Book 2
CHAPTER V. CURE OF ILEUS.
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IN Ileus it is pain that kills, along with inflammation of the bowels, or straining and swelling. A most acute and most disgusting form of death! For others, when in a hopeless state of illness, fear nothing except their impending death; but those in ileus, from excess of pain earnestly desire death. The physician, therefore, must neither be inferior to the affection, nor more dilatory; but, if he find inflammation to be the cause, open a vein at the elbow by a large orifice, so that blood, which is the pabulum of the inflammation, may flow copiously; and it may be carried the length of deliquium animi, for this is either the commencement of an escape from pain, or of a torpor ending in insensibility. For in ileus a breathing-time for a short space, even from loss of sensibility, will prove an interval from pain; since, also, to persons enduring these pains, to die is happiness, but to impart it is not permitted to the respectable physician; but at times it is permitted, when he foresees that present symptoms cannot be escaped from, to lull the patient asleep with narcotics and anæsthetics.
