which
sounds on being struck. It is generally attended with costiveness and
emaciation. In one kind the air is said to exist in the bowels, in which
case the tumor is less equal, and becomes less tense and painful on the
evacuation of air. In the other kind the air exists in the cavity of the
abdomen, and sometimes is in a few days exchanged for water, and the
tympany becomes an ascites.

Air may be distinguished in the stomach of many people by the sound on
striking it with the fingers, and comparing the sound with that of a
similar percussion on other parts of the bowels; but towards the end of
fevers, and especially in the puerperal fever, a distention of the abdomen
by air is generally a fatal symptom, though the ease, and often
cheerfulness, of the patient vainly flatters the attendants.

M. M. In the former case a clyster-pipe unarmed may be introduced, and left
some time in the rectum, to take off the resistance of the sphincter, and
thus discharge the air, as it is produced from the fermenting or putrefying
aliment. For this purpose, in a disease somewhat similar in horses, a
perforation is made into the rectum on one side of the sphincter; through
which fistula the air, which is produced in such great excess from the
quantity of vegetable food which they take, when their digestions are
impaired, is perpetually evacuated. In both cases also, balsams, essential
oil, spice, bandage on the abdomen, and, to prevent the fermentation of the
aliment, acid of vitriol, saliva. See Class I. 2. 4. 5.

10. _Hypochondriasis._ The hypochondriac disease consists in indigestion
and consequent flatulency, with anxiety or want of pleasureable sensation.
When the action of the stomach and bowels is impaired, much gas becomes
generated by the fermenting or putrescent aliment, and to this indigestion
is catenated languor, coldness of the skin, and fear. For when the
extremities are cold for too long a time in some weak constitutions,
indigestion is produced by direct sympathy of the skin and the stomach,
with consequent heart-burn, and flatulency. The same occurs if the skin be
made cold by fear, as in riding over dangerous roads in winter, and hence
conversely fear is produced by indigestion or torpor of the stomach by
association.

This disease is confounded with the fear of death, which is an insanity,
and therefore of a totally different nature. It is also confounded with the
hysteric disease, which consists in the retrograde