Erasmus Darwin

“ In cases of strangulated hernia, could acupuncture, or puncture with a capillary trocar, be used with safety and advantage to give exit to air contained in the strangulated bowel? Or to stimulate it into action? It is not uncommon for bashful men to conceal their being afflicted with a small hernia, which is the cause of their death ”

“ In the rumination of horned cattle the retrograde motions of the œsophagus are visible to the eye, as they bring up the softened grass from their first stomach. The vegetable aliment in the first stomach of cattle, which have filled themselves too full of young clover, is liable to run into fermentation, and distend the stomach, so as to preclude its exit, and frequently to destroy the animal. To discharge this air the farmers frequently make an opening into the stomach of the animal with success. ”

“ In this pitiable disease, through the valve of the colon, through the pylorus, the cardia, and the pharinx, are ejected, first, the contents of the stomach and intestines, with the excrement and even clysters themselves; then the fluid from the lacteals, which is now poured into the intestines by their retrograde motions, is thrown up by the mouth; and, lastly, every fluid, which is absorbed by the other lymphatic branches, from the cellular membrane, the skin, the bladder, and all other cavities of the body ”

“ Which continue so long as they are excited to act, like the tremors of the hands of infirm people, so long as they endeavour to act. Now as these hollow muscles are perpetually stimulated, these retrograde actions do not cease as the tremors of the longitudinal muscles, which are generally excited only by volition. Whence the retrograde motions of hollow muscles depend on two circumstances, in which they differ from the longitudinal muscles, namely, their motions being associated in trains, and their being subject to perpetual stimulus. ”

“ As this noise never ceased a minute together for many hours in a day, it could not be produced by the uniform descent of water, and ascent of air through it, but there must have been alternately a retrograde movement of a part of the bowel, which must again have pushed up the water above the air; or which might raise a part of the bowel, in which the fluid was lodged, alternately above and below another portion of it; which might readily happen in some of the curvatures of the smaller intestines, the air in which might be moved backward and forward like the air-bubble in a glass-level. ”

“ It frequently occurs, when the stomach is empty, and in some cases continues many hours; but as the lymphatics of the stomach are not inverted at the same time, there is no supply of materials to be ejected ”

“ They may be distinguished from those fluids, which are the consequence of deficient absorption, by their not possessing the saline acrimony, which those fluids possess; which inflames the skin or other membranes on which they fall ”