_Deglutition_ interrupted: we very rarely meet with this similitude of tantalus, wherein food or drink is either swallowed with difficulty and pain, or totally interrupted in its descent to the stomach, and regurgitated by the mouth or nose. The causes spasmodick constriction of the œsophagus, and in various parts of the tube; palsy of the muscles of deglutition; tumors or scirrhus in the pharynx, œsophagus, pylorus, trachea, thyroid or dorsal glands; aneurism and enlargement of the aorta, ulcers in the œsophagus; luxation of the os hyoides; compression of the pharyngeal nerves; cachexy, worms, crudity, passions, extraneous substances stuck in the throat. The spasmodick is periodical and painful; and also affects the voice: in the lower part of the œsophagus it excites pain between the shoulders; sometimes eructation and vomiting.
_Manducation._ Diseases of the teeth are the principal impediments to the exercise of this function. There are few adults who cannot describe the pangs of tooth-ach from their own feelings. It is generally intermittent, seldom dangerous to life, except during the first dentition of infancy. Its constant symptoms, pain, flow of saliva, restlessness: its variable symptoms, swelled face, carious loosened teeth; fistula, exostoses of the gums and jaws. The _causes_, inflammation of the periosteum of the teeth, gums, or jaw; suppressed perspiration; moist air; catarrhal defluxion; suppressed habitual evacuations, nasal hemorrhage and venesection; plethora; intermittent, scorbutick, arthritick; rheumatick; caries of the teeth; sugar eat; beetle and tobacco chewed, acrimony of blood or saliva; spirituous liquors; mercury; suppuration in the maxillary sinusses and gums; spunginess and flaccidity of the gums and periosteum; irritation and disorder of the fifth pair of nerves.
_Diseases of the Stomach and Intestinal Tube_, are very universal and frequent maladies in both sexes, and throughout all orders and ages. The stomach and alimentary canal are furnished with numerous nerves; and the sensibility of the former very acute, especially at its upper extremity. The length of the human alimentary tube, from the mouth to the anus, is five or six times the length of the whole body: it is folded into many convolutions, as may be daily seen at shambles, on the opening of animals. Into this alimentary muscular and contractile sewer are incessantly heaped food and drink, besides a variety of copious secretions from the body, requisite in the process of digestion and assimilation of chyle, as saliva, pancreatick fluid, bile, mucus, and arterial exhalation from the whole of its internal surface.