or laughter, more general
convulsions occur; which vary perhaps according to the situation of the
pained part, or to some previous associations formed by the early habits of
life. When these convulsive motions bend the body forwards, they are termed
emprosthotonoi; when they bend it backward, they are termed opisthotonoi.
They frequently succeed each other, but the opisthotonoi are generally more
violent; as the muscles, which erect the body, and keep it erect, are
naturally in more constant and more forcible action than their antagonists.

The causes of convulsion are very numerous, as from toothing in children,
from worms or acidity in their bowels, from eruption of the distinct
small-pox, and lastly, from breathing too long the air of an unventilated
bed-room. Sir G. Baker, in the Transactions of the College, described this
disease, and detected its cause; where many children in an orphan-house
were crowded together in one chamber without a chimney, and were almost all
of them affected with convulsion; in the hospital at Dublin, many died of
convulsions before the real cause was understood. See Dr. Beddoes's Guide
to Self-preservation. In a large family, which I attended, where many
female servants slept in one room, which they had contrived to render
inaccessible to every blast of air; I saw four who were thus seized with
convulsions, and who were believed to have been affected by sympathy from
the first who fell ill. They were removed into more airy apartments, but
were some weeks before they all regained their perfect health.

Convulsion is distinguished from epilepsy, as the patient does not intirely
lose all perception during the paroxysm. Which only shews, that a less
exhaustion of sensorial power renders tolerable the pains which cause
convulsion, than those which cause epilepsy. The hysteric convulsions are
distinguished from those, owing to other causes, by the presence of the
expectation of death, which precedes and succeeds them, and generally by a
flow of pale urine; these convulsions do not constantly attend the hysteric
disease, but are occasionally superinduced by the disagreeable sensation
arising from the torpor or inversion of a part of the alimentary canal.
Whence the convulsion of laughter is frequently sufficient to restrain
these hysteric pains, which accounts for the fits of laughter frequently
attendant on this disease.

M. M. To remove the peculiar pain which excites the convulsions.
Venesec