106 STUDIES IN CLINICAL PHYSIOLOGY 



a neurosis or in association with organic nervous 

 disease. Some interesting cases are reported by 

 Walton in a discussion of the subject. The milder 

 degrees of the condition will yield to turpentine 

 enemata and to saline purges, but there are instances 

 in which all drugs are vomited and the block seems 

 to be too high for enemata to act. Here we may 

 try the effect of physostigmine (eserine) salicylate, 

 in x^-gr. doses, given hypodemiically every four 

 hours for six doses. This drug has been used for 

 years in Vienna and Germany, though but little in 

 England. Our personal experience of it is favourable. 

 Walton shows by a chart that the evacuations when 

 this drug is given after abdominal operations are much 

 more frequent than without it. It is scarcely at all 

 aperient in health, working best when the local 

 nerve gangha in the intestine are thrown out of 

 action. It is of course an old and well-known 

 remedy, acting like pilocarpine by stimulating the 

 nerve endings in unstriped muscle. Pituitary ex- 

 tract often works well in these cases. 



A few further points may be summarized briefly. 



Intestinal colic is due to some interference with the 

 normal relation between the wave of relaxation and 

 the following wave of contraction, which make up 

 normal peristalsis. 



Ordinary constipation is rarely due to any prolonga- 

 tion of the normal four hours taken by the bismuth 

 meal to pass from the stomach to the caecum. Some- 

 times the delay is in the whole length of the colon ; 

 sometimes the faeces reach the rectum and pelvic 

 colon in good time, but are retained there. There 



