REVIEW. 
444 
movements of the abdominal muscles and diaphragm, is not 
such as to prove beyond doubt that they were efforts to vomit. 
Confessing adhesion to the doctrine that the diaphragm takes 
an active part in vomiting, we deny that it does so by virtue 
of an inspiratory movement , and that, as it relaxes , the abdominal 
muscles make a sudden effort, as in forcible expiration. The 
act of vomiting is one sui generis , and not a respiratory act. 
Let any one try to simulate the effort to vomit, or study the 
real effort in his own person, and he will feel that the glottis 
having been closed after a deep inspiration, the diaphragm 
abdominal muscles act simultaneously, so as to press the 
stomach between them. To this it may be objected that, for 
the diaphragm to descend while the glottis is closed, the air 
in the chest should be rarefied, which is an unlikely occurrence. 
The fallacy of this objection is demonstrable by experiment, 
as Dr. Sharpey has long since shown in his lectures on 
anatomy and physiology in University College. A bandage 
being closely passed round the lower part of the chest, it is 
easy to press down the diaphragm at will; on doing so, the 
bandage becomes loose, evidently owing to drawing in of the 
cartilages of the lower ribs by the descending diaphragm. 
Thus the augmentation of the thoracic cavity in its long axis, 
is compensated by its decrease in the transverse; and it 
becomes obvious that the diaphragm may descend when the 
glottis is closed, without enlarging the chest, and therefore 
without rarefying the contained air. That, however, the 
witnessed efforts were in reality the pangs of death, is rendered 
more than probable by the terms in which the narrative of 
the experiment ends ,—“ enfin , Vanimal expire ” 
But conceding, for the sake of argument, that the move¬ 
ments observed were efforts to vomit, we maintain that it is 
not just to conclude that, because they were not followed by 
vomiting, there must have been some mechanical obstacle to 
the escape of matter through the cardia. As the experiment 
was performed, it was impossible for the stomach to be pressed 
upon by either the abdominal muscles or diaphragm, and, 
therefore, there was no chance of its contents being evacuated 
through the oesophagus. Protected, as the horse’s stomach 
is, by the far-back projecting ribs, it can only receive pressure 
from the abdominal muscles, indirectly, through the intestines. 
When these are removed, the viscus cannot be pressed upon 
by those muscles, and the pressure of the diaphragm on it is 
very slight, because the stomach undulates like a pendulum, 
backward and forwards, in the empty cavit) T , without meeting 
with the least resistance. 
The evidence which we have adduced, and which is all that 
