APEPSIA, (from ap, neg. and psia, to digest.) Indigestion.
Abstemiousness and excess are alike causes of indigestion. An over distension of the stomach may in some measure injure its proper tone; and long fasting, by inducing a bad quality in the juices secreted into the stomach, renders it feeble, and generates wind. Hard drinking, and any of the causes of an anorexy, also injure digestion.
The columbo root is particularly useful when the stomach is languid, the appetite defective, digestion with difficulty carried on, or when a nausea with flatulence attends. It may be given in substance with any grateful aromatic, or infused in Madeira wine, now and then interposing gentle doses of the tincture of rhubarb.
A mixture of mustard-feed with the columbo root is of admirable utility in complaints of this kind; particularly where acidity and flatulence prevail much in the prime vice.