The management of the bowels in health and disease, physiologically and homœopathically considered / by G. Calvert Holland.

  • Holland, G. C. (George Calvert), 1801-1865.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The management of the bowels in health and disease, physiologically and homœopathically considered / by G. Calvert Holland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    is the last attainment of the medical practitioner, and it is that which the public never fully appreciate. They cannot conceive that beneficial effects can take place without active means. We hesitate not to acknowledge, that a large amount of the good which we have effected in numerous cases is attributable to the comparative repose of the bowels induced by the treat- ment employed, or refraining from disturbing that which exists. The presence of this condition gives a greater degree of vital capital to act upon, and.so to direct or influence it as to render it instrumental in the removal of disease what- ever may be its locality. We will briefly glance at the functions of the digestive organs —explain the nature of their actions—the effects towards the production of which they co-operate, and then we shall have an opportunity of showing in what manner aperients act,— how they become so injurious to the powers of life. The stomach has two obvious endowments—that of secre- tion and of contractility. On the reception of food its nerves are excited, and their aroused activity is communicated to the millions of capillaries or small arteries with which it is richly supplied, in consequence of which a greatly increased quantity of blood is drawn to it, furnishing the secretion of the gastric juice according to existing temporary neces- sities. The contractility of the stomach changes the position of the food or its relations to the internal surface of the organ : as it undergoes the process of elaboration, it is carried forward in the direction of the aperature through which, in successive minute quantities, it enters the first of the bowels : and other portions are then brought under the imme- diate influence of the gastric juice, and after a similar modi- fication in their properties, are transmitted by the action of the stomach in the same direction, and this is repeated until the process of digestion is accomplished. It is scarcely necessary to remark, that it would be the A 2