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.
CHAPTER IX.
CURES FOR CONSTIPATION: "FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE."
Diseases of the anus and rectum are very common, very numerous and of very critical consequences. This is especially true of the disease of chronic inflammation, one of whose symptoms is piles or hemorrhoids. In the writings of the early Greek and Roman physicians will be found minute descriptions of the latter disorder. But on the whole, the most important symptom of chronic inflammation of the lower bowel, and the most far-reaching in its morbific results, is that protean monster, chronic constipation. It deranges more lives, from infancy to old age, than any other pathological condition that can be named.
For the cause and cure of that mere symptom of a disease, constipation, the so-called scientific physicians, from the early history of medication to the present time, have had one immutable theory as to the leading cause, and one grand motto as to the "safe and sure" cure. They have always prescribed remedies for this malady on the theory of portal congestion and hepatic derangement, and hence their supreme motto: "Physic! Physic!! Physic!!!"
The layman naturally adopted the theory and the motto of his medical advisers; hence in his self-medication and also under advice he consumes such vast quantities of purgative nostrums.
I have just received some medical literature beginning with the usual salutation—"Dear Doctor"—setting forth a new and remarkable theory of the cause, and an original motto for the cure, of constipation. Its authors have discovered that the "rectal nerve-tissues" are hungry, torpid, anemic, and to overcome the "atony" they must be "Fed! Fed!! Fed!!!"