tion. An emetic. A cathartic with calomel. Warm-bath. Opium in large
quantities, beginning with smaller ones. Mercurial frictions. Electricity.
Cold-bath in the paroxysm; or cold aspersion. See Memoirs of Med. Society,
Lon. V. 3. p. 147. a paper by Dr. Currie.

_Convulsio debilis._ The convulsions of dying animals, as of those which
are bleeding to death in the slaughter-house, are an effort to relieve
painful sensation, either of the wound which occasions their death, or of
faintness from want of due distention of the blood-vessels. Similar to this
in a less degree is the subsultus tendinum, or starting of the tendons, in
fevers with debility; these actions of the muscles are too weak to move the
limb, but the belly of the acting muscles is seen to swell, and the tendon
to be stretched. These weak convulsions, as they are occasioned by the
disagreeable sensation of faintness from inanition, are symptoms of great
general debility, and thence frequently precede the general convulsions of
the act of dying. See a case of convulsion of a muscle of the arm, and of
the fore-arm, without moving the bones to which they were attached, Sect.
XVII. 1. 8. See twitchings of the face, Class IV. 1. 3. 2.

6. _Convulsio dolorifica._ Raphania. Painful convulsion. In this disease
the muscles of the arms and legs are exerted to relieve the pains left
after the rheumatism in young and delicate people; it recurs once or twice
a-day, and has been mistaken for the chorea, or St. Vitus's dance; but
differs from it, as the undue motions in that disease only occur, when the
patient endeavours to exert the natural ones; are not attended with pain;
and cease, when he lies down without trying to move: the chorea, or dance
of St. Vitus, is often introduced by the itch, this by the rheumatism.

It has also been improperly called nervous rheumatism; but is distinguished
from rheumatism, as the pains recur by periods once or twice a day; whereas
in the chronic rheumatism they only occur on moving the affected muscles.
And by the warmth of a bed the pains of the chronic rheumatism are
increased, as the muscles or membranes then become more sensible to the
stimulus of the extraneous mucaginous material deposited under them.
Whereas the pains of the raphania, or painful convulsion, commence with
coldness of the part, or of the extremities. See Rheumatismus chronicus,
Class I. 1. 3. 12.

The pains which accompany the contractions of the muscles in this di