Chapter 8 THE CAUSE OF CONSTIPATION AND HOW WE IGNORANTLY TREAT IT.

One of the best preparations for active life is a first-class intestinal canal.

"An old Scotch physician," says Sir Astley Cooper, "for whom I had a great respect and whom I frequently met in consultation, used to say to me as we were about to enter our patient's room together, 'Weel, Misther Cooper, we ha' only twa things to keep in meend, and they'll serve us for here and herea'ter; one is au'ways to hae the fear o' the Laird before our e'es, that'll do for herea'ter; and th' t'other is to keep our boo'els au'ways open, and that'll do for here.'"

A person whose mind is devoted to the realization of ideals, and whose body has a set of bowels that perform the act of defecation twice every twenty-four hours is doubly prepared for a useful life.

"If thou well observe

In what thou eat'st and drink'st, seek from thence

Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight,

Till many years over thy head return:

So may'st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop

Into thy mother's lap, or be with ease

Gathered, not harshly plucked, for death mature."

Milton's advice in poetic lines is all very well for those who have escaped chronic inflammation of the lower bowels, an ailment common and troublesome even under the very best dietetic regulations.

Inflammation having once penetrated the circular and longitudinal muscular fibres or bands of a section of the intestine, all hope of a comfortable existence is at an end, for such inflammation will bring on constipation and constipation nervous misery. It is inevitable that inflammation should determine this outcome since it induces spasmodic contraction of the muscular walls of the tube, lessening the bore or closing the portion of the canal invaded. Plastic infiltration takes place in the walls of the gut, thickening and binding them together; or, if the inflammation be of a simple catarrhal or atrophic nature, the plastic infiltration will more or less bind the circular muscular bands of the gut together in their abnormally contracted state! The presence of feces and gases above the zone of the disease will increase the irritation and contraction of the affected portion of the intestine. Consequent upon these changes wrought by inflammation, gases and excrementitious material are perforce imprisoned in the intestine, inducing constipation, foul fermentation, flatulency, diarrhea, indigestion, nausea, loss of appetite, sick headache and, in fine, autogenetic poisons, the source of auto-infection, ending in auto-intoxication, the chronic poisoned condition of the system.

Since the most common cause of chronic constipation, internal sluggishness and uncleanliness, is known, too much cannot be said in condemnation of the wide-spread abuse of "liver and atony persuaders" and the use of irritating suppositories and dilating bougies, candles, etc. The numerous and various drastic purgative nostrums-which literally fill our medical literature-and the universal demand for them, are evidence of this very common disease, which disease is rendered worse by the drugs taken for the relief of a foul intestinal alveus. An abnormal amount of watery secretion is forced by the drug into the foul canal, to mix there with its contents, of which the major portion is retained and re-absorbed into the system. And to make the bad condition and treatment worse, all such sufferers, as a rule, drink very little water, some scarcely any.

The demand for an irritating stimulus to "open the bowels" (the exciters contribute to close them) is largely due to the popular error in thinking, "I can treat my own bowels quite as well as the doctor, if not better." No intelligent person would think of stimulating and irritating daily an inflamed region of tissue on the outer portion of the body; yet this is precisely what intelligent persons do when they habitually use liver and peristaltic persuaders. The primary disease in the lower bowels and the consequent symptoms are gradually aggravated as the "physic" habit is formed.

As in the case of opium fiends and drunkards, so with habitual cathartic drug-users, should they be suddenly deprived of the accustomed artificial stimulus and irritant they become absolutely miserable, mentally and physically. It is a well-known physiological fact that every artificial stimulation of the intestines is followed by a corresponding loss of vitality and reaction. Now that the almost universal cause of undue retention of foul, effete matter has been ascertained, it is important to communicate to the world at large the best means of cleansing the bowels without increasing the local primary disease and its annoying symptoms.

That external physical cleanliness is next to godliness is an apt proverb. That internal physical cleanliness is nearer to godliness no one will deny.

Water is a universal solvent and therapeutic agent and is therefore indispensable in the cleansing and purifying of the integument and mucous membrane of the body. A large quantity of water is necessary to carry on the functions of the animal economy. Water enters every cell and fibre of the living organism, aiding in nutrition and in the elimination of worn-out tissues which if retained turn into poisons.

It is really not an intelligent but rather a barbarous practice to prescribe liver and intestinal exciters for the purpose of throwing into the alimentary tract a sufficient quantity of watery excretions to "cleanse itself"; to succeed they must first soften and liquefy the dry, hardened feces and scybalous masses (little ancient, bullet-like formations) imprisoned above an inflamed and fevered lower bowel, even colon.

Normal feces consist of 75 per cent water; and when unduly retained in the colon much of this fetid percentage is absorbed into the system. Then drugs are prescribed to liquefy the hardened putrid remnant and absorption begins again: a fact very shocking to a sensitive, even sensible, person.