10. From Nervous Debility.
Some of the most inveterate cases of indigestion arise from weakness of the nervous system. This may be brought on in many ways. It may be due to nervous strain or worry of business. It may arise from fright, mental shock, or anxiety. Much more frequently it arises from evil habits and abuse of the organs of generation. One vicious boy at school will often corrupt numbers of others, and so the disease will spread like an infection, bearing fruit before long in the loss of all manly qualities, and in sufferings of a most distressing kind connected with the process of digestion. These cases, like most of the others, are curable, but they need much care, and, of course, a sine qua non is the abandonment of the habits that have brought about the disorder.
II. From Bloodlessness.
Young girls between 12 and 20 are very frequently affected with a disease commonly called “green-sickness.” This is chiefly a fault of digestion, primary or secondary, or both, but it is also a fruitful cause of digestive troubles. There is almost complete loss of appetite, constant nausea, frequent vomiting. Usually, also, there is great weakness and constipation. When the condition is attended by violent pains at the stomach after all food, it is not easy to distinguish between simple indigestion and ulceration of the stomach. This is usually declared by vomiting of blood in the quantity, which never takes place in ordinary indigestion, and is rarely, if ever, absent at some period of ulceration.
12. Medicinal.
Many a sufferer from indigestion traces his troubles to the prescriptions of his doctor. It is one of the commonest experiences of medical life, to find digestion ruined by strong drugs given for other complaints. Others owe it not to their doctors, but to their own efforts to cure themselves with drugs. Probably, in the first instance, it has been a slight attack of indigestion from indiscretion in diet, for which the offender has purchased a drug according to his own fancy. Then the drug has set up symptoms of its own, for which he has taken more drugs. More symptoms have followed, and the drugging has become a habit which he has not been able to break off. Palliatives, like Bicarbonate of Soda and Bismuth, are responsible for many cases of confirmed dyspepsia, and Iron, Mercury, and acids for many more. The symptoms in these cases vary according to the drugs which have caused them.
13. Constitutional.
A depraved or disordered constitutional state is often answerable for chronic indigestion. Persons who inherit a tendency to skin disease frequently find that when their skin is affected their digestion is good, and vice versa. This is what Hahnemann called psora. In such cases, the only treatment that is of any permanent service is one which is directed to the constitution as a whole. The indigestion is only one symptom of many.
Indigestion is frequently a manifestation of the consumptive tendency which is one of the branches of Psora, and in such cases Tuberculinum or Bacillinum often greatly assists the cure. Occasional doses may be given inter-currently with the symptomatically indicated remedy.
The hydrogenoid constitution of Grauvogl is answerable for many disorders of digestion. *1 This subject is dealt with at large in the author’s Constitutional Medicine, with especial reference to the Three Constitutions of von Grauvogl.* The symptoms of this are an extraordinary sensitiveness to cold, damp, and barometrical changes. The persons are always chilly. Residence by water, in valleys, or forests, passing storms, and changes of weather bring on attacks of illness, which takes various forms. Sometimes it is general malaise, with no definite symptoms, only the patient feels wretched only the patient feels wretched, good for nothing. At other times it is an attack of asthma or ague. Certain kinds of food disagree with them, such as melons, cucumbers, mushrooms, hard-boiled eggs, watery fruits, fish, and sometimes milk. They are generally pale and have cold feet. They are better in summer than in winter, and are relieved when they perspire. This constitution may be inherited or acquired. It often follows malarial poisoning. The particular form of indigestion attending this constitution is marked by pains in the stomach, water-brash, eructations of odourless gas, often brought on by eating watery fruits or vegetables and vegetable acids. There is distaste for animal food, though the appetite is often good. With such patients drinking plain water produces aggravation, and in their case the addition of wine to the water they drink is necessary.
Vaccination often leaves behind it a depraved state of the constitution with many hydrogenoid symptoms, and the development of abdominal flatulence. Thuja meets most of these cases.
14. From Gout.
Chronic gout is answerable for much indigestion. It takes a great variety of forms and is often attended with pains in the joints or affections of the skin. There is loss of appetite, acidity, tendency to flatulence, generally constipation. Gouty persons are inclined to the formation of fat in spite of small appetite. This is in consequence of insufficient oxidation of the tissues. They have nearly always a great desire for the open air.
Some persons who are constitutionally dyspeptic always suffer from an attack when the wind is in the east.
Before closing this chapter I must say a word on a very inveterate form of indigestion which is associated with the modern malady Neurasthenia. It is beyond the limits of this treatise to deal with this subject, but I may mention that the nerve-weakness of the condition is very markedly manifested in the digestive tract. The stomach is dilated and the entire digestive system is in a state of devitalisation.
In addition to the above-named, there are cases of dyspepsia arising from causes which cannot easily be classed, and some which seem to arise from no discoverable cause, and which are hence termed self-causing, or, in the medical phrase, “idiopathic.”
In the following chapter I shall describe the treatment of the different kinds of indigestion, and shall relate a number of typical cases.
