Purging

“ I believed the weak and low pulse which I had observed in this fever, to be the effect of debility from a depressed state of the system, but the unsuccessful issue of purging, and even of a spontaneous diarrhœa, in a patient of Dr. Hutchinson, had led me not only to doubt of, but to dread its effects. My fears from this evacuation were confirmed, by the communications I had received from Dr. Stevens. I had been accustomed to raising a weak and low pulse in pneumony and apoplexy, by means of blood-letting, but I had attended less to the effects of purging in producing this change in the pulse. ”

“ If the blood abounds not in such a quantity as may stir up nature to expel it, its purging must necessarily be deferred till there be enough. And if the blood be thick, 198the passage stopped, and the expulsive faculty weak, the menses must needs be out of order, and the purging of them retarded.
For the cure of this, if the quantity of blood be small, let her use a larger diet, and very little exercise. If the blood be thick and foul, let it be made thin, and the humours mixed therewith be evacuated. It is good to purge after the menses have done flowing, and to use calamint ”

“ While the pain lessens or ceases as the abdominal affection advances, the purging, on the other hand, continues, often it increases. Purging, succeeding to constipation and to pain, and remaining after the subsidence of the pain, affords an infallible indication of abdominal disease. ”

“ THAT Purging may be also practised with Success, the Strength of the Patient is carefully to be consulted, for where the Spirits are low, or deficient, it may not only prove unsafe, but fatal; and where the Bowels are extreamly stimulated by the Cathartick, and the Humours greatly put into Fusion by its rarifying Qualities, they will be apt to pass off in too large a Profusion. ”

“ When the nausea arises from plethora, he directs bleeding; and when the plethora is connected with vitiated humours, he recommends both bleeding and purging. When bilious or melancholic humours occasion the nausea, he recommends dilution at first by giving tepid water or the like, and then evacuations of them by purging or emetics. When the humour is an acrid or sweet phlegm, he recommends oxymel, radishes, and the like. When a serous and thin humour is impacted in the stomach, he evacuates it by procuring vomiting with tepid water or ptisan. ”

“ Vomiting and purging have to be treated according to the conditions in the individual case and no rule can be followed. As the peripheral vessels are dilated the body temperature is usually subnormal. ”

“ Even where the purging is thin and watery, it ought not to be checked too suddenly, as it often proves critical, especially when the child has caught cold, or an eruption on the skin has disappeared. Sometimes an evacuation of this kind succeeds a humid state 553of the atmosphere, in which case it may also prove of advantage, by carrying off a quantity of watery humours, which would otherwise tend to relax the habit. ”

“ But should the Vomiting solely be excessive, without any Purging, the Number of the emollient Glysters with Oil and the Yolk of an Egg must be increased; and the Patient should be placed in a warm Bath.
§ 553. Purges frequently repeated, without just and necessary Indications, are attended with much the same ill Effects as frequent Bleedings. They destroy the Digestions; the Stomach no longer, or very languidly, exerts its Functions; the Intestines prove inactive; the Patient becomes liable to very severe Cholics; the Plight of the Body, deprived of its salutary Nutrition, falls off ”

“ We may learn from these observations, the great impropriety of those Egyptian laws which oblige physicians to adopt, in all cases, the prescriptions which had been collected, and approved of, by the physicians of former ages. Every change in the customs of civilized nations, produces a change in their diseases, which calls for a change in their remedies. What havoc would plentiful bleeding, purging, and small beer, formerly used with so much success by Dr. Sydenham in the cure of fevers, now make upon the enfeebled citizens of London! ”

“ The Stomach and Bowels are emptied either by Vomiting, or by Stools, the latter Discharge being much more natural than the first, which is not effected without a violent Motion, and one indeed to which Nature is repugnant. Nevertheless, there are some Cases, which really require this artificial Vomiting; but these excepted (some of which I have already pointed out) we should rather prefer those Remedies, which empty the Belly by Stool.
§ 548. The Signs, which indicate a Necessity for Purging, are, 1, a disagreeable Tast or Savour of the Mouth in a Morning, and especially a bitter Tast ”

