The common smells of the surrounding air sometimes excite the attention of these patients, and bad smells are complained of, which to other people are imperceptible.  The irritative motions that belong to the sense of pressure, or of touch, are attended to, and the patient conceives the bed to librate, and is fearful of falling out of it.  The irritative motions belonging to the senses of distention, and of heat, like those above mentioned, become attended to at this time:  hence we feel the pulsation of our arteries all over us, and complain of heat, or of cold, in parts of the body where there is no accumulation or diminution of actual heat.  All which are to be explained, as in the last paragraph, by the irritative ideas belonging to the various senses being now excited by internal stimuli, or by their associations with other irritative motions.  And that the inebriate, like one in a dream, believes the external objects, which usually caused these irritative ideas, to be now present.

10.  The diseases in consequence of frequent inebriety, or of daily taking much vinous spirit without inebriety, consist in the paralysis, which is liable to succeed violent stimulation.  Organs, whose actions are associated with others, are frequently more affected than the organ, which is stimulated into too violent action.  See Sect.  XXIV. 2. 8.  Hence in drunken people it generally happens, that the secretory vessels of the liver become first paralytic, and a torpor with consequent gall-stones or schirrus of this viscus is induced with concomitant jaundice; otherwise it becomes inflamed in consequence of previous torpor, and this inflammation is frequently transferred to a more sensible part, which is associated with it, and produces the gout, or the rosy eruption of the face, or some other leprous eruption on the head, or arms, or legs.  Sometimes the stomach is first affected, and paralysis of the lacteal system is induced:  whence a total abhorrence from flesh-food, and general emaciation.  In others the lymphatic system is affected with paralysis, and dropsy is the consequence.  In some inebriates the torpor of the liver produces pain without apparent schirrus, or gall stones, or inflammation, or consequent gout, and in these epilepsy or insanity are often the consequence.  All which will be more fully treated of in the course of the work.

I am well aware, that it is a common opinion, that the gout is as frequently owing to gluttony in eating, as to intemperance in drinking fermented or spirituous liquors.  To this I answer, that I have seen no person afflicted with the gout, who has not drank freely of fermented liquor, as wine and water, or small beer; though as the disposition to all the diseases, which have originated from intoxication, is in some degree hereditary, a less quantity of spirituous potation will induce the gout in those, who inherit the disposition from their parents.  To which I must add, that in young people the rheumatism is frequently mistaken for the gout.