CHAPTER V.

REBELLION OF OUR OUTRAGED INTERNAL ECONOMY.

The small intestine is that portion of the alimentary canal which begins at the stomach and ends at the large intestine. Its usual length is twenty feet. The diameter, which at the upper portion (duodenum) is two inches, gradually becomes less, until at the lower end it is but one inch.

Now, the length of the inner coat of this small intestine--the mucous membrane--is about _double_ that of the intestine itself. Think of wearing a coat twice as long as yourself! How do you think this is accomplished in the case of the muscular tube under consideration? Well, Nature, having a most peculiar function to perform, has thrown this mucous coat or tube into a thousand folds (valvulæ conniventes, or “winking valves”). These folds form valves, occupying from one-third to one-half the circumference of the bowel. The greatest width of each fold is at the center, where it measures from a quarter to half an inch. Over this great expanse of mucous membrane we find studded ten million five hundred thousand intestinal villi, whose office it is to absorb the food substances in their passage through the canal.

Those that have observed the anatomical illustrations of the small intestines must have been struck by their apparently inextricably tangled convolutions. In life, these convolutions are constantly changing their locations, as though they were a mass of worms.

The large intestine begins at the cæcum and extends to the anus, or vent of the intestinal sewer. It is called the colon--the ascending, transverse, and descending colon. It is about five feet in length. Its diameter is the greatest at the cæcum, where it measures, when moderately distended, two and a half to three and a half inches. Beyond the cæcum the diameter is one and two-thirds to two and two-thirds inches, the smallest part being at the upper end of the rectum.

The muscular movements of the large intestine are much more limited in number and range than those of the small intestines. The area of its mucous membrane is also much less, notwithstanding the fact that it is thrown into sacculated pouches, or sacculi, by the contraction of the longitudinal muscular bands of the bowel.

Consider this tube, for it is really unique. Note the longitudinal muscular bands (Figs. 12 and 13). We find this tube to be five feet long when the surface made by the circular bands is measured, and four feet long when that made by the longitudinal bands is measured. Now, the four feet of surface must of course contract the five feet. Well, in the tube under consideration, the musculo-areolo mucous tube is thrown into circular puckerings in short sections, between which are deep transverse creases, each bounded by prominent bulges. (Fig. 13.) An inspection of the bore of the tube shows a sharp ridge corresponding to each depression of the outer surface, and a large recess collocated with each external protrusion. This external and internal appearance of the large intestine reminds one somewhat of the flexible hard-rubber tubing used as a conduit for electric wire in houses.

The sacculated pouches thus formed by the shortening of the bowel may become abnormally distended, and resemble the proper receptacle for feces--the sigmoid flexure. Even the rectum, in cases of chronic constipation, is usually enormously distended, owing to the overloading or filling up of the bowel with feces.

I have given this somewhat lengthy _résumé_ in order to enable the reader to appreciate a most pertinent question.

Let us see what we have found: The small intestine, with its manifold folds and its numerous pockets, made by the forty feet of mucous membrane; the bends and curves in the five feet of the large intestine, with its numerous dams and pools; and, lastly, the abnormal reservoirs for feces, liquids, and gases.

Finding this, the question inevitably is, What is the best agent for cleansing this marvelously sensitive canal, twenty-five feet long, whose mucous membrane extends forty-five feet? No one would think of taking, if he could, the foul sewer in his hands, and shaking it, fold upon fold, with the faint yet fond hope of sterilizing it. How can any mode of physical culture meet the requirements for effecting a cure of ulcerative proctitis and colitis, to say nothing about keeping the bowels sweet and clean? Chronic, subacute, and acute inflammation, accompanied with ulceration, located in any part of the body, requires rest to overcome the fever and congestion. Muscular exercise irritates and inflames the diseased parts.

Another form of “physical culture” would put into the bowels all sorts of stuff that cannot be digested, such as bran, crushed seeds, shells, raw food, etc., that set up excessive muscular action and secretion of mucus as the improper stuff passes down and out. In the sacred name of hygiene, this new cathartic remedy is prescribed and taken. Seeking relief from the painful effects, the patient finds that these “remedies” make the disease and its symptoms worse. Hygienic fool-killers are, like the poor, always with us.

