Chapter 33

PHYSIOLOGICAL IRRIGATION.

The scientific irrigation of land is pretty well understood by those who have financial interest in soil requiring it. The wonderful beauty and freshness of flower and fruit give evidence of what scientific irrigation can do. So from a commercial and esthetic point of view the proper amount of daily moisture for land, tree or vine, is of such importance that it receives the consideration of those interested. How many persons, however, in the course of a lifetime have given ten minutes to serious consideration of the question: _How much water should be imbibed daily under the varying conditions of the body's garden?_ Those who give no consideration to the problem of how to attain and maintain a healthy and vigorous physical basis are persons who usually drift into habits for which they will, sooner or later, have to pay the penalty.

For the first twenty or more years the body is, as a rule, unfortunate in not having an intelligent tenant. For man misuses his physiological estate, and lets things go to rack and ruin ere he wakes to realize how it might have been as to length of days and strength of body and mind. Enlighten him, after he has reached adult years, on the values and needs of physiological and psychological functions; you will find that however eager he may be to follow the light he is handicapped by vicious habits and by confirmed, destructive changes which had seized on him when he was quite too young and incompetent to care for his body. What a topsy-turvy world this is, to be sure!

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. Such persons as a rule are not long-lived, inasmuch as their power of resistance is small, owing to their lack of blood, a lack in quality as well as in quantity. The blood pressure in their arteries and veins is light, as evidenced by their pale, sallow complexion, and the dry, scaly, feverish skin, which seldom or never perspires. The body garden has not been properly irrigated and is slowly drying up as age advances. Did you ever notice how like death such persons appear when they are asleep? Their dull, pasty complexions alarm us then. When I see them a desire to soak these dried specimens of humanity possesses me. Is it not unfortunate that we were not born with an automatic irrigator? We even lack a tube on our boiler to indicate the danger point! Deficient by nature in these little conveniences, and unaided by science, man is compelled to give some attention to the irrigation of his physiological soil, however indifferent or careless he may be.

Planters and gardeners have treatises on irrigation. Have mothers or nurses any similar guides? Such books are unknown to modern civilization. Infants, boys and girls, and adults are brought up haphazard, and their garden of life becomes choked with weeds. The drought soon makes itself felt, and a little graveyard mound is their usual fate. Before some of us wither and fade, to what a pest-weed is our adipose changed for want of life-giving water.

Man's most serious physiological fault is the toleration of constipation; or even of semi-constipation induced by the twenty-four-hour habit of stooling. In other words, his fault is the toleration of intestinal uncleanliness. And next to this foolhardiness is his negligence in the matter of drinking daily a quantity of pure soft water sufficient to aid in the proper stimulation and circulation of the blood, in the proper elimination of the waste material from the body, and in the proper assimilation of nutriment by the system.

If parents would encourage their children to become bibbers of pure spring water daily it would not be easy to make them bibbers of intoxicants in after years. I would give a child all the liquid it desires, I would even encourage it to take more rather than less, and the best liquid of all for this purpose is pure soft water. 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. Water acts as a solvent for the nutritious elements and as a sponsor for the elimination of foreign substances and worn-out tissues of the system. It also serves to maintain a proper degree of tension in the tissues, which tension is essential to the proper circulation of the lymphatic fluids.

The tonic reaction of externally applied water is well known. But the advantages of the internal use of water are hardly known at all because the reactions of the circulation, temperature, respiration, digestion and secretions are less noticed.

Two or three pints of cold water at a temperature of forty to forty-five degrees drunk at intervals of half an hour will reduce the pulse from eight to thirty beats. The copious drinking of cold water will act as a diuretic, removing stagnated secretions, and will at the same time improve the quality of the pulse and the arterial tone. The drinking of warm water will increase the pulse from five to fifteen beats, and at the same time will relax the vessel walls and also increase the cutaneous secretions to a marked degree.

The drinking of a large quantity of water not only increases the secretions of the kidneys--assisting them in the work of carrying off solid constituents, especially urea--it also increases the secretions of the skin, saliva, bile, etc. Under proper conditions the internal use of water acts as a stimulant to the nerves that control the blood-vessels, a stimulant similar to that produced by its external application.

I advise the drinking of a copious quantity of water daily. There need be no fear that this practice will thin the blood too much, as the ready elimination of the water will not permit such a result to ensue. I would further advise the generous use of water (temperature 60°) at meal-times. I pray you do not drink to wash down food: a bad habit of most of us. Drink all you desire; and if you are like many who have no desire for water, cultivate it, even if it takes years. The imbibed water will be in the tissues in about an hour; and the entire quantity will escape in about three and one-half hours. The demand on the part of the system for water is subject to great variation and is somewhat regulated by the quantity discharged from the organism. Physiologists declare that water is formed in the body by a direct union of oxygen and hydrogen, but those who have cultivated the drink-little habit need not hope to find an excuse for themselves in this fact: chronic ill-health betrays them. Water in organic relations with the body never exists uncombined with inorganic salts (especially sodium chloride) in any of the fluids, semi-solids, or solids of the body. It enters into the constitution of the tissues, not as pure water, but always in connection with inorganic salts. In case of great loss of blood by hemorrhage, a saline solution of six parts of sodium chloride with one thousand parts of sterilized water injected into the system will wash free the stranded corpuscles and give the heart something to contract upon.

When water is taken into the stomach, its temperature, its bulk, and its slight absorption react upon the system; but the major part of it is thrown into the intestinal canal. When it is of the temperature of about 60° it gives no very decided sensation either of heat or cold; between 60° and 45° it creates a cool sensation, and below 45° a decidedly cold one. Water at a temperature of about 50° is a generator of appetite. A sufficient quantity should be taken for that end; say, one or two tumblers an hour or so before each meal, followed by some exercise. Those who have acquired the waterless habit, and the many ills resulting from it, will hardly relish cool water as an appetizer; but if they would become robust they must adopt the water habit--a habit that will refresh and rejuvenate nature.

Water of a temperature between 60° and 100° relaxes the muscles of the stomach and is apt to produce nausea, especially if the effect of bulk be added to that of temperature. Lukewarm water seems to excite an upward peristalsis of the intestines and thus produces sickness.

Hot water acts as a stimulant and antiseptic, as a sedative and as a food. Water at a temperature of 110° to 120°, or more, will nearly always relieve a foul stomach and intestines. It should be slowly sipped, so that the stomach may not be uncomfortably distended. After imbibing a pint or a pint and a half, wait for fifteen or thirty minutes to give it time to pass into the bowels, then drink more if thought advisable. Drink it an hour before meal-time. It will excite downward peristalsis, will dilute the foul contents of the stomach, and will thus aid the escape of these contents into the intestines, which latter require the washing process as well. Sometimes it is a good thing to omit one, two or three meals while the washing process is being continued. Commence treatment with pure hot water. To make it appetizing, add a pinch of salt or of bicarbonate of soda; with children add sugar. It will pay you to follow this treatment for the cleansing of the alimentary canal.

The vitality of the body may be sustained for days and weeks on water alone; there is therefore no hurry about food. If human beings would only keep their bowels and stomachs clean they would avoid all the ills that flesh is heir to, except, of course, those due to accident.

My remarks have been confined to irrigation _per orem_ (that is, by way of the mouth), and nothing has been said of irrigation _per anum_ (by injection), since I have treated the latter subject fully in several previous chapters, to which the reader is referred. Be sure to follow the counsel there given, and use the enema two or three times a day in moderate quantities as indicated.