or
no water. As a consequence, they are a sort of dirty, dried-up plant,
with but little juice of life in them.

Others, again, equally unclean, or more so, take a moderate amount of
fluid every day, and present a more or less roly-poly appearance, with
considerable abdominal distention, due to malnutrition and gases. Of
course, their eyes, skin, tongue, breath, and lack of vim and vigor
tell the story of a long process of self-poisoning, with every now and
then the eventuation of a storm of foulness, called a bilious
attack--meaning an overflow of filth. Death often brings about a
radical change in such poisoned bodies.

Now, what can a prescriber of a gastro-intestinal ejector expect to
accomplish by disturbing the maleconomy of this apparatus? Usually he
expects that considerable trouble will ensue; consequently, he will add
belladonna or some other soothing drug to mitigate the act of expulsion.
The ejector (called laxative, purgative, cathartic) occasions
irritation, which sets up twisting, writhing, rumbling of the bowels,
accompanied with a shower of liquid into the canal (as tears fill the
eyes from the effects of sand or a blow), which liquid mingles again
with the putrid refuse materials, from which it had been recently
absorbed, and, mingling, proceeds to fill up the normal and abnormal
spaces just described, _to be again reabsorbed into the system_. Oh,
the foulness of it all! The spirits of the departed, as well as the
still incarnate patients, demand of the healing art safe and sane
hygienic methods of cure. _The enema, regularly and properly used, is
the remedy par excellence._

Those that suffer from chronic constipation are usually deficient in
the quantity and quality of intestinal secretions. Physic increases the
depletion of the intestinal juices. Of the watery secretion forced into
the bowels, four-fifths are reabsorbed into the system, plus poisons
and filth. The system soon becomes accustomed to the irritation of
drugs, and requires an ever-increasing amount. These irritate and
increase the chronic inflammation of the lower bowel, often to the
extent of a discharge of blood.

Straining effort to induce defecation is injurious. The use of massage,
of vibratory exercises, of electricity; the spraying of cold water on
the abdomen, etc.,--none of them are calculated to remove or even to
relieve the proctitis and colitis.

The temperature of the water used for an enema should be about one
hundre