The insidious manner in which proctitis, colitis, constipation, and self-poisoning progress from mild through medium to severe stages does not, generally, alarm the victim of intestinal neurasthenia until many years have elapsed, and one or more of the vital organs have become diseased, and the whole system is thoroughly under its toxic effects. Thus, slowly, are the various segments of the gastro-intestinal canal changed to an abnormal condition.
Suppose the tissues of one of your arms and hands were inflamed, constricted, or swollen, and that the nerves of motion were uncertain, shaky, and “kinky,”—all of which conditions we often find in the digestive apparatus,—and that finally recovery takes place under persevering and patient treatment; how soon, think you, could a sensible person expect the limb thus affected to become as useful as its companion that had never been disturbed by disease?
Unfortunately, we have not two sets of bowels. Ocean steamers are equipped with two sets of motion-producing engines, so that the disability of one will result in no loss of speed. When man places as much commercial value on himself as he does on his machines or on a boat, he will either induce Nature to furnish him with an extra set of energy-producing organs, or he will take the best possible care of the only one she vouchsafes to him—a care that extends from os to anus.
Civilized man does, indeed, take a little notice of a sore mouth (although indifferent about an unclean one), and will even try hard to have it heal, because a sore mouth may be seen, and is likely to disfigure him. But a sore anus and rectum may, for all he seriously cares, play their painful and poisonous pranks until he is put to bed disabled or is sent to an asylum—or to the final inn where all diseases of the body cease from troubling and the weary organs are at rest.
To re-establish that normal régime of physiological relations called health, after many years of perverse relations and disorderly practices, obviously requires time and intelligent, faithful attention to prescribed conditions.
The factors or causes that militate against the removal of curable diseases are:
(1) The neglect of a local disorder until it has had time to exhaust the general vitality of the system.
(2) Inattention on the part of the patient after he has obtained temporary or partial relief.
(3) The victim arbitrarily setting his own time limit for the cure of the disease.
(4) His wilful disobedience of prescribed rules.