VOL. XXX. ] l'»ILOSOPHlCAL TRANSACTIONS. 289 



aliment downward, in order to expel them, when all their nutritive contents 

 are extracted. 



This motion thus established, it naturally seems to follow, that an inversion 

 of it (called therefore an antiperistaltic motion) should force the aliments, bile, 

 pancreatic juice, and lastly the faeces, to ascend towards the mouth. The 

 cause of this imaginary antivermicular motion, is assigned to a stoppage of the 

 intestine, or to a great length of it being entangled, in the same manner as the 

 fingers of a glove are choaked by inverting the glove in drawing it off: or as a 

 silk stocking, which when it is not gartered, falls down on the foot, and is in 

 a manner strangled, so that some force is required to pull it up again. 



This supposed, the antiperistaltic hypothesis seems at first sight very natural, 

 and answers most difficulties. For if the vermicular motion accelerates the 

 contents of the intestines downward ; the antivermicular, by the law of con- 

 traries, should force them upward towards the mouth. Were this supposition 

 as certain as it is generally received, I should not presume to advance that there 

 is no such thing as an antiperistaltic motion of the intestines; nor that the mi- 

 sere mei is oftener a violent contraction of the abdominal muscles, than a stop- 

 page or inversion of the intestines, as it is supposed. 



Supposing then that this disorder is a violent contraction of the abdominal 

 muscles, caused by the redundancy of the intestines, or their contents: then 

 comparing the symptoms of this disease, with those of the different kinds of 

 Hernias, we shall find by the analogy of the parts, by reason, and repeated ex- 

 perience, that the chordapsus, so called by Celsus, is a disease in which the 

 intestines and omentum, at other times the pancreas or spleen, nay even the 

 mesentery itself, are forced through the diaphragm into the thorax. All these 

 tender parts being strongly compressed, by the continual motion of this muscle, 

 must consequently cause the same accidents as in the bubonocele or complete 

 hernia, there being no difference in these two cases; but that the first is a 

 strangling of the intestine by the diaphragm, and the latter a choking of the 

 intestines by the abdominal muscles. 



One example of the many of the like nature, that I could produce, will 

 much confirm this assertion, and is as follows: A gentleman that came to town 

 in good health, meeting with some friends, drank a great deal of new-bottled 

 oat-ale, after some pints of wine. These liquors fermented so violently in his 

 stomach and intestines, that he was taken with a violent colic the same night. 

 In the morning an apothecary was sent for, who administered a clyster, and 

 drew some ounces of blood to relieve the patient, who complained of a great 

 pain in his left side. The clysters being repeated the following night, as also 

 the next morning, and the patient growing worse ; the apothecary, without 



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