An old man, who eats little and exercises still less, but has a good pulse, a good appetite, and a free perspiration, with a cheerful mind, need not take "physic" merely because his bowels do not move more than once a week; nor need those who are feverish, and who eat and exercise but little. The disturbance which will ensue, if medicine be taken, may be productive of more mischief, on the whole, than the absorption into the system of small portions of the retained excretions, or the small amount of irritation they produce—and probably will be so.
It will be a solace to some to know that the alvine excretions of the system are not so much the remnants of our food, when that food is such as it should be, as a secretion from the internal or lining membrane of the bowels. Consequently, if this secretion is interrupted by disease, there will be a proportionally diminished necessity for alvine evacuations.
Prof. ——, of Ohio, had been sick of fever, for a long time, and, on the departure of the disease, his bowels were left in such a condition that cathartics, or at least laxatives, began to be thought of; but his physician interdicted their use: His costiveness continued to the twenty-first day, without any known evil as the consequence. On this day nature rallied. Then followed a period of quiescence of fourteen days, and then another of seven days, after which he fell into his former diurnal habits. There was much croaking among the neighbors, on account of the treatment of his physician; but the results put all to silence.
The case of Judge ——, in the interior of the same State (Ohio), was so much like that of Prof. ——, in all its essential particulars, that I need but to state the fact, without entering at all upon the details.
J. W. G., a lawyer of Massachusetts, was sick with a lingering complaint, attended with more or less of fever, for several months. During this time there was one interval, of more than thirty days, during which his bowels did not move. And yet there was no evidence of any permanent suffering as the consequence.
The principal use I would make of these facts, so far as the mass of general readers is concerned, is the following: If, during feebleness and sickness, human nature will bear up, for a long time, under irregularities of this sort, is it needful that we should be alarmed and fly at once to medicine in cases less alarming—above all, in these cases, when, except in regard to costiveness, the health and habits are excellent? May we not trust much more than we have heretofore believed, in the recuperative efforts of Nature?