Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/214

 pasty, sodden look, occasionally, however, presenting nothing uncommon, has very rarely the red tip and margin, indicative of mucous inflammation. It is true that leeches, generally, give temporary relief, but they appear to do so in the same manner in which they alleviate pains of a spasmodic or neuralgic character. Purgatives, followed by subnitrate of bismuth, and, occasionally, by acetate of morphia, seldom fail to cure the disorder for a time; but it returns unless the cause be removed, which is, unquestionably, the use of indigestible irritating articles of food. The triple use of potatoes, tea, and gin, will reduce the hardiest stomach to the painful condition we speak of. The great frequency of the disorder in Bristol, evidently results from the poverty of the people, and its relation with alimentary causes.

Omitting the febrile exanthemata, together with infantile remit tents, and diseases connected with dentition, which constitute so large a proportion of medical cases in all parts of the kingdom, we find, among the most frequent of our patients, females labouring under some form or other of hysteria, considering this term as generic for all those neurotic, atonic, anomalous ailments, to which females are so obnoxious, and which are all less or more related with catamenial deficiencies and disturbances. To attempt to specify them is vain; no cases preserve so much individuality, united with so much family resemblance. Numerous as they seem to us, we by no means imagine that they are eminently so; for their very nature and causation intimate that they must be prevalent wherever a great variety of moral stimulants are in operation, as, for instance, in a crowded population.