Fig. 14.
A longitudinal section of the end of the small intestines, or ileum, and of the beginning of the large intestines, or colon. 1, 1, a portion of the ascending colon; 2, 2, the cæcum, or caput coli; 3, 3, lower portion of the ileum; 4, 4, the muscular coat, covered by the peritoneum; 5, 5, the cellular and mucous coats; 6, 6, folds of the mucous coat at this end of the colon; 7, 7, prolongations of the cellular coat into these folds; 8, 8, ileo colic valve; 9, 9, the union of the coats of the ileum and colon.
You are aware of the irritation that a grain of sand will set up when it comes in contact with the mucous membrane of the eye. Then can you not realize that you will torment the forty-five feet of intestinal mucous membrane with like indigestible stuff? It is estimated that ten per cent. of the really suitable food is residue matter with which the digestive tract has to deal and get rid of with as much economy and as little friction as possible. Then why increase this residue twenty or fifty per cent.?
More than nine-tenths of the human race have been content to depend on comparatively violent excitants, such as drugs, coarse food, and muscular exercise, etc., to relieve the bowels of the feces, liquids, and gases of a most foul character—the foulness due to putrid fermentation and undue retention.
When will these prescribers and partakers ever learn that bile bouncers and peristaltic persuaders have an immense journey before them when they start to remove the foul accumulation of feces from the sigmoid flexure and ballooned rectum? For, be it remembered, the normal receptacle for feces is twenty-four feet four inches from the stomach, and the abnormal receptacle twenty-four feet eleven inches—within two inches of the vent of the body!
Surely quite a degree of mental constipation must have existed in both the prescribers and the partakers to think such thick and dense thoughts as are represented by these bouncers and persuaders. So you would cleanse the bowels with such unclean, poisonous, and irritating things! What amazing hope born of ignorance! Outraged Nature cries: “How long! how long! how long will my ‘inards’ be so abused in the name of cleanliness and yet remain so unclean? Ye benighted mortals, if ye would listen to me, your Mother, I would give ye a pure and wholesome prescription, for I would prescribe equal parts of enlightenment and water well mixed, and advise ye to take a portion of it fore and a portion of it aft, per os (mouth) and per anus. Thus and thus alone would I prescribe for ye; such and such alone is the way for ye to do; purify to cure, or cure by purifying.”
Constipation must not continue, for it means not only the clogging up of the large intestine with the foul sewage of the system, but also the drying of that sewage, which latter process implies the absorption of poison. Now that you are in this condition, Medicus steps up and prescribes a cathartic mixed with belladonna or opium, or both. These latter are meant to quiet the mournful cry of outraged Nature when the cathartic invades its sacred precincts. And it may be noted, by the way, that though belladonna, atropine, morphia, etc., tend to dry up the secretions of the mucous membrane and make matters worse by making them still more arid, still the action of the cathartic is usually so powerful that after the free fight with the pain soothers it triumphs, and produces a free flow of watery secretion into the dried, impacted mass of the bowel.
Does it not stand to reason that the greater portion of the liquid in which the feces were dissolved and had fermented is re-absorbed into the system? Why should the poor victim of proctitis and cathartics wonder why he has gout, rheumatism, and disease of the kidneys, bladder, lungs, liver, stomach, nerves; why he has neurasthenia, debility, feebleness, loss of memory, inability to fix and hold the attention upon a single line of thought, apprehensions, etc.? His wonder is childish, for deep in his heart he knows that he poisoned himself. He knows this, but it seems that he must be reminded of the fact that there is a better way to remove the accumulated mass from the large intestine, and to prevent in future the undue retention of feces, liquids, and gases in abnormal sacs or pouches. The way that Nature prescribes is the resort daily, two or three times, to the enema.
When the injected water reaches the imprisoned and dried feces, the crust is loosened from its holdings and the mass is moved toward the exit by the expulsive effort of the bowels. Previously the bowels were helpless with their load. As the sudden flood of water is expelled it carries with it the inspissated feces; whereupon the subconscious personal Ego, who is the superintendent of the digestive apparatus and functions, congratulates himself on the delightfully refreshing manner in which the local disturber has been ousted.