all-important question
is:--How soon and how well have the residuary part of the food (for
some part will always be undigested or unassimilated), and the waste
resulting from worn-out tissues of the various organs, been eliminated
from the system? Wisdom declares that it is not so much what we eat,
but what and how well we eliminate, that decides the issues of health
and disease. Do the egesta pass out in the form of normal feces? Three
times in twenty-four hours foodstuffs are taken, and as many times the
bowels should be freed of accumulated excrement and gases. Does Nature
have her way, or do neglect and bad habits rule the assimilative and
eliminative functions of the bowels?

The habit of storing feces for twenty-four hours ought to concur and
keep pace with a habit of eating one meal in the same period. Household
and laboratory receptacles in which fermentation has occurred are
emptied and cleaned before fresh material is put into them. Is not the
same precaution more essential with the receptacles for digestion and
egestion? They constitute our chief physiological economy; they are
precious household and laboratory utensils; exceedingly precious, as we
can purchase no other set when these are worn and wasted beyond repair.
What marvelous possessions, and how reckless most of us are with them!
Neither love nor money will bring another "body"-house to us when this
decays; when poisons or parasites infest it as the result of a
pernicious diathesis, of debasing, destructive tendencies; in short, of
unmindfulness!

Too often criminal negligence or the lack of proper convenience has
brought on the habit of using the intestinal canal as a storehouse for
dried feces, and the glands and blood-vessels as reservoirs for the
absorbed fluid poisons from the feces that have been stored and thus
dried. This baneful habit is general throughout civilized communities.
It is this habit that has made the words "constipation," "indigestion,"
"diarrhea," etc., familiar and household subjects of complaint. Medical
writers agree that "constipation" is the most common malady that
afflicts mankind; but they are also unanimous in preposterously
attributing the cause to the abnormal action of the liver and the
secondary symptoms of constipation.

Chronic constipation is the result of proctitis and colitis. Proctitis,
the inflammation of the rectal and anal canals, is the most common
disease that afflicts the human creature from infancy