A treatise on pyrosis idiopathica, or water-brash : as contrasted with certain forms of indigestion and of organic lesions of the abdominal organs, together with the remedies dietetic and medicinal / by Thomas West.

  • West, Thomas, 1948-
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on pyrosis idiopathica, or water-brash : as contrasted with certain forms of indigestion and of organic lesions of the abdominal organs, together with the remedies dietetic and medicinal / by Thomas West. 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.

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    may be referred to the vires vitse having been shattered by long and incessant labour in approaching old age, or in women by rapid and frequent breeding; and in some I have been disposed to refer it to excessive dosing with empirical remedies, to frequent mer- curialism, to the abuse of purgatives, to a depraved habit of voraciously eating or rather bolting of food, &c. In other cases I have satisfactorily referred the mischief to excessive constipation of the lower bowels, and found it to yield to the ordinary remedies for such torpor. Such is the result of my own experience. I will now briefly notice some of the causes enumerated by authors and practitioners of acknowledged celebrity. Before I glance at their opinions I would have it understood, that although in the majority of cases of pyrosis, the function of the liver is more or less languid or disturbed, yet in very few instances does its depraved condition appear to be the root of the evil. Nevertheless, the prime suffering organ is the stomach, and although it is difficult, from the close sympathy existing between all the chylopoietic and assistant chy- lopoietic organs, to say with any certainty that such and such viscera are intact, yet the nature of the paroxysms, and the remedies which are found most effective in pyrosis, while they are least, or much less so, in hepatic derangement, will justify the practical view we have taken, and the practical application of that view in the cure of the disease. Individual ex- perience would lead me to believe that the sanguineous
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