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rected them to be extracted, and advised him afterwards to
lose a few ounces of blood any time when he felt the premon-
itory symptoms of a recurrence of his fits. He followed my
advice, in consequence of which, I had lately the pleasure of
hearing from his brother, that he was perfectly cured." The
following case of an hysterical affection I lately witnessed in
my own practice : about the last of October, 1827, I was
requested to call and see a lady, living in a small alley be-
low Christian-street. I found she had been afflicted with a
most distressing tooth-ache for about three weeks, and to
that degree had the pain in her tooth affected her nerves,
that any thing which was unusual, as any kind of mental
emotion, &c. threw her into fits of hysteria ; as for instance,
when she sat in a chair to have her pained tooth extracted,
she fell into a violent paroxysm of hysterical convulsions,
and her mother informed me that when her tooth was in
pain, without any other apparently exciting cause, she would
have the hysteric paroxysms. As I found she could not be
in any way composed so as to allow of extracting her tooth,
I gave her a preparation of nitrous ether and pulverized alum,
directing to apply it upon a piece of cotton to the diseased
tooth, and directed them, as soon as her health and spirits
would allow, to have her tooth extracted. I have never
heard from her since.
section vt.
HYPOCHONDRIASIS.
Hypochondriasis is usually an attendant upon a disordered
state of the gastric functions ; and all the cases of dyspepsia