Alcinous B. Jamison

“ It is estimated that food taken into the stomach will reach the colon in five hours. For nineteen hours the sewage waste of the body is gradually becoming a fetid pool before an outlet is furnished it by the one-movement-a-day people; and O ye gods of health! how many of us there are that haven't even one movement a day! For a few hours the absorbent cells of the colon will try to extract as much of the nutritious residue as the system calls for, but along with it a lot of poisonous filth will be absorbed. The call of the system for nourishment should be fully answered by the small intestines. ”

“ Man's food is as varied as his work, more varied than the climate, with one food for the luxurious and one for the poor. The majority of us take what we can get, making no complaints; even when we have a cook and a good one the same is true. The ideal diet prepared by the ideal cook no one has as yet made fashionable, but one thing is within the reach of all—cleanliness of the sewers of the body. Keep the contents of the bowels moving down and out steadily and regularly and you may eat almost any food and in almost any preparation and still be healthy. ”

“ Can we not by a settled habit, that is, by the formation of a second nature, assure our vital success, on which the continuance of the enjoyment of life so much depends? If some part of a complicated machine gets out of order it must be repaired at once or damage may result to other parts of it. Again, if our business accounts will not balance, the error must be found and corrected at once, or the evidence of it will annoy us sooner or later. Why should not such prompt care and attention be given to the human mechanism, to the economy of vital functions? ”

“ Disease gradually acquaints him with the fact that there are within him organs and functions corresponding to the objects and forces in the world without,—servitors in fact which must not be ignored under penalty of transforming them into foes to his well-being. Disease makes him aware that by ignoring the claims of his inner relations he has been converting his very food, juices and gases into insidious and formidable poisons, which perforce he absorbs into his blood and tissues and circulates throughout his entire system. ”

“ But how strange it is that so many sufferers regard their anatomy and physiology so lightly as to think of using remedies, even for relief, without first undergoing a thorough examination by a competent physician. In troubles of a rectal character it is exceedingly foolhardy to allow any one to prescribe without insisting upon a thorough examination to ascertain whether there be any disease of a cancerous nature present, or what the trouble actually is, and its progress. ”

“ To merely relieve the annoying symptoms that accompany it cannot be called a cure. But on the other hand relief may be the commencement of a cure. Of course the true way of looking at the subject of this disease is to regard the cure of proctitis as necessarily leading to the disappearance in time of all the other troubles that were the outcome of that ailment. Through the harmonious efforts of patient and physician, marvellous results are often obtainable. ”

“ THE USUAL DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT OF BOWEL TROUBLES WRONG.
Herodotus tells us that among certain tribes when a man fell sick his next-door neighbor did not wait for him to become thin but killed him at once, lest by the loss of his adipose his flesh might be rendered less appetizing.
But alas! in this age of constipation and piles, of self-generated poisons and self-infection, how changed is the custom! Our next-door neighbor, the doctor, waits till we are really thin, and then begins to feed and grow fat on our ills! ”

“ Surely it is a moral crime, an inexcusable folly to tolerate a disease with its inevitable train of dire consequences, up to the point when the discomfort compels one to seek treatment. There are patients, of course, who have good and sufficient excuses for their painful predicament; they have, for example, tried persistently for relief and cure, but have failed to find a physician competent to treat their particular case. ”

“ To know that there is only one chief cause for chronic constipation and its train of disorders, and that that cause overshadows all other causes combined, and is easily diagnosed and treated, is news long hoped and prayed for by a multitude of sufferers the world over.
Twenty years as a specialist in diseases of the lower bowels have demonstrated to the writer that chronic inflammation, and often ulceration, of the rectum and sigmoid flexure, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, is the cause of chronic constipation and the long army of ills resulting from it. ”

“ Man's body is 70 per cent water. It is therefore a good-sized water cask with a ramification of countless canals or pipes imbedded in soft connective tissues, nerves and muscles, all of which are supported by a bony framework; through the centre of this runs the alimentary canal, down which waters may flow and disappear like unto a stream lost in the sand, to reappear and ooze from skin, lungs, kidneys and intestinal canal. Every organ and tissue luxuriates in water; they lave and live in and by it. With all kinds of food it is introduced into the body. ”

“ Normal health depends on right doing and being. Eternal vigilance is the price to be paid for the attainment and maintenance of the goal of normal life and progress. Eliminate all waste material from the body and all shifty vermin from the mind, and the millennium for all things in the universe will soon dawn. ”

“ Man is not as yet more than half human, and he will not become truly human until he makes more use of the upper lobes of his brain, nor until the spiritual part of his nature becomes dominant. When that day dawns he will have a corresponding evolution of the physical body, especially of the gastro-intestinal canal. Some one has sagely said that man's brain is a mere extension of his intestinal canal. Well, possibly by and by the intestinal canal may become an extension of a spiritually awakened mind, with all its dominating influence over the physical body. ”

“ There is a legion of secondary symptoms of proctitis, all of which medical empiricism considers and denominates causes. As constipation is such an every-day complaint of almost everybody one meets, it will not tax our imagination unduly to conceive how it may be a frequent cause of diarrhea, which is only Nature's effort to get rid of its useless and excessive burden of retained feces and gases. Constipation, semi-constipation, and irregular action of the bowels, excessive fermentation, putrefaction, self-generated or auto-infection, are the factors to be considered. ”

“ We medical men all know the numerous and grave symptoms exhibited by one or more organs of the body, or by all of them, from the persistent work of the deleterious gases and bacterial poisons on the system—a work going on for years, finally placing the victim beyond medical aid. All of us are agreed that the capacious gastro-intestinal canal should be clean. What, I submit, is the best means of keeping clean this long, large, tortuous, spacious, valved and flexed canal—a canal that disease has here and there pouched, dislocated, bagged, reservoired ”

