Alcinous B. Jamison

“ Observe the large percentage of human beings that are anemic, sallow, clay-colored, or white—a few obese, but the many spare, lean, gaunt—all of them expressing the disgust of the soul in having such an abiding-place. If all the organs and tissues of the body were kept flushed, what a fresh and inviting spot the soul would have for the cultivation here on earth of the arts of life! ”

“ It is poor consolation when you have reached your last gasp, after a chronic invalidism, to feel that you have done the best you knew how. You have not sought the cause, nor, having learned it somehow, sought to remove or avoid it. For the last four hundred years this tinkering, this futile medication, has been kept up at a furious pace without even a hope of permanent cure. Poor, outraged human nature dimly knew that it was simply doctoring a symptom, a consequence of something or other—for that is all that con­sti­pa­tion and its host of symptoms really are. ”

“ Is it not reasonable that so harmless and efficient a remedy as the internal bath should be adopted by all intelligent persons? Inasmuch as neglect—due to social, business, and other customs, and to lack of conveniences for ready relief—has brought upon us so much fecal poisoning and local disorders and so many abnormal and pernicious systemic results, it should not be considered too great a task to take an internal bath three times a day to amend our outrage on Nature—an outrage that involves our health and general well-being, here and hereafter. ”

“ Every year thousands of children and invalids of New York receive improper nourishment, or are made positively sick, on milk that is either foul, stale, or ready to sour; and every summer thousands of children die from complaints traceable to this source. Swill milk is one of the great generators of disease-producing germs to which all sorts of “complaints” are due. Does the Board of Health care a fig for the generator? No; the Board is absorbed in watching the antics of the germs! Mighty intellects are searching for malignant, multitudinous mites. ”

“ Many persons never take an external bath, and are not conscious of any bodily discomfort arising from the omission of this presumably necessary practice. As the summer approaches, another batch of “civilizees,” so fortunate as to be within convenient distance of a pond, lake, river, or ocean, begin to feel the real need of a “dip,” and are uncomfortable until they get it. This is surely a sign that the spirit of cleanliness is beginning to stir in the breast of humanity. ”

“ We owe it, not only to our possibilities, but also to posterity, that fecal poisoning be banished. We have no right to communicate such a taint to our children. They have a right to be free from such poison. Do we ever think of their claims in this regard? Let us leave them a better legacy, by adopting the thrice-a-day use of the enema for the purification of the alimentary canal! ”

“ In the early history of the disease this habit may serve for a time; but, as the disease progresses, the “laxative” habit is formed, which, in turn, settles into a chronic “drug” habit for all sorts and conditions of gastro-intestinal and other ills, which inevitably ensue. As the ravages of chronic inflammation of the anus and rectum increase, the symptoms rapidly multiply, till finally the victim, in desperation, feels that he must find additional sources of relief—and, among other habits, he forms the “diet” habit. ”

“ Whatever the explanation may be, it is nevertheless passing strange that little or no care is bestowed on either our external or internal servitors, instruments, or organs, which otherwise are ever ready to keep us well filled with the pure wine of joy. Perhaps it is that many of us find Nature so lavish in supplying us with the means of joy that we are naturally equally lavish in wasting them. True economy—that is, the conserving of means for their effective use—is yet to be learned by man. ”

“ Is there any human being so ignorant that he cannot understand that when food stuffs in the gastro-intestinal canal ferment and putrefy they thereby generate toxic (poisonous) gaseous matter, volatile fatty acids, and putrid feces; that such matter, acids, and feces are rapidly absorbed by the system, and that, if the system does not readily eliminate them by way of the bowels, kidneys, and mucous membrane, they will tend to bring on one or more forms of acute or chronic disease? ”

“ Paradoxical as it may seem, there is, not­with­stand­ing the appropriation every year for the New York City Board of Health of over one million dollars, a prohibitive tax on bath-tubs and water-closets—that is, on cleanliness—prohibitive on all homes except those of the wealthy. Is it to be wondered at that contagious diseases are prevalent, especially during the winter months, and that we have so many acute and chronic maladies? ”

“ It is not my purpose at present to go into a detailed description of the organs involved in this inflammatory process, but to make plain why the enema is superior to all other means of securing cleanliness. When we know why we do a thing, the task is not so difficult and annoying as when we go it blind or simply obey the behest of a physician. Ignorance has no business bothering with anything; experience, however, is usually a painful if not a fatal instructor. The human race at large is ignorant concerning the normal and abnormal processes of its internal organs. ”

“ Nature is stored habit, and she feels outraged when her proprieties are disregarded. Let us pray, therefore, that the habit of cleanliness may become contagious!
Now, the parallel between external and internal cleanliness is quite obvious. Those whose bowels move but once in two or three days do not realize how foul they are. Others have a scant evacuation once in twenty-four hours, and they imagine that they are as clean as those that take an external bath once a week think themselves to be. ”

“ Still others have two stools daily, and they feel as clean internally as those that take three external baths weekly. And, finally, there are a few who, defecating thrice daily, feel quite as clean as does the most persistent external bather. Thus we see that cleanliness, external and internal, is a habit, a new nature, attended with exquisite comfort and pleasure—a quality that may lead to the goal of divine purity in realizing the joys of hydropathy. ”

