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

To the scientific eye, your capacious digestive apparatus is a psycho-physical exhibit of the racial proclivity to overeat. Here, in this exhibit, the race's inordinate craving for food and drink, its gluttonous thought, have embodied themselves; and this exhibit, this apparatus, is accordingly not merely physical, but also psychical, for its sub-conscious outreach for "more and always more" is only too apparent. Man's stomach and bowels are too much like those of a mere animal, and are the source of nine-tenths of his ills.

All great consumers of foodstuffs, Nature declares, should walk on all fours; if you will persist in walking on your hind legs, you will have to pay the penalty. You will, moreover, contract other habits not conducive to real animal health. And, as Nature predicted, man's social customs to-day are out of all accord with gluttonous feeding; he, as well as his capacious bowels, suffers the consequences of his excessive feeding, and this suffering leads him to adopt artificial means for relief or escape. Up-to-date civilization has constrained man to adopt a cooped-up existence, one that shuts out, to a great extent, sunshine and air; an existence, moreover, that involves but a limited amount of exercise. How, then, can it be otherwise than—gormand that he is—that he should fare ill with this gluttonous, mammoth digestive canal?

Man is not as yet more than half human, and he will not become truly human until he makes more use of the upper lobes of his brain, nor until the spiritual part of his nature becomes dominant. When that day dawns he will have a corresponding evolution of the physical body, especially of the gastro-intestinal canal. Some one has sagely said that man's brain is a mere extension of his intestinal canal. Well, possibly by and by the intestinal canal may become an extension of a spiritually awakened mind, with all its dominating influence over the physical body. Surely the evolutional trend from animal to complete manhood may be aided by intelligent foresight as to bodily care and hygiene.

Cooped up like a canary bird, or penned up and fattening like a hog, with his enormous eating capacity and vast intestinal storage space, poor man has matters made worse by having his several orifices liable to inflammatory invasions. He does not seem able to escape from his enemies anywhere.

The mucous membrane lining the orifices of the body is nothing more than the skin turned in to line canals for air, gases, liquids, and solids to pass in and out in order to keep up the physio-logical functions of the body. Very rarely, indeed, do we find, from childhood to old age, the orifice of the intestinal sewer otherwise than chronically inflamed, the invasion extending, moreover, the whole length of the rectum for some distance into the sigmoid colon.

It is no trifling matter to have the function of some thirty feet of the gastro-intestinal tract disturbed, especially of the large intestine—some five feet in length, two and a half inches in diameter in not a few sections.

Almost without exception, we find the lower portion of the intestinal sewer the seat of chronic inflammation that extends into the sigmoid colon; and, as an inevitable result of the inflammation, contraction more or less permanent has taken place in the circular and longitudinal muscular bands that form its structure. The constriction is especially severe at the junction of the rectum with the sigmoid colon, where it flexes upon itself in the region where the bore of the rectum is less. The comparative shutting up of the caliber of the upper end of the rectum and lower portion of the sigmoid colon occasions undue retention of the feces and gases which accumulate, and in accumulating dislocate various portions of the large intestine, thus forming pouches, sacks, reservoirs, prolapse, etc., which hold the products of putrefaction as well as the irritating, poisonous mucus thrown out from the inflamed tissue.

I regard the occlusion of the upper portion of the rectum, and especially of the region involved in the flexure of the bowel, as the most usual seat and source of constipation. Not so very long ago it was the custom to stretch the sphincter muscles for the "cure" of constipation; at the present time the "cure" is found in the valves of the middle lower portion of the rectum. The folly of these "cures" becomes apparent when we understand that the parts treated were neither the seat nor the source of constipation. I have always regarded great retention of feces in the rectum as impaction in a delivery canal, due to contraction of the anal muscles, not as constipation, which can only take place in the temporary storage-place—the sigmoid flexure. The lower two-thirds of the rectum plays no part in constipation of the bowels.

Form a manikin, made out of very thin, soft rubber tubing, to represent the stomach and small and large intestine, holding the various parts in place with elastic bands, and cotton to represent fat. When all portions are properly and anatomically placed close the lower eight or ten inches of the manikin, representing the lower portion of the sigmoid colon, rectum, and anus, just as tightly as we should find it closed in sufferers from chronically acute proctitis and colitis. Now insert at the stomach portion of the manikin a generous amount of man's usual mixture of foodstuffs and liquids, and repeat the supply three or four times during the day (without any previous attempts at cleansing), and then note the fermentative and putrefactive changes that take place; the ensuing bacterial poisons and the great volume of poisonous gases—all of which occasion squirming, twisting movements of the manikin as dislocations here and there occur, as pouches and reservoirs develop, as the walls become distended with gas and putrid substance; and then, time elapsing, the usual foodstuffs are added to the foul mass within! Now, if there is any pity in your soul, you medical man, for the enfouled and deformed human manikin, you will want to wash it out with cleansing water before its structure comes to an untimely end. We medical men all know the numerous and grave symptoms exhibited by one or more organs of the body, or by all of them, from the persistent work of the deleterious gases and bacterial poisons on the system—a work going on for years, finally placing the victim beyond medical aid. All of us are agreed that the capacious gastro-intestinal canal should be clean. What, I submit, is the best means of keeping clean this long, large, tortuous, spacious, valved and flexed canal—a canal that disease has here and there pouched, dislocated, bagged, reservoired; a canal at whose lower end a great cesspool exists; that, like other portions of the gut, is never empty and clean—what is the best means but a flushing with copious amount of water?

Proctitis or colitis is a very serious disease; like a railroad injury, it is found, on examination, to be much worse than appearances at first indicated.