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d. By exciting serous discharges from the bowels.
Upon the principle announced in the preceding section, the operation of a saline cathartic may relieve the pulmonary organs when loaded with a preternatural accumulation of fluid, and consequently assist expectoration. On the contrary, if the exhalation be deficient, this class of remedies may increase pulmonary irritation, and check expectoration, a fact which coincides with the concurrent testimony of many able practitioners.
III. Of Medicines which operate mechanically.
a. By imparting vigour to the respiratory muscles, engaged in the act of expectorating.
It must be admitted that, to a certain extent, expectoration is a voluntary operation, connected with the action of a variety of muscles, which in a state of extreme debility are not easily excited into action: every practitioner must have noticed this fact during the treatment of the coughs of exhausted patients, and have witnessed the distress necessarily arising from it; in this condition, the exhibition of a stimulant may so far renew the exhausted excitability of these organs, as to enable them to undergo the necessary exertions.