ON THE INGESTS AND EGESTA 13 



and less liable to misconception and misuse than such terms 

 as absorptive and eliminative, secretive and excretive, 

 integrative and disintegrate, anabolic and katabolic, 

 astringent and diluent, etc., and other locally applied 

 incidental adjectives. 



A secondary and modifying therapeutic classification 

 would of necessity arise in connection with the dual con- 

 struction of the nervous system, since agents which are 

 esteemed neuro-medicinal quite differently affect the two 

 systems, the sympathetic and the systemic, and give rise 

 to therapeutic influences entirely determined by the 

 physiological and histological distinctness and independ- 

 ence, as well as by the mutual inter-dependence, functional 

 and structural, of the two systems the terms for which 

 two classes of therapeutic agencies might be, neuro- 

 sympathetic and neuro-systemic. 



Flowing out of these heterodox views, which we have 

 with some considerable pains, and for a long time, been 

 endeavouring to evolve from the orthodox materials and 

 views which we have possessed, the foregoing therapeutic 

 divisions seem to us to possess the elements of truth, 

 simplicity, and adaptability, although, did time and 

 classical "license" permit, we might do fuller justice to 

 our constructive efforts and the requirements of scientific 

 terminology ; be that, however, as it may, to those con- 

 cerned, we give them for what they are worth, with the 

 utmost confidence that if found fit they will survive, but 

 if unfit their future fate will likewise be fit. 



Involved in, and flowing from, the continuity of the 

 circulatory phenomena of ingestion and egestion is the 

 great principle of onward progression of the circulatory 

 material in all its stages, ingestive, nutritive, incorporative, 

 or metabolic, and egestive ; stasis or retrogression in either 

 of these resulting in the production of pathological pheno- 

 mena, in accordance with, and determined by, the nature 

 and incidence of the etiological factors engaged in the 

 evolution of the particular morbid condition. Stasis and 

 regurgitation in the alimentary canal produces its effects 

 in a particular manner and order, mesenteric circulatory 

 stasis and regurgitation its sanguineous circulation, its 

 pulmonary, its nutritive, or its metabolic, and the many 



