Diseases of the stomach.

  • Reeves, C. E. (Charles Evans), 1828-1880.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseases of the stomach. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    the obstruction at tlie lower part of the duodenum, and enables both it and the overloaded stomach to free themselves ; the constant demand for nourish- ment, to supply the loss by the wear of the body, assists materially in lessening the amount of the accumulation. Itis in thismanner thatnature, ever kind and beneficent, points out the mode in which a cure should be affected; but the warnings which she gives are constantly neglected. Persons when their appetite flags, from a fear, that if one or two meals are omitted they may sink from starvation, continue to tempt the stomach—if it refuses one kind of food,—with another, until it, at last, rebels, or chronic inflanmiation is excited. It is true that people, at present do not have recourse to the same measui-es which the Greeks and Romans adopted to enable them to enjoy days of feasting ; namely :—as soon as they felt their stomachs oppressed by the food they were eating, have recourse to vomitives, but they do that which is qu.ite, if not more reprehensible, in the daily use of cathartic pills or potions to keep the stomach fi-ee, to enable them to enjoy the daily luxxuy of a good dinner. A torpid state of the colon is induced which can only be overcome by the constant use of the most powerful drastic purgatives. Natm-e, it is quite certain, no more intended that people should be constantly taking medicine to rcgidate their bowels, than, that because she has fui-nished them with hands, they should walk on all fours.