ent forms as these?

=Change of Water.= Another popular superstition centers around
drinking-waters. There are people who cannot move from one town to
another, much less take an extensive trip, without a fit of
constipation--or a box of pills. If they only knew it, there is no
water on earth which could make a person constipated. A new water,
full of unusual minerals, might hasten the bowel movement, but on what
possible principle could it retard it? Constipation has nothing to do
with food or with water, but solicitous care about either can hardly
fail to create the trouble which it tries to avoid.

THE CURE

=Taking off the Brakes.= Since constipation is wholly due to the
acceptance of a false suggestion, the only logical cure must be
release from the power of that suggestion. "He is able as soon as he
thinks he is able"; not that thought gives the power, but that the
right thought releases the inhibition of the mistaken thought. As soon
as the brakes are taken off, the internal machinery is quite able to
make the wheels go round. The bowel will empty itself if we let it.
The function of elimination is not a new trick learned with difficulty
by the aged, but a trick as old and as elemental as life itself. Like
balancing on a bicycle, it may not be done by any voluntary muscular
effort, but it just does itself when one learns how.

Once the sense of power comes, once the mind forgets to be doubtful or
afraid, then the old automatic habit invariably reasserts itself.
Meddlesome interference may throw the mechanism out of gear, but
fortunately it cannot strip the gears. Constipation is an inhibition
or restraint of function, but is never a loss of function. No one is
too old, no one is too fixed in the bad habit to relearn the old
trick. I have had a good many patients with chronic constipation, but
I have never had one who failed to learn. Real conviction speedily
brings success, and in many cases success seems to outrun conviction.
So efficient is Nature if she has only half a chance!

=Some People Who Learned.= Unless you are over ninety-two, do not
despair. One old lady of that age, a sort of patient by proxy, was
able to cure herself without even one consultation. Her daughter had
been a patient of mine and had been cured of the constipation with
which she had been busy for many years. The mother, who believed her
own bowel paralyzed, had been in the habit of lying on the bed and
taking a copious enema every