The principal evacuations from the human body are those by stool, urine, and insensible perspiration. None of these can be long obstructed without impairing the health. When that which ought to be thrown out of the body is too long retained, it not only occasions a plethora, or too great fulness of the vessels, but acquires qualities which are hurtful to the health, as acrimony, putrescence, &c.
Of the Evacuation by Stool.
Few things conduce more to health than keeping the body regular. When the fæces lie too long in the bowels, they vitiate the humours; and when they are too soon discharged, the body is not sufficiently nourished. A medium is therefore to be desired, which can only be obtained by regularity in diet, sleep, and exercise. Whenever the body is not regular, there is reason to suspect a fault in one or other of these.
Persons who eat and drink at irregular hours, and who eat various kinds of food, and drink of several different liquors at every meal, have no reason to expect either that their digestion will be good, or their discharges regular. Irregularity in eating and drinking disturbs every part of the animal œconomy, and never fails to occasion diseases. Either too much or too little food will have this effect. The former indeed generally occasions looseness, and the latter costiveness; but both have a tendency to hurt the health.
It would be difficult to ascertain the exact number of stools which may be consistent with health, as these differ in the different periods of life, in different constitutions, and even in the same constitution under a different regimen of diet, exercise, &c. It is however generally allowed, that one stool a-day is sufficient for an adult, and that less is hurtful. But this, like most general rules, admits of many exceptions. I have known persons in perfect health who did not go to stool above once a-week. Such a degree of costiveness however is not safe; though the person who labours under it may for some time enjoy tolerable health, yet at length it may occasion diseases.
One method of procuring a stool every day is to rise betimes, and go abroad in the open air. Not only the posture in bed is unfavourable to regular stools, but also the warmth. This, by promoting the perspiration, lessens all the other discharges.
The method recommended for this purpose by Mr. Locke is likewise very proper, viz. to solicit nature, by going regularly to stool every morning whether one has a call or not. Habits of this kind may be acquired, which will in time become natural.
Persons who have frequent recourse to medicines for preventing costiveness seldom fail to ruin their constitution. Purging medicines frequently repeated weaken the bowels, hurt the digestion, and every dose makes way for another, till at length they become as necessary as daily bread. Those who are troubled with costiveness ought rather, if possible, to remove it by diet than drugs. They should likewise go thinly clothed, and avoid every thing of an astringent or of an heating nature. The diet and other regimen necessary in this case will be found under the article Costiveness, where this state of the bowels is treated as a disease.
Such persons as are troubled with a habitual looseness ought likewise to suit their diet to the nature of their complaint. They should use food which braces and strengthens the bowels, and which is rather of an astringent quality, as wheat-bread made of the finest flour, cheese, eggs, rice boiled in milk, &c. Their drink should be red port, claret, brandy and water in which toasted bread has been boiled, and such like.
As a habitual looseness is often owing to an obstructed perspiration, persons affected with it ought to keep their feet warm, to wear flannel next their skin, and take every other method to promote the perspiration. Further directions with regard to the treatment of this complaint will be found under the article Looseness.