328 PRACTICE OF PHYSIC. 



practitioners very generally observe, that astringents are not 

 only ineffectual, but very hurtful in dysentery ; and therefore 

 we assert, that the marking of astringents as equally adapted to 

 both diseases, is a pernicious error. M. M. 



MLXXXVII. Whether an acrid matter be the original 

 cause of this disease, may be uncertain ; but from the indigestion 

 and the stagnation of fluids in the stomach which attend the 

 disease, it may be presumed that some acrid matters are con- 

 stantly present in the stomach and intestines, and therefore that 

 demulcents may be always usefully employed. At the same 

 time, from this consideration, that mild oily matters thrown into 

 the intestines in considerable quantity always prove laxative, I 

 am of opinion that the oleaginous demulcents are the most use- 

 ful. 



MLXXXVII I. As this disease is so often of an inflamma- 

 tory or of a putrid nature, it is evident that the diet employed 

 in it should be vegetable and acescent. Milk in its entire state 

 is of doubtful quality in many cases ; but some portion of the 

 cream is often allowable, and whey is always proper. 



In the first stages of the disease, the sweet and subacid fruits 

 are allowable and even proper. It is in the more advanced 

 stages only that any morbid acidity seems to prevail in the 

 stomach, and to require some reserve in the use of acescents. 

 At the beginning of the disease, absorbents seem to be super- 

 fluous ; and by their astringent and septic powers they may be 

 hurtful. 



MLXXXIX. When this disease is complicated with an 

 intermittent fever, and is protracted from that circumstance 

 chiefly, it is to be treated as an intermittent, by administering 

 the Peruvian bark, which, however, in the earlier periods of the 

 disease, is hardly to be admitted. 



" When dysentery is of its proper nature, that is, depending 

 chiefly on a constriction of the colon, and frequently in its be- 

 ginning attended with some phlogistic diathesis, the use of the 

 bark appears to me to be absolutely pernicious. In the begin- 

 ning of dysentery we judge the bark to be improper, but in the 

 advanced stage, when some symptoms of putrescency appear, or 

 when the disease has changed in some measure into the state of 

 diarrhoea, the bark may possibly be employed with advan- 