“ The upper part of the body is covered with frequent spots and tumours, the redness gradually changes to black, the skin is thickened, and covered with hard asperities like scales; the body wastes, but the face, legs, and feet swell; and when the disease is protracted, the fingers and toes become buried in the swelling, and a slight fever comes on, which finishes the patient’s sufferings. Such is his description of the disease. His treatment consists in bleeding at the commencement, abstinence, then supporting the strength, purging, exercise, sudorifics, and friction. ”

“ They carry off a Heap of Matter that may have been long amassed and corrupted in the Body; which, if not discharged, might have produced some Distemper; and, far from weakening the Body, such Purgings as these render it more strong, light and active. ”

“ One day, when suffering so intensely as to need the assistance of her sisters in religion, she thought of the souls in Purgatory, and, to temper the heat of their flames, she offered to God the burning heat of her fever. At that moment, being rapt in ecstasy, she was conducted in spirit into the place of expiation, where she saw the flames and braziers in which the souls are purified in great torture. ”

“ Besides, God bridles His rigor in this world; but, in the next, He lets the reins loose and punishes almost equally to the desert. And, since those souls have preferred creatures before their Creator, He seems to be put upon a necessity of punishing them beyond the ordinary strength of creatures; and hence it is that the fire of Purgatory burns more, torments and inflicts more, than all the creatures of this life are able to do. But is it really true that the least pain in Purgatory exceeds the greatest here upon earth? ”

“ Parker, and break up the dead, or for preference the living body with the scalpel, you always find the footmarks—the little trail of ruin or disorder left by madness or disease or drink or any other similar pest. But the difficulty is to trace them back, merely by observing the surface symptoms—the hysteria, crime, religion, fear, shyness, conscience, or whatever it may be; just as you observe a theft or a murder and look for the footsteps of the criminal, so I observe a fit of hysterics or an outburst of piety and hunt for the little mechanical irritation which has produced it. ”

“ To healthy individuals, whose feces are indurated, drastic purges are exceedingly detrimental; because their disposition to Costiveness (which see) , is the best proof of their vigorous habit. 5. If such remedies become necessary, they should be given in the morning, when the first passages are empty; in diseases, during the intermission of paroxysms. Lastly, all nourishment, but particularly solid food, must be withheld previously to the operation of the medicine; nor should the patient be allowed much drink, till the purgative actually begin to produce its effect. ”

“ She ate too many black-beetles in the kitchen and died vomiting shreds of her shard-torn stomach. He often thought of that cat. One might die like that oneself, coughing up one’s vitals.
Not that one eats many black-beetles, of course. But there is always putrid fish. The effects are not so very different. Wretched moron! he thought, looking at the coffin. It had been a disgusting sort of death. Pains, vomiting, collapse, coma, then the coffin—and now the busy ferments of putrefaction and the worms. ”

“ Could these poor souls leave the fire of Purgatory for the most frightful earthly fire they would, as it were, take it for a pleasure- garden; they would find a fifty years' stay in the hottest earthly fire more endurable than an hour's stay in the fire of Purgatory. Our terrestrial fire was not created by God to torment men, but rather to benefit them; but the fire of Purgatory was created by God for no other purpose than to be an instrument of His justice ”

“ She saw there souls which suffered cruelly, but angels visited and assisted them in their sufferings.
Purgatory, she said, is divided into three distinct parts, which are as the three large provinces of that kingdom of suffering. They are situated the one beneath the other, and occupied by souls of different orders. These souls are buried more deeply in proportion as they are more defiled and farther removed from the time of their deliverance.
The lowest region is filled with a fierce fire, but which is not dark like that of Hell; it is a vast burning sea, throwing forth immense flames. ”

