liquids, permits of sufficient space for even the daily
passage of feces without dislodging the stored contents. The fact that
there is a passage daily deceives both sufferer and medical adviser as
to the source of the poisonous condition of the system, and masks the
origin of such disorders as chronic inflammation and ulceration of the
nose, throat, lungs, stomach, duodenum, colon, appendix vermiformis,
uterus, bladder, kidneys and edema of the legs. But these evidences of
auto-infection are generally preceded and accompanied by a general loss
of vitality and weight, by anemia, by a lowering of the resisting power
of the organism--all of which produce a fit soil for the various
diseases to which flesh is heir. As soon as the system becomes
saturated with bacteria and effete matter, auto-intoxication results,
in which condition there is but little or no store of vitality for
resistance, reaction and recuperation.

Dr. Bright has recorded several instances of fecal accumulation in the
colon mistaken for enlargement of the liver and for malignant tumors.
In one of the cases there was jaundice which disappeared after free
evacuation of the bowels. Frerichs also relates a case where
enlargement from fecal accumulation was at first ascribed to a pregnant
uterus, and subsequently, on the supervention of deep jaundice, to an
enlarged liver, but in which purgatives dispelled the patient's anxiety
about a diseased liver and at the same time her hopes for a child.

Dr. N. Chapman, in his _Clinical Lectures_ (p. 304), says:

"The feces sometimes accumulate in distinct indurated scybala or in
enormous masses, solid and compact. Taunton, a surgeon of London,
has a preparation of the colon and rectum of more than twenty
inches in circumference containing three gallons of feces, taken
from a woman, whose abdomen was as much distended as in the
maturity of pregnancy. By Lemazurier, another case is reported of a
pregnant woman, who was constipated for two months, from whom,
after death, thirteen and one-half pounds of solid feces were taken
away, though a short time before between two and three pounds had
been scraped out of the rectum. Cases are reported by Dr. Graves of
Dublin, which he saw in women, where from the great distentions in
certain directions of the abdomen, the one was considered to be
owing to a prodigious hypertrophy of the liver, and the other of
the ovary; in t