Book 2
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If, therefore, by these means the sweat and discharges from the bowels are stopped, and the stomach receives the food without vomiting it again, the pulse becomes large and strong, and the straining ceases; if the heat prevails everywhere, and reaches the extremities, and sleep concocts all matters, on the second or third day the patient is to be bathed, and remitted to his usual course of living. But if he vomit up everything, if the sweat flow incessant, if the patient become cold and livid, if his pulse be almost stopped and his strength exhausted, it will be well in these circumstances to try to make one’s escape with credit.
CHAPTER V. CURE OF ILEUS.
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IN Ileus it is pain that kills, along with inflammation of the bowels, or straining and swelling. A most acute and most disgusting form of death! For others, when in a hopeless state of illness, fear nothing except their impending death; but those in ileus, from excess of pain earnestly desire death. The physician, therefore, must neither be inferior to the affection, nor more dilatory; but, if he find inflammation to be the cause, open a vein at the elbow by a large orifice, so that blood, which is the pabulum of the inflammation, may flow copiously; and it may be carried the length of deliquium animi, for this is either the commencement of an escape from pain, or of a torpor ending in insensibility. For in ileus a breathing-time for a short space, even from loss of sensibility, will prove an interval from pain; since, also, to persons enduring these pains, to die is happiness, but to impart it is not permitted to the respectable physician; but at times it is permitted, when he foresees that present symptoms cannot be escaped from, to lull the patient asleep with narcotics and anæsthetics.
