As a rule, the majority of victims put off treatment until a protracted period of extreme suffering or the fear of a fatal ending compels them to consult a physician—who labors at a great disadvantage in seeking to effect a cure on account of the long neglect.

Severe symptoms located at the porous-plaster region of the spine, when brought on by disease of the lower bowel, usually indicate an acute stage of chronic inflammation and retention of feces and gases in the sigmoid flexure and colon. Acute or subacute inflammation and fever and pressure of the feces are more than the long-abused nerves can endure, and severe pain is the result.

Then the sufferer has something to say about his back, and what is best to do for it.

The logical course is to unload the bowels of feces and gases by a generous use of the enema and to treat the diseased tissues kindly. The symptoms will soon disappear when the cause is removed.

CHAPTER XV.
Uric Acid.

A society leader, in speaking of her ills to a woman friend, said: “I am ‘lousy’ with uric acid.” From infancy to old age, mankind is more or less filled with uric acid and other poisons—the result of a foul intestinal canal. Poisoned blood is a common symptom, and it arises from an almost universal cause—chronic con­sti­pa­tion. So universal is con­sti­pa­tion of the bowels in illness that it is the first duty of a physician to prescribe some remedy to unload them.

It is said that a Boston doctor, whose practice was largely among the wealthy classes, used to say: “There is no use in physicians pretending to be anything else—they always smell of rhubarb.” And in an address to a class of medical students an old doctor once said that he and his associate practitioners had found that calomel and opium filled every want in the ills they were called upon to treat.

For ages all mankind has striven to find a remedy effectively to clean the intestinal tract. Pills, powders, tablets, wafers, suppositories, salts, teas, candies, and syrups have been administered—all with that sole purpose. Efforts have been made to accomplish this object by utilizing every possible device and contrivance known to human ingenuity. Calisthenics, massage, physical-culture exercise, mental therapy, horseback riding, “dieting,” fasting—these are some of the many means resorted to in order to “sterilize” the foul, con­sti­pated intestinal canal.