no inconsiderable number of both sexes are incapacitated from exercising that important and divine function of giving creation to their own species. The causes in the male sex are, palsy, or torpidity of the penis, or its nerves, or generative organs; the penis short, monstrous in size, its prepuce straitned; impediments in the urethra and seminal ducts; testicles, epididymidis, vasa deferentia; the semen inert, vapid, aqueous, scanty; weakness of the ejecting or accelerator muscles; corpulency; too tense erection; old age; castration, manustupration, too frequent coition, extreme chastity, venereal disease, inebriety, broken constitution, tabes-dorsalis. In the female sex, original structure of some part of the generative machinery of the ovarium, fallopian tubes, womb, vagina, labia, clitoris; straitness, concretion, obstruction of the vagina or womb from inflammation, scirrhus, polypus; cold frigid temperament; promiscuous coition; excess of venery, irritability; fluor albus, obstructed menses, irregular menstruation, cachexy.
Morbid irritability of the genitals,
including priapism, pollution, furor uterinus. Of involuntary pollution we have treated under dorsal tabes. In our climate the uterine mania rarely occurs in that extreme of indecency described by authors. The woman at first is bashful and silent; the pulse and circulation are agitated on mentioning a venereal topick; by significant looks and gestures she betrays her passion; and if disappointed, becomes low-spirited, anxious, and wastes in flesh. The same has happened to some women who had the mortification to be linked with impotent husbands. Sometimes, however, this universal passion has burst into a flame; the woman losing all sense of shame, soliciting, with obscenity in speech and gestures, the embraces of the other sex; and raving on this theme with maniacal insanity. The causes, acrid serum, spasm, inflammation of the urethra, vagina, or other generative organs; irritation of the bladder, womb, rectum; obstructed menses; fluor albus, heat, excoriation of the vagina, venereal; stimulating, acrid, diureticks, and emmenagogues; stimulating diet and drink, excess of venery, manustupration, libidinous books, prints; protrusion of the vagina.
Deglutition interrupted: we very rarely meet with this similitude of tantalus, wherein food or drink is either swallowed with difficulty and pain, or totally interrupted in its descent to the stomach, and regurgitated by the mouth or nose. The causes spasmodick constriction of the œsophagus, and in various parts of the tube; palsy of the muscles of deglutition; tumors or scirrhus in the pharynx, œsophagus, pylorus, trachea, thyroid or dorsal glands; aneurism and enlargement of the aorta, ulcers in the œsophagus; luxation of the os hyoides; compression of the pharyngeal nerves; cachexy, worms, crudity, passions, extraneous substances stuck in the throat. The spasmodick is periodical and painful; and also affects the voice: in the lower part of the œsophagus it excites pain between the shoulders; sometimes eructation and vomiting.
Manducation. Diseases of the teeth are the principal impediments to the exercise of this function. There are few adults who cannot describe the pangs of tooth-ach from their own feelings. It is generally intermittent, seldom dangerous to life, except during the first dentition of infancy. Its constant symptoms, pain, flow of saliva, restlessness: its variable symptoms, swelled face, carious loosened teeth; fistula, exostoses of the gums and jaws. The causes, inflammation of the periosteum of the teeth, gums, or jaw; suppressed perspiration; moist air; catarrhal defluxion; suppressed habitual evacuations, nasal hemorrhage and venesection; plethora; intermittent, scorbutick, arthritick; rheumatick; caries of the teeth; sugar eat; beetle and tobacco chewed, acrimony of blood or saliva; spirituous liquors; mercury; suppuration in the maxillary sinusses and gums; spunginess and flaccidity of the gums and periosteum; irritation and disorder of the fifth pair of nerves.
Diseases of the Stomach and Intestinal Tube,
are very universal and frequent maladies in both sexes, and throughout all orders and ages. The stomach and alimentary canal are furnished with numerous nerves; and the sensibility of the former very acute, especially at its upper extremity. The length of the human alimentary tube, from the mouth to the anus, is five or six times the length of the whole body: it is folded into many convolutions, as may be daily seen at shambles, on the opening of animals. Into this alimentary muscular and contractile sewer are incessantly heaped food and drink, besides a variety of copious secretions from the body, requisite in the process of digestion and assimilation of chyle, as saliva, pancreatick fluid, bile, mucus, and arterial exhalation from the whole of its internal surface.
Within the short space of a few weeks, the generality of mankind consume more food and drink than amounts to the whole weight of their bodies. This diurnal superfluity and load, together with the corrupted and abraded animal parts of the body, and the different secreted fluids, must again, in a few hours, be expelled through the principal human excretories; the fecal, urinary, perspiratory. In the healthy state, by far the smallest proportion of this diurnal superfluity is through the intestinal excretion: the greatest part is absorbed by the lacteals and lymphaticks, intermixed with the blood, and afterwards filtered by urine, perspiration, and in the puerperal state, milk. In cold climates and winters, especially if moist, the urine; in warm climates, the perspiration preponderates. But in these prodigious diversities ensue from exercise or rest, sleep and waking, passions of mind, the quantity or quality of food, cleanness of the skin, constitution, atmosphere, and the alternation with each other of these excretions. Again, when we reflect that from the small parotid glands, between a pint and a quart of saliva is secerned during the twenty-four hours; and on the prodigious secretion through the kidneys, we may easily conceive in the natural and morbid state, what a considerable quantity may be secerned from the liver, the largest of the abdominal viscera: making, however, some deduction for the slower circulation through the vena porta.