FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77  
78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   >>   >|  
al is desecrated on all hands, though part of a house not made with hands--a house that should be a home for the soul of man. CHAPTER XVII. COSTIVENESS. The words constipation, obstipation and costiveness are often employed as if of exactly similar meaning, but it is well to let each stand for a particular condition. Obstipation implies that the canal of the intestine is stopped up or closed. Constipation carries the idea that the canal is completely filled up with refuse matter. In the normal condition the intestine is divided by transverse bulges or valves or dams into a number of separate segments, the entire arrangement having the effect of preventing too rapid descent of the feces. These folds within the canal may become too much narrowed by disease and thus prevent the movement of the matters inside; this is obstipation. Constipation, stuffing of the gut, may be the result of neglecting the call of nature, and after a time the ability to recognize and answer it is lost; or it may result from inflammation which itself comes from the bad habit mentioned. The author prefers to use the term costiveness for the general debased condition of the system from auto-intoxication depending upon proctitis and similar conditions of the intestinal tract. And it must be remembered that the same patient may have two or more of these conditions at the same time. Constipation, obstipation and diarrhea may alternate through the progress of the case. We would expect people suffering from constipation or obstipation to pass as fairly well people for a time, but the same is not true of patients having the other condition, costiveness. As we may speak of the stages of a disease like consumption, so we may speak of these three conditions as different stages of one affliction, the worst being costiveness with its progressive self-poisoning by the products of intestinal decomposition. Early in the case the system may pass these poisons out of the body with comparative ease, by way of the lungs, skin and kidneys. In time the second stage begins to make itself apparent, vitality becomes less and less, calling for a greater variety of medicines to correct the condition, as in the second stage of consumption, and also to arrest the progress of emaciation and anemia or anemic obesity. The third stage of auto-intoxication is a most unhappy one. The impoverished tissues offer a most favorable soil for the development of dise
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77  
78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
condition
 

obstipation

 

costiveness

 

conditions

 

Constipation

 

intestine

 
stages
 
consumption
 

disease

 
people

result

 

progress

 
intestinal
 

system

 

constipation

 

similar

 

intoxication

 

patients

 
remembered
 
diarrhea

alternate

 

expect

 
fairly
 
patient
 

suffering

 

comparative

 

arrest

 
emaciation
 

anemia

 

correct


medicines

 

calling

 

greater

 

variety

 
anemic
 

obesity

 
favorable
 

development

 
tissues
 

unhappy


impoverished

 

vitality

 

apparent

 
poisoning
 

products

 

decomposition

 

progressive

 

affliction

 

poisons

 
kidneys