Christo praeside et auspice: Theses hasce de Dolore Colico

XX.
Matter, slow and cold, is resolved into flatus when a heat not very intense has attacked it. Hence, frequent griping pains in quartan fevers; likewise in the paroxysms of other fevers, which nevertheless calm down when the heat grows strong under the vigor. Constant griping pains also occur in the decline of intermittent fevers, when a remoter heat acts upon the remains of the conquered disease. Flatus also invades the intestines by a defect of the spleen, when it does not sufficiently purge the blood from the melancholic humor: so also by a defect of either the stomach or the liver; when because of the weakness of those viscera, many flatus arise through digestion.

XXI.
By what means flatus, whose substance seems to be thinner, can be so restrained in such great amplitude of the colon, and torment the sick person with such great pains, one might not undeservedly wonder.

XXII.
And concerning the force of flatus, the answer is easier: since we see that by the incursion of winds, not only the strongest fortresses and buildings are laid low; but also, if they are intercepted in the passages of the earth, whole cities, vastest mountains, and often entire regions are overturned by their shaking and violence.

XXIII.
The reason, however, by which they are restrained within this intestine, can perhaps be derived from this: that this intestine is also more sinuous than the others; and because, in such a varied circumference of the intestines, other parts are laid over one another here and there, it can indeed happen that the inflated part compresses the intestine lying beneath it, and so shuts off the exit for itself. By which reason it has also been observed that in hysterical affections the belly is mostly lazier, with the rectum intestine obviously compressed because of the proximity of the womb swelling with flatus.

XXIIII.
Beyond this cause, however, it has been discovered by the skill of some anatomists of our age, that a certain valve was fashioned by nature at the beginning of the colon intestine, in the manner of those that are wont to be demonstrated in the structure of the heart: and that this valve easily opens toward the colon, and by its own movement; but toward the other part, toward the jejunum, it does not offer passage, even if the intestines, taken out of the body, are inflated from the lower parts. Which was to be added to the fuller knowledge of the efficient causes.