f dropsy.

* * * * *

ORDO II.

_Decreased Irritation._

GENUS IV.

_With Decreased Actions of other Cavities and Membranes._

Many of the diseases of this genus are attended with pain, and with cold
extremities, both which cease on the exhibition of wine or opium; which
shews, that they originate from deficient action of the affected organ.
These pains are called nervous or spasmodic, are not attended with fever,
but are frequently succeeded by convulsions and madness; both which belong
to the class of volition. Some of them return at periods, and when these
can be ascertained, a much less quantity of opium will prevent them, than
is necessary to cure them, when they are begun; as the vessels are then
torpid and inirritable from the want of sensorial power, till by their
inaction it becomes again accumulated.

Our organs of sense properly so called are not liable to pain from the
absence of their appropriated stimuli, as from darkness or silence; but the
other senses, which may be more properly called appetites, as those by
which we perceive heat, hunger, thirst, lust, want of fresh air, are
affected with pain from the defect or absence of their accustomed stimuli,
as well as with pleasure by the possession of them; it is probable that
some of our glands, whose sense or appetite requires or receives something
from the circulating blood, as the pancreas, liver, testes, prostate gland,
may be affected with aching or pain, when they cannot acquire their
appropriated fluid.

Wherever this defect of stimulus occurs, a torpor or inaction of the organ
ensues, as in the capillaries of the skin, when exposed to cold; and in the
glands, which secrete the gastric juice, when we are hungry. This torpor
however, and concomitant pain, which is at first owing to defect of
stimulus, is afterwards induced by other associations or catenations, and
constitutes the beginning of ague fits.

It must be further observed, that in the diseases of pain without fever,
the pain is frequently not felt in the part where the cause of the disease
resides; but is induced by sympathy with a distant part, whose irritability
or sensibility is greater or less than its own. Thus a stone at the neck of
the bladder, if its stimulus is not very great, only induces the pain of
strangury at the glans penis. If its stimulus be greater, it then induces
pain at the neck of the bladder. The concretions of bile, which are
pr