“ Still, there is this difference—oh! blessed be God, there is this difference, and it is all we could ask: in hell, the damned blaspheme their Master with the demons that torment them; in Purgatory, the holy souls love their God with the angelic choirs who await their entrance to the land of bliss. If the souls of the damned could love, hell would cease to be hell; if the souls of the blessed ones in prison could cease to love, Purgatory would be worse to them than a thousand such hells. ”

“ PURGATORY (Late Lat. purgatorium, from purgare, to purge) , according to Roman Catholic faith, a state of suffering after death in which the souls of those who die in venial sin, and of those who still owe some debt of temporal punishment for mortal sin, are rendered fit to enter heaven. It is believed that such souls continue to be members of the Church of Christ; that they are helped by the suffrage’s of the living—that is, by prayers, alms and other good works, and more especially by the sacrifice of the Mass ”

“ Only to learn when the damage was already done that the actions of men, for good or evil, made a difference. They mattered! The bile rose in his throat, nearly choking him. For now the mindless cruelty of life. . .was slowly turning back upon him. That same unyielding blade, the heartless razor that he had served and become, was proving to be double-edged.
But fear and a momentary helplessness were not to be confused with impotent despair. The Lord Purceville was far from defeated. ”

“ But some persons turn in anger from the thought of Purgatory, as if it were not to be endured, that after trying all our lives long to serve God, we should accomplish the tremendous feat of a good death, only to pass from the agonies of the death-bed into fire—long, keen, searching, triumphant, incomparable fire. ”

“ The swelling gradually extends around it, sometimes deep into the muscles. The surface is hard and tense, but often when the finger is firmly pressed upon it and withdrawn a depression is left. In severe cases chills occur, the pulse is weak and quick, the breathing hurried, the bowels constipated and the urine scanty and highly colored. There is considerable thirst, but no appetite. A brisk purge is the first step in treating. Follow the purge with tincture of chloride of iron, 4 teaspoonfuls in a pint of water. ”

“ Death in a scented garden, the tokens of the plague on a fair young breast, the gray flag of fear in the face of one who reels into the arms of Destruction, the sexton scrambling in the lap of spring, folding his sleek wings, unfolding them to ape the buzz of bees, passing over sweet clover tops to the putrid flesh that summons him—these things must be and will be to the end. ”

“ We are very far from wishing to hinder people from thinking less of its sufferings—nay, rather their very intenseness and severity only pleads our case more strongly. All that has been revealed to the Saints, all that has been made known to us by the Church or tradition, proclaims the same fact. Suffering, intense, unearthly anguish, is the portion of those most blessed souls; and it has been said that the pains of Purgatory only differ in duration from those of hell. ”

“ The soul has created its own torment, but in Purgatory the fires die out because they deal with the anima separata, never with the senses. In each case the nature of the fire, which may not be material and is exercised on spirits, must remain mysterious to us. ”

“ Terror seized him, an icy coldness ran through his veins and riveted him to the spot like a lifeless statue. Then one of the dead brothers addressed him with terrible reproaches. " Unfortunate creature," said he, "why didst thou not distribute the alms which were destined to give relief to the souls of thy departed brethren? Why hast thou deprived us of that assistance amid the torments of Purgatory? Receive, from this moment, the punishment of thy avarice; another and more terrible chastisement is reserved for thee, when, after three days, thou shall appear before thy God." ”

“ That which is the most remarkable in this example, and which should most attract our attention, is that a soul from Purgatory, after having experienced the most excruciating torments, prefers that state of suffering to the life of this world; and the reason which he gives for this preference is, that in this mortal life we are exposed to the danger of being lost and incurring eternal damnation. ”

“ He knelt down to pray by the corpse, then suddenly rising, with a serene countenance he said, " 'Such a death is more worthy of our envy than of our tears; this soul is condemned to Purgatory, but only for twenty four hours. Let us endeavour to shorten this time by the fervour of our prayers ."
Enough has been said on the duration of the pains. We see that they may be prolonged to an appalling degree; even the shortest, if we consider their severity, are long. Let us endeavour to shorten them for others and to mitigate them for ourselves, or better still to prevent them altogether. ”