CHAPTER IV.
INDIGESTION, INTESTINAL GAS, AND OTHER MATTERS.
We noted the fact that the "digestive secretions" in a man weighing 140 pounds amount to twenty-three pounds in twenty-four hours; now add to these the food and liquids taken in that period, and you will form some estimate of the work done in the human chemical laboratory in its normal and abnormal states.
We noted further that substances confined too long in receptacles decompose and generate pathogenic poisons, that is, poisons productive of disease; and that the intestinal reservoirs are no exception to this law of putrefactive changes. How could we avoid drawing the inference, therefore, that disease-breeding germs, (generated in the organism and hence called "autogenetic"), and their auto-infection, i.e., absorption by the system, are an inevitable consequence of the undue retention and fermentation of the contents of these reservoirs: a consequence, in other words, of that intestinal uncleanliness commonly called biliousness, constipation, indigestion.
By far the most common and immediate source of autogenetic (self-produced) poisons and their auto-infection, is some degree of chronic constipation and the deadening, smothering effects of constipation on digestion; an effect analogous to what takes place when we allow waste material or ashes to bank up against a fire, shutting off its draft. Does the fire then continue to digest the coal? Clog up the receptacle for ashes and the coal grows cold. Dam up the colon or sigmoid and digestion is disturbed, diminished and debased, as evidenced by the local and general discomfort, and later by the train of inevitable disorders.
Indigestion is a household word. It has the widest range of all the diseases, because it forms a part of almost every other; and some diseases, such as chronic catarrh and pulmonary consumption, are in many cases produced by indigestion; which in turn had its source in chronic constipation caused by injury or inflammation of the lower bowel, as explained in our first chapter.
Diminished nutrition, impoverished blood, and loss of weight of from ten to twenty-five pounds, are the signs that indicate the coming disaster to the sufferer from auto-intoxication: the thoroughly poisoned state of the system resulting from auto-infection.
Vessels used by the dairyman and by those who furnish us with food products and liquids are kept scrupulously clean. Why? Because it is a question of loss of trade—of money. Should these vessels be used when foul from fermentation or putrefaction of their contents, Wealth would flee from the coffers of our purveyors, and the Boards of Health would, or rather should, take a hand in the matter. And these same purveyors, by the way, why do they care more for Wealth than for Health, their own and ours? But why are we all of us so neglectful of Inner cleanliness and so careful of Outer? The receptacles of the inner man reek with augean filth, and we cleanse them not. The immortal fountains of Health and Happiness are dammed, blasted and degraded by just this neglect of our imperative duty; the duty of furnishing full opportunity for the functions of replenishment and life, by keeping the sewer passages clear.
Are a sour stomach and foul intestinal canal fit receptacles for food and liquids? When our receptacles are in this condition, why do we add more material for the generation of poisons of the ptomain and leucomain classes, and morbid gaseous elements? It has been demonstrated that during fermentation an apple will evolve a volume of gas six hundred times its own size. What folly then to add to the fermenting mass! Food taken under such conditions will produce results not hard to imagine.