1813.] 



On Vomiting, 



the phrenic nerves are cut, then how strong soever an emetic is 

 administered, nothing more takes place than successive nauseas^, 

 and very seldom vomiting, notwithstanding the most violent 

 contractions of the abdominal muscles. 



One of the commissioners having invited M. Magendie to cut 

 the phrenic nerves on both sides of a dog still vigorous^ whose 

 abdominal muscles had been removed, and to make him swallow 

 a gros (72 grains) of red oxide of mercury, the animal was very 

 much agitated, and had nauseas, retchings, and painful alvine 

 evacuations, but did not vomit. M. Magendie intends speedily 

 to state the observations which he made on this occasion. 



Most of these experiments prove sufficiently that the stomach 

 is entirely passive in the act of vomiting, and that the principal 

 effect is produced by the diaphragm. Those that follow go still 

 farther, since they demonstrate that vomiting may take place 

 without the stomach. They were repeated three times in our 

 presence, with the same result. 



M. Magendie having cautiously (in order to avoid hemorrhages) 

 made a ligature on each of the orilices of the stomach, removed 

 that viscus altogether, and, after having sewed up the wound in 

 the belly, administered an emetic. In less than two minutes the 

 dog exhibited all the symptoms which precede vomiting. We 

 may even say that he actually vomited, for he threw out with 

 effort and violent nausea the mucus of the oesophagus. Thus it 

 appears that vomiting may in some measure take place without 

 the stomach. It appears, then, that as far as vomiting is con- 

 cerned the stomach is nothing but an inert bag, containing 

 matters destined to be thrown out. And what other part in 

 vomiting is it possible to ascribe to those schirrous stomachs 

 whose coats have acquired some inches of thickness, and a hard- 

 ness approaching to that of cartilage ? 



We have only another experiment to notice, and it is the most 

 extraordinary and the most decisive of all those which we have seen. 

 In the place of the stomach, which had been cut out of seve- 

 ral dogs, M. Magendie substituted a small hog's bladder, almost 

 of equal capacity, to the neck of which a canula of caoutchouc 

 had been adapted, which was thrust into the oesophagus below 

 the diaphragm, and kept in its place by a thread. These dogs 

 were made to swallow water tinged yellow, with which the 

 bladder was filled according as deglutition took place. The 

 opening of the belly having been sewed up, an emetic was in- 

 troduced into the jugulars. Nausea took place in a short time^ 

 and the animals vomited the yellow water precisely as if it had 

 come from a real and living stomach. The wound in the belly 

 being laid open, we easily observed at each strain the air de- 

 scending in a current into the bladder, and distending it as if it 



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