Remarks on dyspepsia. Read to the Lexington Medical Society, Dec. 12, 1834.

  • Yandell, Lunsford P. (Lunsford Pitts), 1805-1878.
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on dyspepsia. Read to the Lexington Medical Society, Dec. 12, 1834. 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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    obliged to abstain from it. But there is a larger class whose health is reached so insidiously and slowly by this narcotic, that they overlook it as the can?*.' of their indisposition. In these, it produces occasional nausea, headache, uneasiness and a sense of sinking about the scrobirulm cordis, thirst, nervousness, and constipation: or the symptoms may be more aggravated, and dyspepsia in ils most distressing form may ensue. The writer knew a gentleman in whom dyspepsia, and hypochondriasis, of the highest grade, were made worse by the use of tobacco, if they were not brought on by it. The individual was of studious and sedentary habits, careful in diet, and of a regular mode of life. He swallowed his saliva, con- taining the active properties of the weed. His head was painfully affected, appetite variable, generally deficient, bowels costive, and his mind so much oppressed, that he enter- tained the most awful apprehensions of losing his reason. In his Materia Medica, Culien relates a case evincing the deleterious influence of this narcotic. J have found, says he, all the symptoms of dyspepsia produced by snuffing, and particularly pains of the stomach occurring every day. The dependence of these upon the use of snuff became very evi- dent from hence, that upon an accidental interruption of snuffing for some days these pains did not occur; but upon a return to snuffing the pains also recurred; and this alterna- tion of pains of the stomach and of snuffing having occurred again, the snuff was entirely laid aside, and the pains did not occur for many months afterwards, nor, so far as 1 know, for the rest of life.* The earlier writers who notice tobacco, held, very correct- ly, that its use should not extend beyond the pharmacopoeia. As a medicine, it was extolled, but they deprecated the a- buse of it in the most earnest manner. Burton, in his pecu- liar style, thus denounces it. Tobacco, divine, rare, super- excellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all their panaceas, potable gold, and philosophers stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases. A good vomit, I confess, a vertuous herb, if it *M»t M«d vol. h, p 9T5.