Faecal vomiting and reversed peristalsis in functional nervous (cerebral) disease : a summary of cases and conclusions / by F. Parkes Weber.

  • Weber, Frederick Parkes, 1863-1962.
Date:
1904
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Faecal vomiting and reversed peristalsis in functional nervous (cerebral) disease : a summary of cases and conclusions / by F. Parkes Weber. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    17/32 (page 183)
    dition remained relatively good, and ultimately the bowels acted spontaneously and faeces with an enormous quantity of gas were discharged. No evidence of any organic disease could be found in the patient. A valuable point in favour of delaying operation in this case was the definite history furnished by the patient’s brother (a medical practitioner) of the patient having previously had similar attacks of various degrees of severity which had not necessitated operation. Mental excitement, chill, and certain articles of food seemed to induce an attack. Sander’s and Debove’s cases, though not examples of faecal vomiting, serve capitally to illustrate the subject of neurotic intestinal obstruction, that is to say, of symptoms resembling those of intestinal obstruction, occurring in functional nervous cases. In this place I shall not enter further into the literature of such cases nor of the majority of cases (with or without neurotic vomiting, but without any faecal vomiting) which have been recorded as “hyster- ical pseudo-ileus,” “ hysterical spurious gastric ulcer,” “hysterical pseudo-appendicitis,” or “hysterical pseudo- peritonitis,” many of which cases have led to exploratory laparotomies. At present I am concerned with the subject of (neurotic) actual faecal vomiting, and from a study of the cases to which I have referred it is possible to obtain an idea of the general sequence of events in this rare symptom- complex, which I shall subsequently point out is intimately allied to ordinary attacks of hysterical vomiting. Typical history of an attack of hysterical fcecal vomiting. The patient, generally a young woman, but sometimes a man or a child (of either sex), may seemingly be in blooming health before the attack. Some distressing mental emotion or other physical or psychical shock is followed by a period of great constipation, and this constipation is accompanied or followed by meteorism (hysterical tympanites)- and abdominal pains. There may be severe attacks of vomiting and even some hsematemesis. The constipation becomes absolute and the other symptoms get worse, and finally the condition of “hysterical ileus” is reached. Then everything