CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.PAGE
Efforts to Overcome Constipation without Seeking its Cause[1]
CHAPTER II.
Pathology of the Anus and Rectum; or, The Genesis of Constipation[8]
CHAPTER III.
The Formation of Channels, Piles, and Fistulas[19]
CHAPTER IV.
Undue Retention of Gas and Feces in the Sigmoid Flexure[28]
CHAPTER V.
Rebellion of our Outraged Internal Economy[35]
CHAPTER VI.
Gaseous Obesity and our Roly-polies[46]
CHAPTER VII.
Irrigation of the Assimilative and Eliminative Organs[57]
CHAPTER VIII.
Methods of Stomach Cleansing[65]
CHAPTER IX.
When Enemas should be Taken[72]
CHAPTER X.
How Enemas should be Taken[84]
CHAPTER XI.
The Internal Fountain Bath[90]
CHAPTER XII.
Benefits of the Inner Bath[101]
CHAPTER XIII.
Objections to the Use of the Enema Answered[108]
CHAPTER XIV.
Lame Back[121]
CHAPTER XV.
Uric Acid[126]
CHAPTER XVI.
Rational Sanitation and Hygiene[136]
CHAPTER XVII.
Personal Cleanliness[145]
CHAPTER XVIII.
Hot Water in the Treatment of Proctitis and Colitis[152]
CHAPTER XIX.
Hot Water in the Treatment of External Symptoms[162]
CHAPTER XX.
The Health of School Children[165]
CHAPTER XXI.
Internal Hemorrhoids or Piles versus Mucous Sac, Recto-Anal Mucous Sac[171]
CHAPTER XXII.
External and Thrombotic Piles versus Muco-Cutaneous Sac and Thrombus[181]
CHAPTER XXIII.
Abscess and Fistula Involving Anus, Rectum and Neighboring Regions[190]
CHAPTER XXIV.
Nine Radiograph Illustrations Showing Mucus Channels and Cavities[200]
CHAPTER XXV.
Chronic Mucous Proctitis and Sigmoiditis—Usually Diagnosed as Chronic Mucous Colitis[202]
CHAPTER XXVI.
Antiseptic Employment of Powders and Oils[208]

INTESTINAL IRRIGATION.

CHAPTER I.
Efforts to Overcome Constipation without Seeking its Cause.

In the year 1496 an Italian, Gatenaria, invented an appliance for taking an enema; since that time depuratory instruments have had more or less vogue in all civilized countries. Of late years inventive powers have been taxed to construct more convenient and effective appliances, and now perfection has been almost reached, and the poor civilizee, whose habits are really very bad from the savage point of view, may enjoy the delicious privilege of an internal bath whenever he feels the need of it. By any other name this bath is just as purifying: call it irrigation, injection, lavement, clyster, enema—its many names and what they mean testify to the fact that it is for the disease of civil­iza­tion.

The medical profession is really behind the layman in genuine therapeutic measures. It still cares more for the pill-and-powder-prescription-earning fee than for the real health of the patient. When it shall wean itself from its sordid commercialism, it will make the use of the enema a fundamental factor in most forms of therapeutic treatment, and then the enema will become universal.

From the origin of the enema to the present day, the layman has not been unmindful of this valuable resource for removing morbid matter from his physiological sewer. The great relief he thus obtained, and the invariably good results that followed its use, established as a necessary toilet article some form of depuratory apparatus in many homes for all time to come.