Some persons are subject to attacks of heaviness and low spirits, loss of appetite, and vomiting of bile every few weeks, or it may be, at irregular times, from indiscretion in diet or other causes, and they are said to be “bilious,” and these attacks are called “bilious attacks.” They are at times accompanied with severe headache. Persons of this habit of body are usually compelled to take a certain amount of exercise each day to keep off these attacks. The attacks are due to imperfect action of the liver, which, unless kept in order by exercise and a proper mode of living, relieves itself periodically by excessive secretion of bile and a “bilious attack.”
General Treatment.-Avoidance of rich food, or too much of any kind of food. Regular modes of living, open-air exercise, attention to the bowels, and the use of whole-meal bread if there is a tendency to be constipated.
Medicines.-In the old days a blue pill at night and a black draught in the morning was the medical treatment for these conditions, and it certainly had the effect of stimulating the liver and relieving the bowels, but it reduced the strength of the patient, and did nothing towards preventing a second attack.
The Attack-(Medicines to be given every half-hour.) Nux. vom. 3.-
Vomiting of bile, violent headache, constipation.
Bryonia 3.-
Sharp pain in liver, frontal headache, constipation, white stools.
Podoph. 6.-
Vomiting of bile, morning diarrhoea, green or yellow stools.
The Constitution.-(Medicines to be given three or four times a day.)
Nux. vom. 3.-
In spare persons of sedentary habits, subject to constipation.
Bryonia 3.-
In dark patients, subject to pains in the shoulder and liver; feeling of weight at the stomach after food; constipation with light stools.
Pulsatilla 3.-
In blonde persons of mild disposition, with bowels regular or loose.
Sulph. 6.-
When there is constipation or morning diarrhoea; sinking sensation worse in the forenoon.
