DISSERTATION ON THE EPIDEMIC CHOLERA. 65H 
complaint, and, like a redoubtable systematist, he commences 
with taking the genus Cholera, and dividing it into three species 
—the biliosa, t\\QJiatidenta, and the spasmodica. In describing 
the first of these, the biliosa, he falls fully and without reserve 
into all the vague notions about the bilious character of the com¬ 
plaint, as, indeed, the name he has chosen for his first species 
implies; and under this apprehended species, he enters the one 
half of the dire history of this terrible complaint, reserving the 
other moiety of its hosts of slain as an offering to his third species, 
the spasmodica, which are all most evidently but one and the 
same complaint, the spasms or cramps of the legs and abdomen 
accompanying the disorder (as he himself, indeed, inadvertently 
admits) in both species ; and it is to be remarked, that these 
spasmodic affections do accompany the complaint most severely 
where there is considerable or excessive vomiting attending it. 
As to his second Jiatulenta, it is evidently, at least 
as we believe, no other than an anomalous case of wind colic, 
drawn in to fill up and make out a respectable family list of 
species. This serves to bring to our recollection, as suiting the 
present place, what we had before purposely omitted to mention, 
the cholera^ !»)/)«, of Hippocrates, or cholera siccay of his transla¬ 
tors, or dry cholera; which, apparently in compliment, as, it 
were, to the great father of medicine, Hippocrates, Sydenham 
also makes mention of, but afterwards adds, that he never sa\v 
but one case of it, so that the existence of any real, essentially- 
specific disease, may be fairly doubted : and may not such a 
case be easily explained, by a view of those cases of common 
cholera which are attended with no previous diarrhoea, and which 
would be necessarily a puzzle to those who were fully possessed 
of the notion of the bilious origin of this complaint, from whence 
they apprehended the purging sprung, and which to them would 
give it all the appearance of another and different disease ? It 
would appear either to have been this, or some anomalous case 
of dyspeptic colic, reducible to no certain rule or character. 
And as to flatulence, or wind, it accompanies all kinds of 
imperfectly-arrested digestion, especially where the powers are 
strong to resist the access of the full character of the disease in 
a perfect suppression. And that such flatulence does generally 
occur, we may prove by reference to the description ofCelsus, 
and innumerable cases recorded during the late epidemic; so 
that surely it cannot constitute with propriety a specifically- 
different disease. 
There is one remark, I find, with Dr. Good, which appears to 
deserve a more particular attention here, and which seems to be 
well founded on fact, viz., that powerful impressions upon the 
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