Intestinal Ills / Chronic Constipation, Indigestion, Autogenetic Poisons, Diarrhea, Piles, Etc. Also Auto-Infection, Auto-Intoxication, Anemia, Emaciation, Etc. Due to Proctitis and Colitis

by Alcinous B. Jamison

After the system has absorbed 75 per cent of the fecal mass, a "remedy" is taken to excite a flow of watery excretions into the bowels, of which a portion will be retained in the colon, and especially the ballooned cavities, and reabsorbed; and every day the objectionable practice is repeated without any thought of the harm being done.

The flushing of the rectum, sigmoid flexure and colon with water is not a cure-all, but it is one of the means of treating a grave chronic disease, a disease insidious and far-reaching in its poisonous effects on the human organism.

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CHAPTER XVI.

THE USUAL DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT OF BOWEL TROUBLES WRONG.

Herodotus tells us that among certain tribes when a man fell sick his next-door neighbor did not wait for him to become thin but killed him at once, lest by the loss of his adipose his flesh might be rendered less appetizing.

But alas! in this age of constipation and piles, of self-generated poisons and self-infection, how changed is the custom! Our next-door neighbor, the doctor, waits till we are really thin, and then begins to feed and grow fat on our ills! In our day, through the continuous process of self-poisoning we take on no flesh from puny, peaked childhood, or we insidiously lose what little flesh we had, and when our bones are well exposed, become alarmed, realize that we are sick, rush for the doctor, and dispossess ourselves of our spare cash.

Very frequently, as stated in the first chapter, auto-infection begins in infancy and slowly but steadily progresses, but it may not be before adult age is reached and one or more organs are seriously diseased that it becomes apparent to all. The vital round of the alternate building-up and breaking-down of the system has been going on unceasingly during these years of increasing infection, but prematurely the balance between up and down is lost in favor of down; the building-up process becoming feebler, slower, and the breaking-down process quicker, easier. What can the inevitable outcome be but emaciation and anemia, and all their attendant suffering and consequences? It is the superabundance of vitality in the growing child that retards (inhibits) the morbid changes going on in the blood and tissues of the system; but the process is all the more insidious by being thus restrained, and its very subtlety and stealth beguile us all into fancied security: parents, friends, physicians—all are deceived.

As stated in a previous chapter, the first unwelcome visitor, in infancy, is inflammation of the integument and mucous membrane of the anal orifice, invited by the uncleanliness involved in the use of diapers; and this visitor takes up its residence slowly along several inches of the lower bowel. Its first symptoms are likely to be constipation, flatulency, colic, indigestion, bacterial and other poisons, occasionally diarrhea, and the usual general disturbance of the system as above detailed. It is admitted by all authors that inflammation of the anus, rectum, etc., is by far the most common disease that afflicts mankind at all ages; and I maintain that the natural result of such inflammation is a more or less extensive occlusion of the lower bowel, which in turn involves an undue retention of the feces, and thus we have the foul intestinal canal and stomach called gastric and intestinal indigestion.

The wrong treatment of constipation, diarrhea, indigestion and auto-intoxication up to the present time has been due to improper diagnosis. Writers on these subjects speak of them as causes when they are merely symptoms. And the remedies for these "causes" are even more numerous. Mistaken diagnosis on the one hand, measured doses on the other, and there you have the scientific doctor! The primary cause, inflammation, like the original spark applied to dry shavings, sets up morbid changes in the various parts of the digestive canal and the other organs of the body, and these "set up" or established changes are properly secondary or derivative causes accompanied by their own symptoms. The primary disease and symptoms may exist for five, ten, twenty or more years before any pronounced secondary or derivative diseases and their symptoms occur or are noticeable to a sufficiently marked degree.