Howrah Hospital Report for 1846. 515 



course of a few days. The disease has been attributed to 

 excess in drinking bazar spirits. The pain was most severe, 

 felt at the umbilicu's and lower abdomen, extending to the 

 back, doubling up the patient, accompanied by tenderness 

 and tumefaction of the abdomen, constant retching and rejec- 

 tion of a green liquid ; the pain of long continuance at a time, 

 and recurring in aggravated paroxysms ; there was a loaded 

 white tongue ; general pallor ; great distress of countenance ; 

 damp skin. The complaint had existed in these cases for se- 

 veral days before admission, preceded in some by diarrhoea : 

 relief was obtained in these severe cases upon an average on 

 the 4th day, discharge from the hospital took place on the 

 15th day after admission. They were left in a low tremulous 

 state with a tendency to diarrhoea after the subsidence of the 

 severe pain. 



After such cases cholera often follows. Treatment employed 

 gave temporary relief, but the spasms returned, such as fre- 

 quent leeching, hot bath, sinapisms, turpentine fomentation, 

 turpentine and assafoetida enemata, laudanum and ether, ca- 

 lomel and opium, aperients. 



Diseases of the Spinal Cord and Nerves. 



Two cases coming under this classification have been treated 

 in the Howrah Hospital this year, another case treated in the 

 hospital in bygone years has been added, and four other 

 cases treated in Howrah and the neighbourhood, and occur- 

 ring about the same time, have also been added ; the whole 

 forming a group of disease, and taken together, not devoid of 

 interest. I consider rheumatism too indefinite an expression 

 for several of these cases, believing the seat of the severe 

 nervous spasm in some of them, and of the nervous paralysis 

 in others, to be in the spinal cord the nervous centre of 

 motion, as well as in the nerves. The precise abnormal 

 condition of the nervous centre, I cannot pretend to define, 



