most
universal cause of undue retention of foul, effete matter has been
ascertained, it is important to communicate to the world at large the
best means of cleansing the bowels without increasing the local primary
disease and its annoying symptoms.

That external physical cleanliness is next to godliness is an apt
proverb. That internal physical cleanliness is nearer to godliness no
one will deny.

Water is a universal solvent and therapeutic agent and is therefore
indispensable in the cleansing and purifying of the integument and
mucous membrane of the body. A large quantity of water is necessary to
carry on the functions of the animal economy. Water enters every cell
and fibre of the living organism, aiding in nutrition and in the
elimination of worn-out tissues which if retained turn into poisons.

It is really not an intelligent but rather a barbarous practice to
prescribe liver and intestinal exciters for the purpose of throwing
into the alimentary tract a sufficient quantity of watery excretions to
"cleanse itself"; to succeed they must first soften and liquefy the
dry, hardened feces and scybalous masses (little ancient, bullet-like
formations) imprisoned above an inflamed and fevered lower bowel, even
colon.

Normal feces consist of 75 per cent water; and when unduly retained in
the colon much of this fetid percentage is absorbed into the system.
Then drugs are prescribed to liquefy the hardened putrid remnant and
absorption begins again: a fact very shocking to a sensitive, even
sensible, person.

CHAPTER IX.

CURES FOR CONSTIPATION: "FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE."

Diseases of the anus and rectum are very common, very numerous and of
very critical consequences. This is especially true of the disease of
chronic inflammation, one of whose symptoms is piles or hemorrhoids. In
the writings of the early Greek and Roman physicians will be found
minute descriptions of the latter disorder. But on the whole, the most
important symptom of chronic inflammation of the lower bowel, and the
most far-reaching in its morbific results, is that protean monster,
chronic constipation. It deranges more lives, from infancy to old age,
than any other pathological condition that can be named.

For the cause and cure of that mere symptom of a disease, constipation,
the so-called scientific physicians, from the early history of
medication to the present time, have had one immutable theory as to the
leading cause, a