A system of practical medicine. By American authors. Vol. 2

by Unknown

² Lib. ii. cap. ix.

³ Ed. Med. Essays, vol. v. p. 153, 1752.

⁴ 31st Epistle.

⁵ Actis Nat. Cur., vol. v. p. 483.

Bauer⁶ under the title of "intestinal moles" describes in Haller's Disputations the discharges of this disease as "concreta fibrosa quædam pro parte pinguedine rara abducta, membranacea molarum ex utero muliebri rejectarum formam accurate sistentia."

⁶ "De Moles Intestinorum," Disputationes ad Morborum, Dresdæ, 1747, p. 463.

In the same volume Kaempf⁷ discourses on this subject under the title of "infarction of the intestinal vessels," and also in a separate treatise⁸ published somewhat later. In the latter he groups the disease with others of a far different nature, their only point of convergence being preternatural alvine discharges.

⁷ De Infarctu Vasorum Ventriculi, Basiliæ, 1751.

⁸ Abhandlungen von einer neuer methode der hartnackigsten Krankheiten die ihren Sitz im unterleibe haben, zu heilen, Leipzig, 1784.

Subsequent authors, as a rule, fell into the same error, and it was not until 1818 that membranous enteritis was discriminated by Powell⁹ from that condition in which we recognize the presence of gall-stones. Since then more correct views have prevailed, and the disease has now a recognized place in nosology.