d of fecal dejections. Prof. Ch. Bouchard says:

"The consequence of this development of acid in the whole length of
the digestive tube is an inflammatory condition. We notice catarrh
of the stomach, ulcerative gastritis, to which patients often
succumb after twenty-five years of _bad stomach_; these are the
_false cancers_, as they are called, or malignant gastritis
without tumor. The large intestine is inflamed; around the fecal
matter are seen glairy secretions and sometimes blood (membranous
enteritis)." (Op. cit., p. 159.)

In chronic inflammation of the rectum and colon there is more or less
discharge of mucous, and in some cases of membranous, desquamation,
with yellow or bloody mucus. The shreds, cords or complete tubular
casts are discharged constantly or at varying intervals. The quantity
and character often alarm the sufferer. The discharge is nothing less
than a thick, tenacious mucus that had formed a thin coating on the
inflamed mucous membrane, and become exfoliated in casts or thin
shreds--the result of many years of morbid intestinal exaggerated
action.

Microscopical examination of the desquamated intestinal membrane and
mucus from a man forty years of age, revealed the following products:
crystals, mostly complete; incomplete phosphates, very numerous; mucous
shreds in abundance; fat globules and granules, numerous; anal
epithelia; red blood globules, few; connective tissue, scanty; pus
corpuscles, very few; margaric acid and detritus (substances resulting
from the destruction or wearing away of the part); undigested material,
mostly cellulose; leptothrix threads, micrococci; and the bacillus coli
communis. Diagnosis: foul, undigested material, due to a chronic
inflammation of the lower intestinal tract. The microscopical
examination of mucus and desquamated membrane from a woman sixty-five
years of age, disclosed that she was suffering from proctitis and
colitis. She wrote: "Please tell me how long this mucous discharge must
continue. I am alarmed at the quantity of membrane, cords, casts, etc.,
in my excreta, and I think that if this process goes on much longer
there will soon be no bowels left to purify." This letter was written
some weeks after contracting a severe cold, which accounts for the
unusual amount of exfoliation and mucus. The sample she sent contained
a large quantity of mucus, both threads and corpuscles; with a moderate
number of epithelial scales,