d in producing a
temporary coryza or catarrh.

Another instance may be adduced from the sympathy or consent of the motions
of the stomach with other more distant links of the very extensive tribes
or trains of irritative motions associated with them, described in Sect.
XX. on Vertigo. When the actions of the fibres of the stomach are
diminished or inverted, the actions of the absorbent vessels, which take up
the mucus from the lungs, pericardium, and other cells of the body, become
increased, and absorb the fluids accumulated in them with greater avidity,
as appears from the exhibition of foxglove, antimony, or other emetics in
cases of anasarca, attended with unequal pulse and difficult respiration.

That the act of nausea and vomiting is a decreased exertion of the fibres
of the stomach may be thus deduced; when an emetic medicine is
administered, it produces the pain of sickness, as a disagreeable taste in
the mouth produces the pain of nausea; these pains, like that of hunger, or
of cold, or like those, which are usually termed nervous, as the head-ach
or hemicrania, do not excite the organ into greater action; but in this
case I imagine the pains of sickness or of nausea counteract or destroy the
pleasurable sensation, which seems necessary to digestion, as shewn in
Sect. XXXIII. 1. 1. The peristaltic motions of the fibres of the stomach
become enfeebled by the want of this stimulus of pleasurable sensation, and
in consequence stop for a time, and then become inverted; for they cannot
become inverted without being previously stopped. Now that this inversion
of the trains of motion of the fibres of the stomach is owing to the
deficiency of pleasurable sensation is evinced from this circumstance, that
a nauseous idea excited by words will produce vomiting as effectually us a
nauseous drug.

Hence it appears, that the act of nausea or vomiting expends less sensorial
power than the usual peristaltic motions of the stomach in the digestion of
our aliment; and that hence there is a greater quantity of sensorial power
becomes accumulated in the fibres of the stomach, and more of it in
consequence to spare for the action of those parts of the system, which are
thus associated with the stomach, as of the whole absorbent series of
vessels, and which are at the same time excited by their usual stimuli.

From this we can understand, how after the operation of an emetic the
stomach becomes more irritable and sensible to the s