyspepsia may be often an idiopathic affection, and that it is therefore properly taken into the system of methodical Nosology, and becomes the subject of our consideration here. 1195.] There can be little doubt, that in most cases, the weaker action of the muscular fibres of the stomach, is the most frequent and chief cause of the symptoms men- tioned in (1190.) but I dare not maintain it to be the only cause of idiopathic dyspepsia. There is, pretty certainly, a peculiar fluid in the stomach of animals, or at least a pe- culiar quality in the fluids, that Ave know to be there, up- on which the solution of the aliments taken into the stomach chiefly depends : and it is at the same time probable, that the peculiar quality of the dissolving or digesting fluids may be variously changed, or that their quantity may be, upon occasion, diminished. It is therefore sufficiently probable, that a change in the quality or quantity of these fluids may produce a considerable difference in the pheno- mena of digestion, and particularly may give occasion to many of the morbid appearances mentioned in 1190. 1196.] This seems to be very well founded, and points out another proximate causes of dyspepsia beside that we have already assigned: but, notwithstanding this, as the peculiar nature of the digestive fluid, the changes which it may undergo, or the causes by which it may be changed,
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