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Biliousness, or bilious attacks however vague the terms, 

 and however incorrectly applied are very frequently merely 

 attacks of acute dyspepsia or migraine. According to 

 Dr. F. T. Roberts, the most prominent symptoms of a 

 supposed bilious attack are anorexia, furred tongue, a bitter 

 taste, sickness, constipation, and headache, with a feeling of 

 marked depression and general malaise. However such 

 attacks may be designated, everyone knows, at least, what is 

 meant by a bilious attack ; and although the liver may have 

 little or nothing to do with them, yet they have from the 

 earliest history of medicine been associated with biliary 

 derangement, and as such they are still popularly regarded. 

 Irrespective of their causation, there can be no doubt that a 

 predisposition to them is frequently inherited, a fact which 

 is demonstrated unmistakably in every-day practice. So far 

 as I know, this is the only case in which temperament may 

 be confounded with diathesis ; but as the former term does 

 not imply any proclivity to disease, we may assume that 

 those predisposed to bilious attacks have inherited a con- 

 stitutional peculiarity which might be more aptly described 

 as of the nature of a bilious diathesis, owing to intensification 

 during transmission. However we may map out the 

 differences between families or individuals, a certain amount 

 of elasticity must be allowed, as they cannot be regarded as 

 hard and fast lines. Thus when we employ the terms 

 temperament, diathesis, idiosyncrasy, etc., to designate 

 certain classes of individuals, we must remember that no 

 individual can be regarded as a pure unmixed type of either 

 sub-division : no arbitrary line may be said to divide the one 

 from the other, although heredity and variability are the two 

 laws to which they are all subject, and from which all 

 individual differences arise. The above terms can only be 