You are aware of the irritation that a grain of sand will set up when it comes in contact with the mucous membrane of the eye. Then can you not realize that you will torment the forty-five feet of intestinal mucous membrane with like indigestible stuff? It is estimated that ten per cent. of the really suitable food is residue matter with which the digestive tract has to deal and get rid of with as much economy and as little friction as possible. Then why increase this residue twenty or fifty per cent.?

More than nine-tenths of the human race have been content to depend on comparatively violent excitants, such as drugs, coarse food, and muscular exercise, etc., to relieve the bowels of the feces, liquids, and gases of a most foul character--the foulness due to putrid fermentation and undue retention.

When will these prescribers and partakers ever learn that bile bouncers and peristaltic persuaders have an immense journey before them when they start to remove the foul accumulation of feces from the sigmoid flexure and ballooned rectum? For, be it remembered, the normal receptacle for feces is twenty-four feet four inches from the stomach, and the abnormal receptacle twenty-four feet eleven inches--within two inches of the vent of the body!

Surely quite a degree of mental constipation must have existed in both the prescribers and the partakers to think such thick and dense thoughts as are represented by these bouncers and persuaders. So you would _cleanse_ the bowels with such unclean, poisonous, and irritating things! What amazing hope born of ignorance! Outraged Nature cries: “How long! how long! how long will my ‘inards’ be so abused in the name of cleanliness and yet remain so unclean? Ye benighted mortals, if ye would listen to me, your Mother, I would give ye a pure and wholesome prescription, for I would prescribe equal parts of enlightenment and water well mixed, and advise ye to take a portion of it fore and a portion of it aft, per os (mouth) and per anus. Thus and thus alone would I prescribe for ye; such and such alone is the way for ye to do; purify to cure, or cure by purifying.”

Constipation must not continue, for it means not only the clogging up of the large intestine with the foul sewage of the system, but also the drying of that sewage, which latter process implies the absorption of poison. Now that you are in this condition, Medicus steps up and prescribes a cathartic mixed with belladonna or opium, or both. These latter are meant to quiet the mournful cry of outraged Nature when the cathartic invades its sacred precincts. And it may be noted, by the way, that though belladonna, atropine, morphia, etc., tend to dry up the secretions of the mucous membrane and make matters worse by making them still more arid, still the action of the cathartic is usually so powerful that after the free fight with the pain soothers it triumphs, and produces a free flow of watery secretion into the dried, impacted mass of the bowel.

Does it not stand to reason that the greater portion of the liquid in which the feces were dissolved and had fermented is re-absorbed into the system? Why should the poor victim of proctitis and cathartics wonder why he has gout, rheumatism, and disease of the kidneys, bladder, lungs, liver, stomach, nerves; why he has neurasthenia, debility, feebleness, loss of memory, inability to fix and hold the attention upon a single line of thought, apprehensions, etc.? His wonder is childish, for deep in his heart he knows that he poisoned himself. He knows this, but it seems that he must be reminded of the fact that there is a better way to remove the accumulated mass from the large intestine, and to prevent in future the undue retention of feces, liquids, and gases in abnormal sacs or pouches. The way that Nature prescribes is the resort daily, two or three times, to the enema.

When the injected water reaches the imprisoned and dried feces, the crust is loosened from its holdings and the mass is moved toward the exit by the expulsive effort of the bowels. Previously the bowels were helpless with their load. As the sudden flood of water is expelled it carries with it the inspissated feces; whereupon the subconscious personal Ego, who is the superintendent of the digestive apparatus and functions, congratulates himself on the delightfully refreshing manner in which the local disturber has been ousted.

Such is the satisfactory decision of the arbitrator--Enlightened Nature. No longer need we bow to Medicus or to any other kind of “cuss,” whether styled hygiene or physical culture. Arbitration of this sort makes life worth living.

Now for Nature’s benediction: “May that feeling of freedom from uncleanliness, internal and external, be with you constantly, and this double blessing make your joys flow so fast that in their rapidity they blend into a sun and radiate from your rejuvenated physical being.”