tobacco, anxiety.

V. Cold sudorifics, poisons, fear, approaching death.

* * * * *

ART. VI.

REVERTENTIA.

I. Those things, which restore the natural order of the inverted irritative
motions, are termed Revertentia.

1. As musk, castor, asafoetida, valerian, essential oils.

2. Externally the vapour of burnt feathers, of volatile salts, or oils,
blisters, sinapisms.

These reclaim the inverted motions without increasing the heat of the body
above its natural state, if given in their proper doses, as in the globus
hystericus, and palpitation of the heart.

The incitantia revert these morbid motions more certainly, as opium and
alcohol; and restore the natural heat more; but if they induce any degree
of intoxication, they are succeeded by debility, when their stimulus
ceases.

II. OBSERVATIONS ON THE REVERTENTIA.

I. The hysteric disease is attended with inverted motions feebly exerted of
the oesophagus, intestinal canal and lymphatics of the bladder. Hence the
borborigmi, or rumbling of the bowels, owing to their fluid contents
descending as the air beneath ascends. The globus hystericus consists in
the retrograde motion of the oesophagus, and the great flow of urine from
that of the lymphatics spread on the neck of the bladder; and a copious
salivation sometimes happens to these patients from the inversion of the
lymphatics of the mouth; and palpitation of the heart owing to weak or
incipient inversion of its motions; and syncope, when this occurs in its
greatest degree.

These hysteric affections are not necessarily attended with pain; though it
sometimes happens, that pains, which originate from quiescence, afflict
these patients, as the hemicrania, which has erroneously been termed the
clavus hystericus; but which is owing solely to the inaction of the
membranes of that part, like the pains attending the cold fits of
intermittents, and which frequently returns like them at very regular
periods of time.

Many of the above symptoms are relieved by musk, castor, the foetid gums,
valerian, oleum animale, oil of amber, which act in the usual dose without
heating the body. The pains, which sometimes attend these constitutions,
are relieved by the secernentia, as essential oils in common tooth-ach, and
balsam of Peru in the flatulent colic. But the incitantia, as opium, or
vinous spirit, reclaim these morbid inverted motions with more certainty,
than the foetids; and remove