A Tenesms is an irregular Retention of Nature, and nothing else but a continual Desire or Inclination of going to STOOL; attended with Pain, without voiding any thing but Slime, or an indigested Mucosity: And this is in the Anus, what a Strangury is in the Bladder; being Both a violent Contraction of the Fibres, or Disorder of the Sphincter-Muscles.
WHICH tenacious Symptom proceeds from a great Variety of Causes, occasionally provoking the expulsive Faculty of the strait Gut, call’d the Rectum, without a Power to expel; such as may happen to be an unusual Exulceration, or Constriction of, or an Acid-Salt-Humour in the same Intestine: So likewise a Stone in the Neck of the Bladder, a Tumour of the adjacent Parts, or seminal Vessels, a frigid Intemperature, the Hemorrhoides, a Dysenteria, Dysuria, Ischuria or Stranguria, &c. may very shrewdly occasion the Tenesmus.
WHICH binding SYMPTOM is of the same dangerous Nature and[80]Consequence with the preceding Case; both having an equal Effect of Power, if not prevented, to expel and dislodge the Infant. Which Notion cannot be otherways better maintain’d; for the Womb being situated upon the Intestinum Rectum, must suffer great Commotions by continual Needings and Strainings in both Cases.
BUT the safest Cure, in short, in my humble Opinion, is to be perform’d by proper Decoctions, Fomentations, and absterging Clysters.