Without segregating the cases, some of the diseased conditions mentioned in connection with his patients were dyspepsia, characterized by anorexia, acid and bitter eructations, bad taste in the mouth, gaseous distention, gastric weight and pain. Also cephalalgia, chills, vertigo, chloasmic spots, muddy sclerotics and complexion, insomnia, ennui, eczema, psoriasis, dysuria, etc.
He says: “Daily movements of the bowels are no sort of a sign that the colon is not impacted; in fact, the worst cases of costiveness that we ever see are those in which daily movements of the bowels occur. The diagnosis of fecal accumulations is facilitated by inquiring as to the color of the daily discharges. A black or a very dark green color almost always indicates that the feces are ancient. Prompt discharge of food refuse is indicated by more or less yellow color. It would be interesting to inquire why fresh feces are yellow and ancient feces are dark.
“Absorption of the feces from the colon leads to a great many different symptoms; amongst others, anæmia, with its results, sallow or yellow complexion, with its chloasmic spots, furred tongue, foul breath, and muddy sclerotics. Such patients have digestive fermentations to torment them, resulting in flatulent distention, which encroaches on the cavity of the chest, which in excessive cases may cause short and rapid breathing, irregular heart action, disturbed circulation in the brain, with vertigo and headache. An over-distended cæcum, or sigmoid flexure, from pressure, may produce dropsy, numbness or cramps in the right or left lower extremity.
“I have often questioned whether chloasmic spots were not due to fecal absorption. These spots are pigmentary matter deposited under the skin. It is a physiological fact that all pigments originate in the liver. In a condition of health their abnormal deposit we never see. It is only when the patient is not well, in some way, that these spots are noticed. They are infinitely more common in women than in men. It is easy to see that their sedentary life is more apt to lead in them to the filling of the colon. Absorption from the colon produces a poisoned blood, which in turn deranges every organ of the body, among others the liver. It is possible that the action of light, as in photographs, contributes in some way to precipitate the deposits of these chloasmic spots, because we see them chiefly upon the parts of the body exposed to light....
“The use of a long rectal tube is unnecessary. The patient should be placed in a genu-pectoral position, the shoulders thus being lower than the hips. The water will be made to descend while anatomically ascending the intestines. Patients can be made to receive from one to six pints of water in this position without the slightest trouble. One of the effects of the water is to distend the colon, and in that way pressing away the walls of the loculi from the accumulations that fall into the current of water and are passed out while the water is leaving the intestine. The patient will oftentimes complain of severe tormina, checking the current of water for a few seconds, and will be followed by complete relief. The presence of such a strange foreign body in the intestine as hot water in many cases excites prodigious peristaltic activity, thus producing the tormina. Plain hot water is all that is necessary to use; the water should be hot; cold water, or tepid water, will not do. It will produce great suffering. One patient took the flushings for a fortnight, returning vowed she would never use any more because they produced such terrific cramps. Upon inquiry it was found that she was using tepid water. The subsequent use of hot water by her was never followed by a cramp. Upon many patients this large amount of water acts as a vigorous diuretic. Where patients suffer as well from renal insufficiency, I am in the habit of telling them to use a pint or a pint and a half of hot water after the flushing has passed away, and to lie upon the back with hips elevated for half an hour. Thus retaining the water, it will act as a powerful diuretic. Some patients can administer this flushing with greatest ease, while others will develop a most phenomenal awkwardness. I am in the habit of telling patients to kneel in the bath-tub, who are at all awkward about using these flushings.”
REFLEXES.
The lower end of the rectum is richly supplied with both sensory and sympathetic nerves. The sensory greatly predominating at the verge, making it one of the most acutely sensitive surfaces of the body. In ascending upwards the sensory gradually give place to the sympathetic, until little sensibility is imparted by the touch three inches from the entrance in a normal condition.
This accounts for the hidden cause of so many reflexes, having their seat of origin from lesions an inch or more above the anus, where the sensibility is not always sufficiently great to attract attention.
It has been claimed that obscure rectal disorders may so undermine the nervous system by reflex irritation, allowing the inroad of general systemic disease, that many die yearly from this as the primary cause, without ever knowing the source and origin of the fatal malady.