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.