“ The keynote of this book is Proctitis, inflammation of the anal and rectal canals. Hardly a civilized man escapes proctitis from the day of the diaper to that of death. The diaper is in truth chiefly responsible for proctitis, and proctitis is in turn chiefly responsible for chronic constipation, chronic diarrhea, auto-infection; and hence for mal-assimilation, mal-nutrition, anemia; and for a thousand and one reflex functional derangements of the system as well. The inflamed surface of the intestinal canal (proctitis) inhibits the passage of feces. ”

“ Their one sigh the livelong day is: "Oh, could we be like birds that can stool while on the wing or on foot!" This feat of time-saving being hardly possible in the present incarnation and order of society, they content themselves with making a storehouse out of the intestinal canal for an indefinite length of time as they concern themselves with external affairs of work or sport. ”

“ To the scientific eye, your capacious digestive apparatus is a psycho-physical exhibit of the racial proclivity to overeat. Here, in this exhibit, the race's inordinate craving for food and drink, its gluttonous thought, have embodied themselves; and this exhibit, this apparatus, is accordingly not merely physical, but also psychical, for its sub-conscious outreach for "more and always more" is only too apparent. Man's stomach and bowels are too much like those of a mere animal, and are the source of nine-tenths of his ills. ”

“ In the preceding chapters we have mentioned some of the most common cases of retention of excreta in the rectum, sigmoid cavity, colon, cecum, duodenum and stomach, and how the consequent foul conditions often resulted in diarrhea. Auto-infection impairs the functions of every organ in the body, by clogging the pores with poisons and filth. By the transfer of disease germs from one infected, that is, tainted, contaminated part of the body to parts that were free from infection, the kidneys, mucous membrane and skin receive these unnatural products, and their functions are disturbed thereby. ”

“ Infliction, misery, are everywhere. The taint of auto-generated intestinal morbific products, carried and communicated to the remotest parts, manifests itself now here now there as if it were a local trouble, and it is difficult therefore, nay, impossible, to classify scientifically the symptoms of auto-infection. A classification, though necessarily imperfect, will aid in the diagnosis and treatment of the various abnormal conditions of the stomach and intestines, that is, of mal-digestion. ”

“ The tenth objection to using an enema is in being obliged to use it from the fact of having such a disease as chronic inflammation of the rectum and colon. Every victim hates to be compelled to do a thing, and the victim of proctitis and colitis is no exception to the rule. In fact, he is beginning to realize that unless he uses it his system will be poisoned by the absorption of the sewage waste. Let the victim object to the disease that necessitates the use of the enema and he will shortly be well. ”

“ The writer has long regarded the abnormal production of gaseous substances in the intestinal canal from putrefactive changes as of itself not only a grave menace to health, but as a condition productive of morbific results of which we have still much to learn. The more or less constant and excessive distention of the whole or even of a part of the intestinal canal by gases is a serious condition, affecting as it does the various organs of the body, not only through the absorption of these gases into the general circulation but also through the reflex nervous reaction of these organs. ”

“ To expect one remedy or prescription to meet all the requirements for the cure of a chronic disease of the anus and rectum and of the many complications accompanying it is hardly sensible, but that is just what a great many do expect. No one remedy in the market, or any number of them combined can effect a cure, for the simple reason that proper local treatment by a physician is of paramount importance. ”

“ Through digestion and assimilation the physiological process takes up the food, juices and gases, to support and augment the life of man. The pathological process, on the contrary, because the conditions for nutrition are ignored, reverses the upbuilding processes; and the organs of life wither, waste and weaken, until life goes out like fire unfed. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The flushing of the rectum, sigmoid flexure and colon with water is not a cure-all, but it is one of the means of treating a grave chronic disease, a disease insidious and far-reaching in its poisonous effects on the human organism. ”

“ And, as Nature predicted, man's social customs to-day are out of all accord with gluttonous feeding; he, as well as his capacious bowels, suffers the consequences of his excessive feeding, and this suffering leads him to adopt artificial means for relief or escape. Up-to-date civilization has constrained man to adopt a cooped-up existence, one that shuts out, to a great extent, sunshine and air; an existence, moreover, that involves but a limited amount of exercise. How, then, can it be otherwise than—gormand that he is—that he should fare ill with this gluttonous, mammoth digestive canal? ”

“ It is astonishing what a number of people there are who drink little or nothing, and especially amazing is it to find this lack of sense in people suffering from constipation. One would suppose that they above all others would see the wisdom of irrigating their bowels. But it is seldom that there is one who thinks of such a thing. A cup of coffee or tea at meal-time, in addition to the liquid contained in the food, is the extent of water consumption by ever so many teetotalers and other "totalers," especially women, until they reach, say, thirty years of age. ”

“ 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. ”

“ ABSCESS AND FISTULA.
In our daily affairs we take thought for the future and reason from cause to effect. We observe, anticipate, expect and suspect. This is a commendable practice, for it is the one that is most likely to lead to success. Can we not acquire a similar attitude and habit in regard to our health? Habit is sub-conscious attention. Can we not give sub-conscious attention to the little details of such bodily functions as are liable to get out of order? ”

“ We would expect people suffering from constipation or obstipation to pass as fairly well people for a time, but the same is not true of patients having the other condition, costiveness. As we may speak of the stages of a disease like consumption, so we may speak of these three conditions as different stages of one affliction, the worst being costiveness with its progressive self-poisoning by the products of intestinal decomposition. Early in the case the system may pass these poisons out of the body with comparative ease, by way of the lungs, skin and kidneys. ”