Fig. 16.
Œsophagus and stomach in their natural relation to the vertebral column and aorta. (Gerrish.)
It does seem sometimes that man in his ignorance gets nothing right except to walk forward instead of backward. Even so, most likely he walked on all fours for ages, judging from his progress to date, before he learned to walk on his hind legs. To-day we find him self-poisoned, auto-intoxicated, a gastro-intestinal neurasthenic. His bowels are filled and stretched with ancient feces and gases, and his stomach is burdened with undigested food and tenacious mucus.
The average man’s scanty excreta from the bowels are dry, hard, lumpy, and foul, exhaling a noxious odor; and these excretions may be passed once a day, or once in two or three days, or with some persons too often, should diarrhea supervene. Two-thirds to three-fourths of the fecal mass is absorbed by the system every day; and this absorption is accompanied more or less constantly by symptoms of indigestion, biliousness, uric acid, and many other distressful conditions.
His breath and the exhalations of a garbage-can are much alike; in fact they are twins, the only difference between the human and metallic receptacles being that one is capable of walking and the other is not. Both manifest the same conditions.
His mucous membrane is covered more or less with catarrhal discharges, which result in granulated deposits, especially near the orifices. The skin is often sallow, dry, yellow, scaly, flabby. The hair is dry, non-oily, with a scaly scalp, and often there is a loss or total lack of hair. The teeth are decayed, the gums are found to recede, and the eyes, muscles, joints, etc., are more or less affected by calcareous deposits.
Man is seldom or never in a normal physiological condition. He is either obese or emaciated and lean. Most bodies are anemic and ill-conditioned, a prey to several ailments. Of course, civilized man uses drugs; he would not be civilized were he not to use on occasion a stimulant, tonic, sedative, narcotic, etc., and he has to keep in continual touch with a doctor, to take care of him by prescribing special diet, fasts, exercise, and what not for his numerous bodily infirmities. Generally these prescriptions are ineffective and leave him physically weaker and financially poorer, with the barren consolation that he has really tried everything under heaven that the wisest knew or that money could buy. Yes, indeed, he tries everything: everything but water—pure, soft, spring or distilled water. He never—like the flirt—“thought of such a thing”! Very few “humanals” think it worth while to irrigate themselves inside and out.
Victims of semi-ignorance, too, get things most abominably mixed. They are often half wrong and half right; hence they never enjoy good, sound, robust health and its blessings. Physiologically, these people are what old-time pastors used to describe as lukewarm—neither hot nor cold, neither good nor bad, neither dirty nor clean, neither fish nor fowl, neither one thing nor another. So we find them also complaining and looking for the fountain of health and strength, but not looking very anxiously—they are not interested enough in the matter. Whenever they possess an equal mixture of ignorance and laziness, there is not much hope for them.