26 PHYSIC 



deduce from its teaching some indications for the guidance 

 of those who seek to minister to its relief or to effect its 

 removal. 



Being, as we have said, in most cases a physiological 

 expression by the local nervature, epigastric, of a presence 

 of a disturbing influence or influences, generally material, 

 in the stomach, we must look upon the sensation of sick- 

 ness as a call to both the voluntary and involuntary local 

 machinery, nervous and muscular, to ''work in unison" 

 for the expulsion or removal of the peccant influence or 

 influences, and to maintain that local feeling of comfort 

 which should at all times prevail in well-disciplined diges- 

 tive systems and during physiologically sound gastro- 

 hepatic work and operations. 



Should the offending influence on which the sensation 

 of sickness is dependent be sufficiently powerful to rouse 

 the gastric nervature into supernormal activity, the pheno- 

 mena of anti-peristalsis may be at once initiated and the 

 offending presence ejected without the interference of the 

 systemic neuro-musculature ; such an occurrence, however, 

 in the conscious condition, cannot take place without 

 arousing the latter and bringing into play the combined 

 neuro-muscular machinery of both systems. 



In degrees of the more pronounced sensation of sick- 

 ness, the neuro-muscular storm thus initiated may persist 

 for an indefinite period, to the great discomfort, and some- 

 times danger, of its subject in such cases it becomes a 

 matter of supreme importance to have recourse to what- 

 ever means will assist in stilling "the troubled waters" 

 and securing the wonted physiological calm. In the 

 severest forms of sickness, induced by improper or 

 poisonous ingesta, the disturbance engendered may ter- 

 minate in death from shock and collapse, or be prolonged 

 into local and general pathological conditions of a tem- 

 porary or permanent character, which may tax the highest 

 intelligence and the best resources of art and science. 



Besides these varieties of locally induced sensations of 

 sickness, some of an entirely reflex and distal character 

 take place when pathological conditions or profound 

 functional disturbances ensue in various parts and organs 

 throughout the system, such as in occlusion of the bowel, 



