a._ Inirritative debility. A defective action of the
irritative motions without increase of the frequency of the pulse. It
continues three or four weeks like a fever, and then either terminates in
health, or the patient sinks into one kind of apoplexy, and perishes. Many
symptoms, which attend inirritative fevers, accompany this disease, as cold
hands and feet at periodic times, scurf on the tongue, want of appetite,
muddy urine, with pains of the head, and sometimes vertigo, and vomiting.

This disease differs from the inirritative fever by the pulse not being
more frequent than in health. The want of appetite and of digestion is a
principal symptom, and probably is the cause of the universal debility,
which may be occasioned by the want of nourishment. The vertigo is a
symptom of inirritability, as shewn in Class IV. 2. 1. 16. the muddy urine
is owing to increased absorption from the bladder in consequence of the
diminished cutaneous and cellular absorption, as in anasarca, explained in
Sect. XXIX. 5. 1. and is therefore a consequence of the inirritability of
that part of the system; the foul tongue is owing to an increased
absorption of the thinner part of the mucus in consequence of the general
deficiency of fluid, which should be absorbed by the skin and stomach. The
sickness is owing to decreased action of the stomach, which is probably the
primary disease, and is connected with the vertigo.

M. M. An emetic. Calomel, grains iv. once or twice. Then a blister.
Peruvian bark. Valerian. Columbo. Steel. Opium and wine in small
quantities, repeated alternately every three hours. Small electric
percussions through the stomach.

3. _Somnus interruptus._ Interrupted sleep. In some fevers, where the
inirritability is very great, when the patient falls asleep, the pulse in a
few minutes becomes irregular, and the patient awakes in great disorder,
and fear of dying, refusing to sleep again from the terror of this uneasy
sensation. In this extreme debility there is reason to believe, that some
voluntary power during our waking hours is employed to aid the irritative
stimuli in carrying on the circulation of the blood through the lungs; in
the same manner as we use voluntary exertions, when we listen to weak
sounds, or wish to view an object by a small light; in sleep volition is
suspended, and the deficient irritation alone is not sufficient to carry on
the pulmonary circulation. This explanation seems the most probable one,