aid, and he learns that the troubles complained
of are only symptoms of a chronic disease, therefore easily removed
without harsh treatment while the cause is being properly cured.

It is very fortunate for the sufferer from ballooning of the rectum to
have in or near the anal canal those painful hints or symptoms of a
very grave and long existing disease whose constitutional symptoms were
well marked but attributed to other causes, especially to disease of the
liver--an organ of _so much solicitude_ that the poor liver-worshipping
patient ought to receive more gracious response from it.

In every case of chronic proctitis, or inflammation of the anus and
rectum, the sigmoid flexure must be more or less dilated, as the upper
part of the rectum is very irritable and contracted and inhibits the
feces from passing beyond the sigmoid; but this irritability and
contraction of the rectum, as a rule, is not nearly so severe as that
of the anal canal, whose orifice is closed by very strong sphincter
muscles.

Such being the pathological change in the sigmoid flexure and
especially in the lower portion of the rectum, as described in these
two chapters, who, with ordinary intelligence and an idea of
cleanliness, would take or prescribe remedies to move the bowels, if it
were possible to cleanse the foul capacious cavities with water? We
know that they can be thus cleansed, and that it can be easily
accomplished with benefit to the diseased canals.

After the system has absorbed 75 per cent of the fecal mass, a "remedy"
is taken to excite a flow of watery excretions into the bowels, of
which a portion will be retained in the colon, and especially the
ballooned cavities, and reabsorbed; and every day the objectionable
practice is repeated without any thought of the harm being done.

The flushing of the rectum, sigmoid flexure and colon with water is not
a _cure-all_, but it is one of the means of treating a grave chronic
disease, a disease insidious and far-reaching in its poisonous effects
on the human organism.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE USUAL DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT OF BOWEL TROUBLES WRONG.

Herodotus tells us that among certain tribes when a man fell sick his
next-door neighbor did not wait for him to become thin but killed him
at once, lest by the loss of his adipose his flesh might be rendered
less appetizing.

But alas! in this age of constipation and piles, of self-generated
poisons and self-infection, how change