25 Med. Herald, Louisville, 1880-81, ii. p. 348.
ACUTE INTESTINAL CATARRH (DUODENITIS, JEJUNITIS, ILEITIS, COLITIS, PROCTITIS).
BY W. W. JOHNSTON, M.D.
SYNONYMS.—Enteritis, Catarrhal enteritis, Mucous enteritis, Endo-enteritis, Ileo-colitis, Entero-colitis, Diarrhoea. Older synonyms: Chordapsus, Cauma enteritis, Enterophlogia, Enterophlogosis, Colica acuta seu inflammatoria, Ileus inflammatorius, Enteralgia inflammatoria, Febris intestinorum seu Iliaca inflammatoria, Colique inflammatoire.
HISTORY.—It is interesting to start at the fountain-head of the two streams of inquiry—the clinical and the anatomical—and to follow each in its widely-diverging wanderings until they unite to give to the phenomena of intestinal inflammation a just interpretation.
The symptom diarrhoea was fully described by the earliest writers in medicine.1 The symptomatic differences between diarrhoea, dysentery, and lientery and the different forms of diarrhoea (bilious, watery, etc.) were given in detail by the Greek and Roman physicians. The Arabians had a much more elaborate classification of the fluxes. Avicenna made seven varieties of simple diarrhoea. European writers followed closely in these footsteps. Sennert made twelve and Sauvages twenty-one varieties of diarrhoea, depending upon as many different causes, as undigested food, worms, the bile, etc. Many recent writers have adhered closely to the older authors in their method of treating of diarrhoea, regarding it as a disease and dividing it into varieties based on the causes or on the appearances of the stools. Among them may be mentioned Cullen (1789), Good (1825), Tweedie (1841), G. B. Wood (1852), Trousseau (1865), and Habershon (1879).
1 J. J. Woodward, Med. and Surg. Hist. of the War, Part 2, Medical Volume, foot-note, p. 273 et seq.