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Exhaustion, depression, oppression. 

 Exhaustion. — We are familiar with the first as the 

 effect of: 



Over-exertion. 

 Loss of sleep. 

 Excessive purgation. 

 Following acute or chronic disease. 

 Depression is to be discriminated from exhaustion as 

 resulting, not from expenditure or waste of the material or 

 forces of the body, but from interference with their normal 

 activity by some disturbing cause. 



Oppression is the result of another form of obstruction 

 of the functions of the animal economy. 



Exhaustion and depression have their chief seat in the 

 nerve-central sources of dynamic force. Oppression, in the 

 circulation of the blood, or in some subordinate organs or 

 functions. 



Serious degrees of oppression occur in some cases of vis- 

 ceral congestion, particularly of the lungs or brain, and in 

 violent spasmodic affections of the alimentary canal, with 

 constipation of the bowels. Uraemia, from inaction of the 

 kidneys, presents another cause of oppression, in which even 

 a fatal result may occur. 



Counterfeit debility or oppression thus may occur in : 

 The first stages of all acute diseases. 

 The febrile state. 

 Indigestion of an acute kind. 

 Congestion of the lungs or brain. 

 Obstruction of the bowels, uraemia. 

 These different lesions; and their appropriate treatment, 

 will be found in another part of the work under their proper 

 heads. 



Depression is exemplified in the states produced by : 

 Severe injuries, extensive burns. 

 Sudden frights or terror. 



Withdrawal of nourishing food, and semi-starvation. 

 Intense toxaemia. 

 Spasm of the diaphragm, &c. 

 In all of these conditions stimulation is absolutely re- 

 quired, in greater or less degree, always bearing in mind the 

 probability of reaction, and avoiding as far as possible the 

 exaggeration of this reaction into fever. 



The antidotal treatment can only be glanced at here. 

 Where animals are poisoned the specific poison requires a 



