quantity
of aerated purulent matter, stimulate the whole system into greater energy
of action, and thus prevent the torpor which is the beginning of so many
diseases. In confirmation of this effect of pain on the system, I remember
the case of a lady of an ingenious and active mind, who, for many of the
latter years of her life, was perpetually subject to great pains of her
head from decaying teeth. When all her teeth were gone, she became quite
low spirited, and melancholy in the popular sense of that word, and after a
year or two became universally dropsical and died.

M. M. Issues in the thighs. Five grains of rhubarb, and one sixth of a
grain of emetic tartar every night for some months, with or without half a
grain of opium. No stronger liquor than small beer, or wine diluted with
twice its quantity of water. Since I wrote the above I have seen two cases
of hydrops thoracis, attended with pain in the left arm, so as to be
mistaken for asthma dolorificum, in which femoral issues, though applied
early in the disease, had no effect.

12. _Stridor dentium._ The clattering of the teeth on going into cold
water, or in the beginning of ague-fits, is an exertion along with the
tremblings of the skin to relieve the pain of cold. The teeth and skin
being more sensible to cold than the more internal parts, and more exposed
to it, is the reason that the muscles, which serve them, are thrown into
exertion from the pain of cold rather than those of respiration, as in
screaming from more acute pain. Thus the poet,

Put but your toes into cold water,
Your correspondent teeth will clatter.
PRIOR.

In more acute pains the jaws are gnashed together with great vehemence,
insomuch that sometimes the teeth are said to have been broken by the
force. See Sect. XXXIV. 1. 3. In these cases something should be offered to
the patient to bite, as a towel, otherwise they are liable to tear their
own arms, or to bite their attendants, as I have witnessed in the painful
epilepsy.

13. _Tetanus trismus._ Cramp. The tetanus consists of a fixed spasm of
almost all the muscles of the body; but the trismus, or locked jaw, is the
most frequent disease of this kind. It is generally believed to arise from
sympathy with an injured tendon. In one case where it occurred in
consequence of a broken ankle from a fall from a horse, it was preceded by
evident hydrophobia. Amputation was advised, but not submitted to; two
woun