It would seem that the channels, pile sacs, and cavities serve as temporary reservoirs for the inflammatory product, a portion of which the system absorbs and another portion of which escapes through the mucous membrane and integument. In escaping in this way it occasions itching and pain. The itching or soreness does not in all cases extend throughout the whole length of the channel. A few inches of the channel farthest from its origin may be the seat of the greatest disturbance, and the sufferer and physician alike are usually unaware that the source of the trouble is in the tissues of the anus and rectum.
The marked improvement in the health of those that have been cured of both the morbid condition produced by the inflammatory product and the cause of that condition is evidence that the general vitality of the system had been greatly lowered, even though the most annoying of the symptoms, such as piles, itching, or acute pain, had not been present. The lack of annoyance along the channel for a certain period may be due to a limited production, or to a rapid absorption of the inflammatory product by the system.
Proctitis and the attendant symptoms just described have been overlooked by the medical profession. Physicians have confined their attention to two symptoms—piles and fistula. After undergoing a surgical operation for these, the patient is considered cured. What ignorance, or rather short-sightedness, to remove only the annoying symptom, and then to pronounce the patient healed! Let me ask my professional brethren why they do not concern themselves with the underlying cause of the symptom or symptoms, and whether they suppose this cause is going out of business. Surely it is a grave mistake to concern one’s self with the leading symptom merely—to remove that, and to leave its cause intact. When the disease-producing cause remains to generate its poisonous effects in the system, opportunities exist for further symptoms to develop.
The system may be already depleted of vitality, and the harsh treatment for the purpose of removing a mere symptom may only make the sufferer’s condition more deplorable—if it does not indeed cause death.
There are other symptoms of proctitis than piles and fistula, which remain after the conventional surgical operation for their removal. Obstipation and constipation are usually symptoms of proctitis, and will persist until the inflammation in the upper half of the rectum and sometimes in a portion of the sigmoid flexure is cured.
The victim of proctitis has two marked sources of poisoning of the system: one proceeding from the absorption of the inflammatory product, and the other from undue retention of the waste matter of the body that should pass out by the lower bowel.
Inflammation of a mucous membrane causes structural changes in the tissues involved in the morbid process, and not infrequently it becomes the seat of a malignant disease.
The reader may be familiar with the white, loose, alveolar (honeycomb-like) network of elastic tissue (called fat) just under the skin and mucous membrane. Consult in this connection the cut on page 24.
