578 PRACTICE OF PHYSIC. 



intestines ; but it appears, that the mixture of the animal fluids 

 which our aliments meet with in the alimentary canal, prevents 

 the same quantity of air from being detached from them that 

 would have been in their fermentation without such mixture ; 

 and it is probable that the same mixture contributes also to the 

 re-absorption of the air that had been before in some measure 

 detached. The extrication, therefore, of an unusual quantity 

 of air from the aliments, may, in certain circumstances, be such, 

 perhaps, as to produce a tympanites ; so that this disease may 

 depend upon a fault of the digestive fluids, whereby they are un- 

 fit to prevent the too copious extrication of air, and unfit also to 

 occasion that re-absorption of air which in sound persons com- 

 monly happens. An unusual quantity of air in the alimentary 

 canal, whether owing to the nature of the aliments taken in, or 

 to the fault of the digestive fluid, does certainly sometimes 

 take place ; and may possibly have, and in some measure cer- 

 tainly 'has, a share in producing certain flatulent disorders of the 

 alimentary canal ; but cannot be supposed to produce the tym- 

 panites, which often occurs when no previous disorder had ap- 

 peared in the system. Even in those cases of tympanites which 

 are attended at their beginning with flatulent disorders in the 

 whole of the alimentary canal, as we know that a firm tone of 

 the intestines both moderates the extrication of air, and contri- 

 butes to its re-absorption or ready expulsion, so the flatulent 

 symptoms which happen to appear at the coming on of a tym- 

 panites, are, in my opinion, to be referred to the loss of tone in 

 the muscular fibres of the intestines, rather than to any fault in 

 the digestive fluids. 



MDCXXXVI. These, and other considerations, lead me to 

 conclude, that the chief part of the proximate cause of tympanites, 

 is a loss of tone in the muscular fibres of the intestines. But 

 further, as air of any kind accumulated in the cavity of the in- 

 testines should, even by its own elasticity, find its way either 

 upwards or downwards, and should also, by the assistance of in- 

 spiration, be entirely thrown out of the body ; so, when neither 

 the re-absorption nor the expulsion takes place, and the air is 

 accumulated so as to produce tympanites, it is probable that 

 the passage of the air along the course of the intestines is in 

 some places of these interrupted. This interruption, however, 





