386 PRACTICE OF PHYSIC. 



regularly increased motions ; and such I take to be those uneasy 

 gnawings which are named morsus ventriculi, and whose nature 

 appears from their often ending in spasmodic gastrodynia. With 

 this morsus ventriculi is commonly combined an appetite or 

 craving for food, and it is relieved by the taking in of food. 

 This sort of appetite is in some measure like the natural ap- 

 petite, depending upon an increased action, but from another 

 cause, that is, a convulsive action arising from atonia. 



" Before I quit the species chlorotica, I must observe, that 

 there is another, to be entitled Z>. gravidarum, but I pass it 

 over, because it is hardly the object of practice. 



" But I must observe, that besides the proper chlorotica 

 there is a, 



" D. catamenialis ; it appears, that the ordinary flow of 

 the menstrual discharge, retarded or totally suppressed, affects 

 the stomach, and disposes it to be affected more readily with 

 spasm. 



"And now having thus pointed out the connexion of the 

 stomach with the uterus in the Dyspepsia hysterica, chloro- 

 tica, and catamenialis, it will be obvious how the dyspepsia 

 has been so often confounded with hysteria, and considered as 

 a part of the hysteric disease. Attending at the same time to 

 the common confusion of hysteric and hypochondriac affections, 

 we will perceive why dyspepsia has been confounded with both, 

 and the confused mass has received the general appellation of 

 Nervous Diseases, a term speciously founded, but the most 

 loose and vague ever introduced, and truly an asylum ignoran- 

 tice. I will not say what authors have increased the confusion, 

 or criticise them here ; but I know none that have avoided the too 

 general use of the term ; and that to avoid confusion and great 

 inaccuracy in practice, it is absolutely necessary to study dys- 

 pepsia, to distinguish the idiopathic from the sympathic, and 

 the different cases of the last from each other. We go on to 

 do so, and put next the, 



" D. hcemorrhoidalis. When the flux has become habi- 

 tual, it becomes a part of the balance of the system, and the 

 atony of the hsemorrhoidal vessels may, in the same manner as 

 that of the vessels of the uterus (in D. chlorotica), be com- 

 municated to the stomach. 



