SPASMODIC AFFECTIONS. 495 



paroxysm, and is the most common form ; but its paroxysms 

 are considerably varied in different persons, and even in the 

 same person at different times. It differs by having more or 

 fewer of the circumstances above mentioned ; by these circum- 

 stances being more or less violent ; and by the different dur- 

 ation of the whole fit. 



Before the fit, there is sometimes a sudden and unusually 

 large flow of limpid urine. At the coming on of the fit, the 

 stomach is sometimes affected with vomiting, the lungs with 

 considerable difficulty of breathing, and the heart with palpita- 

 tions. During the fit, the whole of the belly, and particularly 

 the navel is drawn strongly inwards ; the sphincter ani is some- 

 times so firmly constricted as not to admit of a small glyster- 

 pipe, and there is at the same time an entire suppression of 

 urine. Such fits are, from time to time, ready to recur ; and 

 during the intervals the patients are liable to involuntary mo- 

 tions, to fits of laughing and crying, with sudden transitions 

 from the one to the other ; while sometimes false imaginations, 

 and some degree of delirium, also occur. 



MDXVII. These affections have been supposed peculiar to . 

 the female sex, and indeed they most commonly appear in fe- j| 

 males ; but they sometimes, though rarely, attack also the 

 male sex, never, however, that I have observed, in the same ex- 

 quisite degree. 



In the female sex, the disease occurs especially from the 

 age of puberty to that of thirty-five years ; " and especial- 

 ly in that interval which, when on the subject of hae- 

 morrhagy, I alleged to be the plethoric period of the ani- \ 

 mal economy ;" and though it does sometimes, yet it very 

 seldom appears before the former, or after the latter of these 

 periods. 



At all ages, the time at which it most readily occurs is that 

 of the menstrual period. 



The disease more especially affects the females of the most 

 exquisitely sanguine and plethoric habits ; and frequently af- 

 fects those of the most robust and masculine constitutions. 

 kit affects the barren more than the breeding women, and 

 Before frequently young widows. 



