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It is in this way, says Dr. Combe, that bile in the stomach excites nausea, and that tartar emetic produces vomiting. The nerves of the bowels, on the other hand, are constituted in relation to digested food; and, consequently, when any thing escapes into them from the stomach in an undigested state, it becomes a source of irritative excitement.

After some days the irritative circles of motions become disordered by this new stimulus, which acts upon the mucus lining of the stomach; and sickness, vertigo, and a diurnal fever succeed. XXV. 17. and Class IV. 2.

The cure of vertigo will frequently depend on our previously investigating the cause of it, which from what has been delivered above may originate from the disorder of any part of the great tribes of irritative motions, and of the associate motions catenated with them.

It appears from hence, that we can be sensible of a number of ideas at the same time, such as the whiteness, hardness, and coldness, of a snow-ball, and can experience at the same time many irritative ideas of surrounding bodies, which we do not attend to, as mentioned in Section VII. 3. 2.

The vibrations of the two organ-pipes may be compared to Nonius's rule; the sound is louder, when they coincide, and less at the intermediate times. But, as the sound of bells is the most familiar of those sounds, which have a considerable battement, the vertiginous patients, who attend to the irritative circles of sounds above described, generally compare it to the noise of bells.

For though in the vertigo from intoxication the irritative ideas of the apparent motions of objects are indistinct from their decrease of energy: yet in the vertigo occasioned by rocking or swinging the irritative ideas of the apparent motions of objects are increased in energy, and hence they induce pleasure into the system, but are equally indistinct, and in consequence equally unfit to balance ourselves by.

The same probably occurs in the secretion of bile; that is, that the pleasurable sensation excited in the stomach, affects this secretion by sensitive association, as well as by irritative association.

XX. and XXI. 3. on Vertigo and on Drunkenness, and hence the staggering inebriate cannot completely balance himself by such indistinct vision. An instance of the third circumstance, where the primary part of a train of irritative motions acts with less, and the secondary part with greater energy, may be observed by making the following experiment.

Hence the whole muscular system may be considered as one organ of sense, and the various attitudes of the body, as ideas belonging to this organ, of many of which we are hourly conscious, while many others, like the irritative ideas of the other senses, are performed without our attention.

Another mode, by which life is gradually undermined, is when irritative motions continue to be produced in consequence of stimulus, but are not succeeded by sensation; hence the stimulus of contagious matter is not capable of producing fever a second time, because it is not succeeded by sensation. See Sect.