out the sauces.

4. Medicines producing much pale urine, as a certain quantity of alcohol,
invert the motions of the urinary absorbents; if the dose of alcohol is
greater, it inverts the stomach, producing the drunken sickness.

5. Medicines producing cold sweats, palpitation of the heart, globus
hystericus; as violent evacuations, some poisons, fear, anxiety, act by
inverting the natural order of the vascular motions.

II. OBSERVATIONS ON THE INVERTENTIA.

I. 1. The action of vomiting seems originally to have been occasioned by
disagreeable sensation from the distention or acrimony of the aliment; in
the same manner as when any disgustful material is taken into the mouth, as
a bitter drug, and is rejected by the retrograde motions of the tongue and
lips; as explained in Class IV. 1. 1. 2. and mentioned in Sect. XXXV. 1. 3.
Or the disagreeable sensation may thus excite the power of volition, which
may also contribute to the retrograde actions of the stomach and
oesophagus, as when cows bring up the contents of their first stomach to
re-masticate it. To either of these is to be attributed the action of mild
emetics, which soon cease to operate, and leave the stomach stronger, or
more irritable, after their operation; owing to the accumulation of the
sensorial power of irritation during its torpid or inverted action. Such
appears to be the operation of ipecacuanha, or of antimonium tartarizatum,
in small doses.

2. But there is reason to believe, that the stronger emetics, as digitalis,
first stimulate the absorbent vessels of the stomach into greater action;
and that the inverted motions of these absorbents next occur, pouring the
lymph, lately taken up, or obtained from other lymphatic branches, into the
stomach: the quantity of which in some diseases, as in the cholera morbus,
is inconceivable. This inverted motion, first of the absorbents of the
stomach, and afterwards of the stomach itself, seems to originate from the
exhaustion or debility, which succeeds the unnatural degree of action, into
which they had been previously stimulated. An unusual defect of stimulus,
as of food without spice or wine in the stomachs of those, who have been
much accustomed to spice or wine, will induce sickness or vomiting; in this
case the defective energy of the stomach is owing to defect of accustomed
stimulus; while the action of vomiting from digitalis is owing to a
deficiency of sensorial power, which is previously exhausted by