All of us would believe Medicus, the son who so abjectly follows in the footsteps of his father, if we could really feel the possibility of such a victory; but the protests of our bowels are living witnesses against the validity of the medieval practice as here described; and we ask for a modern scientific solution of the fulness and foulness within and the fatuity without.
I must now apologize to the large class of sufferers from chronic constipation for hurting their feelings. I know very well how seriously they have been compelled to regard their trouble, and out of respect for their protracted suffering and efforts to get relief I should instead have sympathized and condoled with them in their dire misfortune. But we all know and realize that there are occasions when we get into awful and painful predicaments, and, when the whole situation is taken in, it becomes comical and ridiculous, so that for a time we cannot treat it seriously, even when old Chronic Biliousness and the mighty knights-errant are having a deadly combat at our internal and external (and possibly infernal) expense.
CHAPTER XII.
SEMI-CONSTIPATION AND ITS DANGERS.
"At least six times in every fleeting day
Some tribute to the renal functions pay,
And twice or thrice all alvine calls obey."
What has been said thus far has been based on chronic constipation mainly, and the accompanying intestinal foulness, which condition was shown to be so annoying that it compelled the sufferer to resort frequently to some more or less direct and artificial means for the relief of the bowels and the incidental indigestion. It has been further shown that many of the chronic cases fail to take on the normal amount of flesh or lose what flesh they have because of self-poisoning (auto-infection), which in turn is the outcome of mal-assimilation and mal-nutrition, and that this consequence must occur wherever there is an absorption of waste through a checking or disturbance of systemic functions. Emaciation and anemia are inevitable in such cases. On the other hand, there are cases that have such great powers of assimilation and elimination that they are able to stand the invasion of destructive material, may maintain the normal amount of flesh, or even take on an abnormal amount, but with the invariable accompaniment of more or less impoverishment of blood, disturbed circulation, indigestion, and the usual nervous derangements. The harmful practice of the lean and the fleshy sufferers of resorting to daily medicines—cathartics, digestives and tonics—has been commented upon. Willingly do they squander their money to get relief from an ever-present ailment. Cases are these of hope deferred that maketh the heart sick.
The primary cause of chronic constipation, namely, proctitis, has been explained, and its many symptoms, as indicated by the functional disturbances of many or all of the organs of the body, enumerated.