Vomiting is often a sign of dangerous vagal involvement in acute pernicious beriberi. Some consider that the extreme dilatation of the right heart, pressing on the stomach, may be the excitant of this vomiting.
The vomiting of cholera follows the diarrhoea. The material vomited may be of the same character as the rice-water stools.
In ptomaine poisoning vomiting precedes the diarrhoea.
Rarely a liver abscess may burst into the stomach, in which case we would have the vomiting of pus. Of course the more common route is by the lungs in which case the chocolate-colored liver abscess pus would be coughed up instead of vomited up.
The Intestinal Tract
It is usual to consider constipation as a clinical feature of such diseases as plague, yellow fever, Malta fever, beriberi and tsutsugamushi, as well as typhus fever.
Abdominal pains are most often connected with dysenteric conditions and it is customary to state that the greater the tormina, or intestinal griping, the nearer is the dysenteric process to the caecum.
In cholera the cramping of the abdominal muscles may follow that of the calf muscles.
In sprue we may have a doughy sensation on palpating the abdomen due to the fermenting contents of the intestine.