048 A DISSERTATION ON THE EPIDEMIC CHOLERA. 
very different issue in his arrangement, and in all probability 
would, after due consideration, have led him to have settled it 
among the species of the genus Colica, and, from its destructive 
character, to have given it a very prominent and foremost situa¬ 
tion in this painful and fatal group or family of diseases, where, 
we are confident, it will ultimately be bestowed, and be found 
truly to belong. For it is now most evident, that it is no proper 
choleous or bilious affection, such at least as the imagined Greek 
term cholera has generally served to convey a notion of, but a 
real cholic, with, in general, a suppression, more or less complete, 
of this salutary function of the bile. This position for it will, we 
believe, greatly facilitate and tend to simplify all our views and 
apprehensions about it, and likewise its treatment, opening a way 
also to the fully appreciating the various descriptions and doc¬ 
trines of its treatment which have, from an almost innumerable 
host of authors, been given and proposed for it as for an incom¬ 
prehensible kind of disorder. 
As to the vomiting, or third head of this Cerberus of a mala¬ 
dy, it would appear to be no other than the mere natural effort of 
the stomach to throw off those contents which it finds an inability 
or want of power to act upon and digest. Sometimes, indeed 
often, whether owing to mere debility and want of efficient force 
in the organ itself, the disease, unrelieved, goes its course after¬ 
wards in spite of these efforts: at other times they prove an 
effectual relief, and were encouraged on this account by many 
eminent practitioners, particularly Sydenham. And where it is 
ascertained, which should be particularly inquired into, that the 
patient has eaten of stale pork, shell fish, hard mutton, certain 
fruits, or any of those things wffiich undigested exhibit poisonous 
properties, as we have formerly stated, it is, perhaps, in these 
cases to be encouraged by artificial means, especially if the quan¬ 
tity taken be such as the use of stimuli may be long in procuring 
the digestion of, otherwise the latter course would perhaps be 
safest, in a general way, to rely upon; many substances being 
perfectly inert when fully digested, which are rank poisons other¬ 
wise, destroying the patient through their effects upon the nerves 
of the stomach, and acting fatally by sympathy upon the brain, 
and in more protracted cases producing the appearances of a 
typhoid disease. 
Should the human physician deem these views worthy his 
attention, they will, we believe, go far to explain many circum¬ 
stances and appearances attending the complaint that were 
before quite obscure and thought inexplicable. Under these 
views and impressions we shall now venture to take up some 
other of the most approved writers on the subject; and first, 