“ Think of it: your body may be bored with channels or holes of varying diameters and lengths, while you yourself may be ignorant of what is occurring! The mucous membrane may be lifted from the connective tissue for the whole length of the rectum, and the skin about the anus may also be in this condition. You know that your health is not good, but you are ignorant of the cause. The formation of pus at some period of the channel’s inroads, or of an abscess, would seem a kindly act of Nature, for the presence of so serious a disturber to health would thus become known. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Notwithstanding the bad odor in which I shall be held, I will nerve myself to claim that, when the ancients considered and called piles or hemorrhoids a disease, they made a very grave and palpable mistake, and that, having made this mistake, it was inevitable that numerous errors should follow logically in its train when they attempted to account for the etiology, character, and means of cure of this “disease.” ”

“ Albeit that the cleaning of the digestive apparatus in the case of a sick person is regarded as a necessary first help the world over, few persons realize that it is of equal importance in the case of a seemingly healthy person. Is it not a fair inference, therefore, that where a purgative—such as calomel, or one of the innumerable similarly-acting medicines—temporarily relieves a patient’s symptoms, the timely precaution of keeping the intestinal canal and system clean would prevent a person from getting ill? ”

“ Quite frequently, owing to various causes, the feces will descend into the rectum, which is properly a conduit, not a receptacle. While there it occasions much nervous irritation of the whole system and makes its victim desperate. It is wise, under such a condition, to take slight injections for relief. Never allow any foulness to accumulate. Establish the habit of internal cleanliness. The new sense of bodily purity will be so great that it can never be outgrown.
Nature easily accommodates herself to habits, whatever they be—normal or abnormal, wholesome or unwholesome, cleanly or uncleanly ”

“ The eleventh objection, and the most ridiculous of all, is that it requires too much time to take the enema twice or thrice daily.
I lose all patience with persons urging this objection. Those that have little or no system with their daily duties seldom have time to do anything of importance. They suffer from “haphazarditis,” a very difficult disease to cure, and they are in many cases hopeless. Usually they are an uncleanly lot of people, full of good intentions, but their intentions, though taken often, seldom operate as an antidote to foulness. ”

“ If it be claimed that many of us do live up to our knowledge of health conditions, and that we are not­with­stand­ing unwell, I would answer that our knowledge now is very disconnected, and that when the time shall come that our itemistic information shall have coalesced and formed a system of principles, we will then have trustworthy rules for the acquisition of health habits and become completely normal physical beings. At present most of us are intemperate in one or more ways. We eat too much or too little—too rich or too poor food. ”

“ Only one that has learned to respect and care for the abode of the soul—the body—is worthy of being classed among the refined. It is truly deplorable that the great majority of the human race are creatures of the moment or the hour, tolerators of abnormal functioning, slow suicides of vital capacities. Claims of the permanent are constantly ignored; most of us are blind to the joy involved in the harmonious functioning of all the organs—a functioning that always ensues upon hygienic care. ”

“ Sometimes there is a reassertion of common sense; the poor victim becomes disgusted with himself and his credulous acceptance of the doctor’s dictation and his fatuous swilling of the druggist’s decoctions. He gets tired of chronic ill-health and bowel troubles, and, lo and behold! he does the simplest and most sensible thing in the world—a thing he ought to have done at the very start, or before he ever had the least trouble: He thoroughly washes out his alimentary canal with pure or antiseptic water. He drinks a lot of pure spring water, and he flushes his bowels with two or three enemas. ”

“ Alas! how little we know—or, for that matter, how little we seem to care—of the great multitude of “civilized” fellow-creatures whose lives are all jangled and out of tune through subjection to the many ills that flesh seems heir to; ills that have arisen through either ignorance or the voluntary ignoring of the light of accessible knowledge! ”

“ Could he not devote his time profitably to studying the habits of health-producing microbes—for there are such? Microbes are absolutely necessary for higher forms of existence, it being now well known that some microbes are destructive or pathological and that others are constructive or physiological. Is it not much wiser to spend our millions of dollars for the prevention of disease than for quarantining it? Inducing, and even compelling, people to be clean is a far better policy than to compel them to be vaccinated. ”

“ If every citizen of New York could have all the water he needed for cleanliness and comfort, there would be little excuse for the existence of such a body as the Board of Health; its existence would then be more honorable than onerous. Furthermore, the city, as a corporate body, should manufacture bath-tubs and water-closets, and furnish them at cost. Thus would it insure a great stride toward the health of its own citizens. When the disease-producing microbe becomes scarce, the occupation of the Health Board pathologist will be gone. ”

“ The removal of the chronic inflammation, in whatever state it may be found, should be a paramount feature of the treatment from the time a case comes under one’s care. The cure of the disease ought to be of more importance than the removal of a symptom or symptoms. Should there be bleeding from a mucous sac, or should there be prolapse of it, or both, immediate treatment will give relief at once, and the sufferer will think you have performed a miracle, especially if the annoyance has existed for many years. ”

“ The victims could scarcely be worse off than they are. I want boys and girls, young men and young women, to learn the facts concerning the local dangers of proctitis; for, when they once realize the seriousness of this disease because of its many grave symptoms, they will give it proper attention before these effects manifest themselves. You cannot neglect so important a portion of your body as the anus and rectum and not seriously endanger the organs that lie close to them. No wonder so many men are troubled with inflammation and induration of the prostate gland. ”