VOL. XXXVI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 411 



one, the contraction of them either way, would have propelled the contained 

 air from one place to another, and would have occasioned borborygmi, or would 

 have expelled a part of it upwards or downwards, when nature had so much 

 need of it to relieve the distended guts, and art had contributed to that inten- 

 tion by clysters and purgatives given. 



3. The patient never went to stool after he received the wound: and the 

 strongest purgatives and clysters that could be reasonably given, had no effect. 

 This seems also to be owing to the want or total loss of the peristaltic motion ; 

 and plainly shows, that the strongest purging stimulus has not the power to 

 restore it, without the assistance of the gall : for had it been in any degree 

 restored, the belly would have fallen proportionally, and some evacuation of 

 what was lodged in the primae viae would have followed. If then the power of 

 purgatives depends on the co-operation of the bile, it will follow, that where 

 it is most active or redundant, their operation will be, caeteris paribus, greatest; 

 and where it is unactive or deficient in quantity, they will have proportionally 

 a less effect. Though it be true that a great quantity, or morbid acrimony, of 

 the bile, by a too strong and violent irritation, will bring the intestines into 

 such spasms, as to stop all excretion by stool; and the strongest purging sti- 

 mulus added to it only increases the spasms and costiveness; as in bilious 

 colics, which are alwavs attended with exceeding costiveness, not conquerable 

 by the strongest purgatives, if they be not joined with opiates, to allay the 

 spasms, and obtund the acrimony of the bile. 



He took what was thought a sufficient quantity of liquid food and drink; 

 but if the elater of the guts, and their peristaltic motion were lost, it is easy 

 to prove that none of his food or drink could enter the lacteals for want of the 

 peristaltic motion; and therefore that he died starved. And this will account 

 for all the rest of the symptoms mentioned. 



To prove that this was his case. — All that have seen live dissections, in- 

 tended to show the nature of the peristaltic motion, and the course of the 

 lacteals, must have observed, that the guts have an alternate systole and dias- 

 tole, or contraction and dilatation, called the peristaltic motion, the superior 

 section contracting itself, while the immediate inferior is dilated; and this 

 motion is carried on in several parts of the guts at the same time; and the 

 contracting part, by expelling the blood and chyle out of its sides, in its con- 

 traction looks pale, while the parts dilated look florid, and the vessels full of 

 blood and chyle. 



Now the part contracting must necessarily force the chyle from the grosser 

 parts of the food or aliments, towards the inner surface of the guts, where the 

 perforated capillary extremities of the lacteals in the villous coat, are ready to 

 3 G 2 



