6T4 ON THE ANALOGY BETWEEN THE GRIPES 
I immediately closed the apartment, took to drinking hot water 
(as hot as I could in any way get it down) ; I sat by the fire and 
rubbed, with a flannel bag over the hand, the abdomen, and in a 
quarter of an hour had dispelled the symptoms. This is the 
simplest form, perhaps, of the complaint, or rather the point of 
commencement of it, when it can be more easily subdued—espe¬ 
cially if there be no great opposition from the mass of food or its 
quality being very refractory, and the animal powers in tolerable 
force. The knotted state of the abdomen appears to arise from 
the recti and other abdominal muscles being contracted in sympa¬ 
thy with the suffering parts beneath. For some remarkable 
cases, where the restoration in the horse was opposed by a combi¬ 
nation of untoward circumstances, I must refer the reader to the 
treatise above described ; and for a great deal of reasoning and 
observation which would be out of place in this small sketch. 
As to anodynes or opiates, it must be obvious, relieving pain by 
mere soothing and lulling the nerves must be nugatory while the 
cause of that pain remains uncontrolled: I, therefore, early quitted 
the use of them, and found, by doing without them, their total 
uselessness; and as bleeding may exhaust the very powers we 
want to rouse, that I never resorted to till the next day, if any 
inflammatory symptoms appeared to remain from the lateness of 
the remedy or the extensive application of it, when a gentle pur¬ 
gative or a venesection was decisive. 
There may be cases, though I believe but rarely, when the car¬ 
diac system may be oppressed by an overcharge of blood, as in 
some plethoric people, where breathing a vein would set the 
springs more at liberty for motion, and be of service; otherwise, 
blood-letting I believe not to be necessary, unless to suppress, as 
we have stated, any inflammation consequent upon the remedy, 
as that may have arisen from its late application. 
After this manner may be successfully treated, we believe, a very 
great number of these strophic attacks, if for once we may be al¬ 
lowed to drop the erroneous term cholera, for there is certainly no 
XoKvi or bile to characterize the complaint, or concerned in it; but 
rather, perhaps, a want of suppression of this secretion; and 
which want of the daily purgative of life adds to the facility of 
access and severity, perhaps, of the complaint: and may not the 
diarrhoea complained of in many cases, which precedes the com¬ 
plaint, derive its origin from the w r ant of the stimulation of this 
natural fluid ; the intestines inflaming for the want of its usual 
operation upon them—thus inducing a capillary flow into them, 
and purging—for the same causes that suppress the digestive act, 
will also diminish biliary secretion. 
Though by no means generally, yet in several instances we 
