Such is the satisfactory decision of the arbitrator—Enlightened Nature. No longer need we bow to Medicus or to any other kind of “cuss,” whether styled hygiene or physical culture. Arbitration of this sort makes life worth living.
Now for Nature’s benediction: “May that feeling of freedom from uncleanliness, internal and external, be with you constantly, and this double blessing make your joys flow so fast that in their rapidity they blend into a sun and radiate from your rejuvenated physical being.”
CHAPTER VI.
Gaseous Obesity and our Roly-polies.
Is there any human being so ignorant that he cannot understand that when food stuffs in the gastro-intestinal canal ferment and putrefy they thereby generate toxic (poisonous) gaseous matter, volatile fatty acids, and putrid feces; that such matter, acids, and feces are rapidly absorbed by the system, and that, if the system does not readily eliminate them by way of the bowels, kidneys, and mucous membrane, they will tend to bring on one or more forms of acute or chronic disease?
Gas is matter in its most rarefied state—a state that permits its easy entrance into all the tissues of the body, where it perverts by its presence and toxic effect the normal function of all the organs. Besides its poisonous infection, it distends or bloats the stomach, bowels, and tissues—a fact especially noticeable in the abdominal region, giving the appearance of corpulency or obesity to many, when really it is only abdominal ballooning or gaseous obeseness. Roly-polies—and there are a great many of them—will have their pride greatly hurt by accounting for their condition in this way, but the truth must be told and they might as well face the facts first as last. Gaseous obesity, or borborygmus, is spoken of popularly as wind in the stomach and bowels. No wonder the roly-poly is sensitive on the subject, for this “wind” occasions rumbling sounds, eructations, and offensive odors—all of which are a great annoyance to the sufferer from dilated, displaced, and unclean digestive apparatus.
Besides being generated in the system, gases may be swallowed during the act of eating, in the form of air (oxygen and nitrogen), and in liquids containing carbonic acid, sulphuretted hydrogen, etc.
Micro-organisms swallowed with the food will occasion fermentation of the contents of the stomach and bowels, which if unduly retained become excessive, foul, and toxic—therefore extremely harmful to the system.
The gases generated in the stomach are the following: carbonic acid, hydrogen, hydrochloric, ammonia, sulphuretted hydrogen, marsh gas, etc. They are partly absorbed or thrown off by eructations, or they pass into the duodenum or small intestine.