TO THE SUFFERING AND MUCH-ABUSED STOMACHS OF HER MAJESTY QUEEN VICTORIA'S FAITHFUL SUBJECTS, THESE PAGES ARE DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. ALTHOUGH medical literature abounds with treatises on the diseased conditions of the stomach, it has always appeared to me that they lacked that comprehensiveness which can alone render clear to the laical reader the immense influence exercised by that organ in the production of a long list of ailments for which he can rarely account. It has been too commonly the practice to speak of, and to treat, each of such ailments as a distinct disease, and, in thus failing to attach it to the stomach, to make that organ the vehicle for remedies, the ultimate effect of which is to increase and strengthen the morbid cause resident in the digestive apparatus. A practical result of this kind was too serious not to warrant an attempt to place the important subject of stomach and bowel disease in its true light, and connect it with the thousand and one sensations in other parts of the body, of which it is at once the centre and the cause. But this attempt is further necessary when it is held in mind that, in order to relieve the sensations alluded to, a system of medication has long been established which generates, maintains, and augments a state of the stomach and bowels, that is altogether incompatible with a chance of radical recovery either from their disease or from the sensations that are so generally but so erroneously supposed to be separate complaints. To such an extent, indeed, has this system been carried, that in speaking of STOMACH COMPLAINTS it becomes unavoidable to refer a portion of them to drugging as a cause, and thus to establish a class of disorders hitherto unappreciated, but of the existence of which no precise medical observer can doubt; to this class I have given the name of DRUG DISEASES. To the causes, symptoms, and treatment of these two orders of disease, therefore, I purpose to dedicate the pages of a work, the First Part of which is now published. This First Part contains the causes of stomach and bowel disease in infancy, childhood, and the adult age, with the manner in which they produce their effects. The symptoms in each of these periods of life are also given in detail: and among these many disorders are explained in their |