Permanent or organic stricture of the asophagus may arise from inflammatory thickening and induration of its coats, or from scirrhous and other formations, situated either in the walls of or external to the tube. The most common seat of this affection is at its upper part. The symptoms are persistent and gradually increasing difficulty of swallowing, occasionally aggravated by fits of spasm; and a bough', when passed, always meets with resistance at the same spot. When the contraction is clue to inflam matory thickening% it may arise from the abuse of alcoholic drinks, or from swallowing boiling or corrosive thdds; and it is said that it has been induced by violent retching in sea-sickness. If unrelieved, the disease must prove fatal, either by ulceration of the tube around the seat of the stricture, or by sheer starvation. When the affection origi nates in inflammation, sonic advantage may be derived from a mild course of mercury, occasional leeching, and narcotics; and especially from the occasional passage of a bangle, of a hall-prohang (an ivory ball attached to a piece of whalebone), or or a piece of sponge moistened with a weak solution of nitrate of silver. If it is dependent upon malignant disease, and the tissues have become softened by the infiltration of the mor bid deposit, the Bougie must be directed with the greatest care through the stricture, as a false passage may be easily made into important adjacent cavities.
Foreign bodies not very unfrequently pass into the (=esophagus, and become impacted there, giving rise to a sense of choking and fits of suffocative cough, especially when they-are smated in its upper part. They may not only cause immediate death by excit ing spasm of the glottis, but if allowed to remain, may excite ulceration of the parts, and thus cause death by exhaustion. If the body is small and sharp (a fish-bone, for
example), it may often he got rid of by making the patient swallow a large mouthful of bread; if it is large and soft (such as too large a mouthful of meat), it May generally be pushed down into the stomach: with the probing; while large hard bodies (such as pieces of bone) should be brought up either by the action of an emetic, or by long curved for cepa. If the offending body can neither be brought up nor pushed down, it must be extracted by the operation of cesophagotonty—an operation which can only be performed when the impacted body is not very low down, and which it is unnecessary to describe iu these pages.
a. family of dipterous insects, having a mere rudimentary proboscis or none, the palm also sometimes wanting, and the mouth reduced to three tubercles; the amen= short and inclosed in a cavity in the forepart of the head; the abdomen large. They are generally very hairy, the hair often colored in rings. They resemble flesh-flies in their general appearance, and are nearly allied to museick. The perfect insect is very short-iived. The females deposit their eggs on different species of herbivorous =m inutia, each insect being limited to a particular kind of quadruped, and selecting for its eggs a situation on the animal suitable to the habits of the larva, which are different in different species, although the larvae of all the species are parasites of herbivorous quad rupeds. The characters and habits of some of the most notable species are described in the article BOT. Animals seem generally to have a strong instinctive dread of the cestrithe which infest them.