Observations on sciatica and other neuralgic affections : with a consideration of their frequent origin from a disordered state of the stomach ; interspersed with some novel views respecting the origin and prevention of gall-stones ... ; together with an account of the waters of Bagnères de Bigorre and Barége in their treatment / by Richard Carmichael.

Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on sciatica and other neuralgic affections : with a consideration of their frequent origin from a disordered state of the stomach ; interspersed with some novel views respecting the origin and prevention of gall-stones ... ; together with an account of the waters of Bagnères de Bigorre and Barége in their treatment / by Richard Carmichael. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    which succeeded and continued for many weeks the gastric fever I have mentioned, and is the state which Prout terms the phos])hatic diathesis. As I improved, it changed to the lithic diathesis, which continued until I drank the waters of Bagneres, of which I shall soon speak more fully. During this period of my illness, the slightest deviation from the strictest rules of diet was sure to be followed by sediments in the urine, whose depth of colour corresponded with the degree of irritation, or dyspeptic symptoms induced. I was obliged to relinquish vegetables altogether, and of animal food and bread I could not, perhaps, take one-fourth of what my appetite would prompt me to use, without exciting unpleasant symptoms, always followed by those sediments. The attacks of spasm, or sudden pain at the pit of the stomach, extending to the back also, became gradually more frequent. I now began to suspect that they were occasioned by gall-stones, as my eyes and skin became tinged with bile after each successive attack, and the urine betrayed the usual appearance it presents in all jaundiced persons. The attack usually came on between two or three hours after a meal, the first indication of which was a sense of fulness at the pit of the stomach, the certain precursor of a most over- coming sensation (as if a heavy weight were lodged there) between this and the spine, that often made me writhe with agony upon the floor. Large and repeated doses of opium, with draughts of hot water, afforded the only relief to attacks under which I continued to suffer subsequently for moi*e than two years, and which necessarily occasioned great de- bility and emaciation. One night, after a severe attack of this description, which came on as usual about two hours after eating, I began to consider why it always happened, that the attacks should so regularly occur between two and three hours after a meal, no matter whether breakfast or dinner. The obstruction of a gall-stone in the duct, which occasions the pain, is me- chanical, but why should it occur only at the periods