M. M. Wine and opium in small quantities repeated every three hours alternately; small repeated blisters; warm but fresh air; sorbentia; nutrientia; transfusion of blood. Small electric shocks passed through the brain in all directions. Oxygene air?
2. _Paresis inirritativa._ Inirritative debility. A defective action of the irritative motions without increase of the frequency of the pulse. It continues three or four weeks like a fever, and then either terminates in health, or the patient sinks into one kind of apoplexy, and perishes. Many symptoms, which attend inirritative fevers, accompany this disease, as cold hands and feet at periodic times, scurf on the tongue, want of appetite, muddy urine, with pains of the head, and sometimes vertigo, and vomiting.
This disease differs from the inirritative fever by the pulse not being more frequent than in health. The want of appetite and of digestion is a principal symptom, and probably is the cause of the universal debility, which may be occasioned by the want of nourishment. The vertigo is a symptom of inirritability, as shewn in Class IV. 2. 1. 16. the muddy urine is owing to increased absorption from the bladder in consequence of the diminished cutaneous and cellular absorption, as in anasarca, explained in Sect. XXIX. 5. 1. and is therefore a consequence of the inirritability of that part of the system; the foul tongue is owing to an increased absorption of the thinner part of the mucus in consequence of the general deficiency of fluid, which should be absorbed by the skin and stomach. The sickness is owing to decreased action of the stomach, which is probably the primary disease, and is connected with the vertigo.
M. M. An emetic. Calomel, grains iv. once or twice. Then a blister. Peruvian bark. Valerian. Columbo. Steel. Opium and wine in small quantities, repeated alternately every three hours. Small electric percussions through the stomach.
3. _Somnus interruptus._ Interrupted sleep. In some fevers, where the inirritability is very great, when the patient falls asleep, the pulse in a few minutes becomes irregular, and the patient awakes in great disorder, and fear of dying, refusing to sleep again from the terror of this uneasy sensation. In this extreme debility there is reason to believe, that some voluntary power during our waking hours is employed to aid the irritative stimuli in carrying on the circulation of the blood through the lungs; in the same manner as we use voluntary exertions, when we listen to weak sounds, or wish to view an object by a small light; in sleep volition is suspended, and the deficient irritation alone is not sufficient to carry on the pulmonary circulation. This explanation seems the most probable one, because in cases of apoplexy the irritative motions of the arterial system do not seem to be impaired, nor in common sleep. See Incubus III. 2. 1. 13.