n early symptom of
measles. Xerostomia, or dry mouth, is a rare condition, connected with
lack of salivary secretion. Gangrenous stomatitis, cancrum oris, or
noma, occasionally attacks debilitated children, or patients
convalescing from acute fevers, more especially after measles. It
commences in the gums or cheeks, and causes widespread sloughing of the
adjacent soft parts--it may be of the bones.

_The Stomach._--It were futile to attempt to enumerate all the protean
manifestations of disturbance which proceed from a disordered stomach.
The possible permutations and combinations of the causes of gastric
vagaries almost reach infinity. Idiosyncrasy, past and present gastric
education, penury or plethora, actual digestive power, motility, bodily
requirements and conditions, environment, mental influences, local or
adjacent organic lesions, and, not least, reflex impressions from other
organs, all contribute to the variance.

Ulcer of the stomach, however--the perforating gastric ulcer--occupies a
unique position among diseases of this organ. Gastric ulcers are
circumscribed, punched out, rarely larger than a sixpenny-bit,
funnel-shaped, the narrower end towards the peritoneal coat, and
distributed in those regions of the stomach wall which are most exposed
to the action of the gastric contents. They occur most frequently in
females, especially if anaemic, and are usually accompanied by excess of
acid, actual or relative to the state of the blood, in the stomach
contents. Local pain, dorsal pain, generally to the left of the eighth
or ninth dorsal spinous process, and haematernesis and melaena, are
symptomatic of it. The amount of blood lost varies with the rapidity of
ulcer formation and the size of vessel opened into. Fatal results arise
from ulceration into large blood-vessels, followed by copious
haemorrhage, or by perforation of the ulcer into the peritoneal cavity.
Scars of such ulcers may be found post mortem, although no symptoms of
gastric disease have been exhibited during life; gastric ulcers,
therefore, may be latent.

Irritation of the sensory nerve-endings in the stomach wall from the
presence of an increased proportion of acid, organic or mineral, in the
stomach contents is accountable for the well known symptom heartburn.
Water-brash is a term applied to eructation of a colourless, almost
tasteless fluid, probably saliva, which has collected in the lower part
of the oesophagus from failure of the cardi