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Updated: September 10, 2025
In respect to the irritative motions this is exemplified in the peristaltic contractions of the bowels; which cease and are renewed alternately, though the stimulus of the aliment continues to be uniformly applied; in the sensitive motions, as in strangury, tenesmus, and parturition, the alternate contractions and relaxations of the muscles exist, though the stimulus is perpetual.
It seems, however, to be largely dependent on the secretion and discharge into the duodenum of an improper quantity of bile, and an irregularity in the peristaltic action of the upper part of the bowels, particularly of the duodenum, in which that action more or less is reversed, and thereby throws the biliary fluid up, through the pylorus, into the stomach.
The two vessels are connected in front and behind by a loop that runs round the gut. The blood contained in the two tubes is propelled by their peristaltic contractions. The arrows indicate the direction of the flow of blood. As a rule, they have three parallel longitudinal vessels connected by loops, a single dorsal vessel above the gut and a pair of lateral vessels to the right and left.
Diarrhea is suppressed with laudanum and other opiates, which paralyze the peristaltic action of the bowels and, if repeated, soon produce chronic constipation.
There is an instance told in the Philosophical Transactions of a man, who could for a time stop the motion of his heart when he pleased; and Mr. D. has often told me, be could so far increase the peristaltic motion of his bowels by voluntary efforts, as to produce an evacuation by stool at any time in half an hour.
I have watched worms during the act of ejection, and when the earth was in a very liquid state it was ejected in little spurts, and by a slow peristaltic movement when not so liquid. It is not cast indifferently on any side, but with some care, first on one and then on another side; the tail being used almost like a trowel.
What would seem to us to be a few fundamental principles for the act of world-assimilation, that vast, slow, unconscious crowd-process, that peristaltic action of society of gathering up and stowing away men all these little numberless cells of humanity where they belong? No one cell can have much to say about it. But we can watch.
But when a great quantity of wine, or of opium, is swallowed, the retrograde motions of the stomach do not occur till after several minutes, or even hours; for when the power of so strong a stimulus ceases, according to the second law of irritation, mentioned above, the peristaltic motions become tremulous, and at length retrograde; as is well known to the drunkard, who on the next morning has sickness and vomitings.
The muscles of the abdomen the bowels and all involved and contiguous parts became set or fixed; and when this rigid state became established, the bowels below the cecum refused to receive the contents of the small intestine; hence when the peristaltic movement started at the head of the small intestine it found that an embargo had been laid on the cecum and lower bowels so that nothing could pass.
The peristaltic motions of our stomach and intestines, and the secretions of the various glands, are other circles of irritative motions, some of them more or less complete, according to our abstinence or satiety.
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