CHAPTER VI.

GASEOUS OBESITY AND OUR ROLY-POLIES.

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?

Gas is matter in its most rarefied state--a state that permits its easy entrance into all the tissues of the body, where it perverts by its presence and toxic effect the normal function of all the organs. Besides its poisonous infection, it distends or bloats the stomach, bowels, and tissues--a fact especially noticeable in the abdominal region, giving the appearance of corpulency or obesity to many, when really it is only abdominal ballooning or gaseous obeseness. Roly-polies--and there are a great many of them--will have their pride greatly hurt by accounting for their condition in this way, but the truth must be told and they might as well face the facts first as last. Gaseous obesity, or borborygmus, is spoken of popularly as wind in the stomach and bowels. No wonder the roly-poly is sensitive on the subject, for this “wind” occasions rumbling sounds, eructations, and offensive odors--all of which are a great annoyance to the sufferer from dilated, displaced, and unclean digestive apparatus.

Besides being generated in the system, gases may be swallowed during the act of eating, in the form of air (oxygen and nitrogen), and in liquids containing carbonic acid, sulphuretted hydrogen, etc.

Micro-organisms swallowed with the food will occasion fermentation of the contents of the stomach and bowels, which if unduly retained become excessive, foul, and toxic--therefore extremely harmful to the system.

The gases generated in the stomach are the following: carbonic acid, hydrogen, hydrochloric, ammonia, sulphuretted hydrogen, marsh gas, etc. They are partly absorbed or thrown off by eructations, or they pass into the duodenum or small intestine.

Gases are found throughout the small and the large intestine. These are the result of both the normal and the abnormal digestive fermentation and bacterial decomposition of the ingesta or food stuffs. Some of the gases are passed into the intestines from the blood by diffusion.

The production of gas is more copious in the upper portion of the small intestine and becomes less rapid and abundant as the large intestine is reached. As formed or found in the intestines, the gases are: carbonic acid, hydrogen, marsh, ammonia, nitrogen, sulphuretted hydrogen, and sulphate of ammonia.

Considering the large amount of abnormal gases generated in the bowels and which abnormally distend the abdominal walls for several inches and press upon the heart and lungs, and considering the small amount passed out as flatus, their entrance into the tissues of the body must be very rapid and harmful.

Stop the habitual putrefaction and mal-digestion, and then the formation of toxic feces, gases, and volatile acid will speedily cease. Then the erstwhile roly-polies will shrink in circumference four or more inches, necessitating the refitting of their garments to the new and better order of things.

Much has been written about the distention of the rectum, sigmoid flexure, and colon from the undue accumulation of feces. The fecal distention of the gut may extend along the intestine for from three to nine inches or more, which is a very grave matter indeed. But why is so much attention given to a few inches of impacted feces dilating a portion of the bowel, and none whatever to the prevention or elimination of gaseous matter that distends the whole gastro-intestinal canal to such an extent that the body is tightly inflated and the median parts of the belly bulge out like a balloon?

Cattle raisers are conversant with the gaseous inflation of their animals, and have to resort to the knife to puncture the stomach to permit the gas to escape; otherwise fatal results would soon follow. Some animals, even, like most human beings, are intemperate in eating. When they consume too much grass they suffer from flatulency and colic, and require drastic treatment.

Rather than let some worthy men and women die, ought we not at times to adopt the ranchman’s treatment for flatus? This harsh means, however, might be avoided by inventive science. Overfed, constipated, inflated man, victim of habitual flatulency, could easily have small gas valves inserted here and there along his gastro-intestinal canal--one, say, to relieve the stomach of toxic gas, another for the appendix region, and still another in the hernial region of the abdomen. Suppose overfeeders were to adopt the gas-valve fad, and discontinue the habit of using cathartics, soda, charcoal, peppermint, pepsin, whiskey, etc., as means of relief! How in the world can a _drug_ aid digestion when taken into a foul, gaseous, and feces-clogged canal?

A chemist cannot get the definite results he seeks unless he have the right chemicals and proper vessels. Just so with the spiritual Ego and his systemic chemistry of food: he needs a clean and healthy digestive apparatus for proper assimilation and elimination. But he gets careless, allows it to get foul, and then insincerely expresses astonishment that the chemical combinations are not such as one could wish or expect. Other chemists, called doctors or druggists, come along and dose the poor victim of his own carelessness until they have ruined his apparatus completely. They have got to live, of course; and it is their business to see that he does not escape so long as they can help it.

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. Doctors and drugs are henceforth banished; he gets well! What a blessing to lose one’s faith in the magic of drugs and the majesty of doctors!

Few comprehend the baneful effects of flatulency on the system, the most usual of which are fatigue, depression, headache, buzzing in the ears, deafness, vertigo, loss of memory, inability to fix the attention, disturbance of sight, drowsiness, etc. A continuous stream of carbonic acid or of hydrogen directed against muscular tissue will cause paralysis of the part.

Physicians admit that in certain portions of the alimentary canal extensive dilatation may occur, independent of any permanent obstruction, in the lumen, or bore, of the gut. As a rule, however, victims of proctitis and colitis suffer from more or less occlusion of the lumen in the region invaded by the ulcerative inflammatory process.

Considering that the wall of the abdomen is often greatly extended by gas within the digestive apparatus, it is not amiss to assume that this gas may cause local distention of segments of the gastro-intestinal canal, sufficient to paralyze or render inoperative the parts.

Suppose we make a rubber duplicate of the abdominal walls of the average man, and place therein rubber duplicates of all the internal vital organs--pelvic and abdominal. To hold the stomach, bowels, and other organs in place, we fasten them with elastic bands here and there, and make a generous use of cotton to support the various parts, which are all connected with many little circulating tubes, with strings for the greater nerves, etc. Now let us distend our thin artificial digestive apparatus with air or gas--snugly filling the abdominal space of our model, without tension, however, or slackness of the various parts, which are happily adjusted and at rest. Now, be it remembered, persons suffering from flatulency are more or less in the predicament of the gluttonous animal referred to above: the gas will not escape at either end, however much of an effort it makes, or the victim may make to help it.

In filling very slowly our thin artificial alimentary canal, note the distention along the canal as the gas accumulates. Then note that the elastic bands stretch as the various segments of the canal change location, especially the stomach and portions of the small intestine and of the colon, etc. The stomach, small intestine, and colon, as they dilate, shift about for room. The abdomen is seen to bulge out some four or more inches while the turmoil is heard going on inside.

Continue this inflation and our rubber intestinal tract will display here and there a displacement and permanent abnormal enlargement of the lumen or bore. Suppose, further, that our complete model of the abdominal viscera and wall had tightly around its outer surface unelastic corsets, skirt bands, trouser bands, vests, etc., all or any of which held in or compressed its bulging wall--what would happen? Why, something inside would slip out of place or burst and let all the wind escape, relegating our creation to the rubbish heap.

Now, when a man loses his wind by the rupture of a tube, he is said to have expired, and his body is sent to the crematory--or ought to be sent there for sanitary reasons. It would be much more satisfactory, by the way, to our friends, after our demise, were our bodies sterilized while they “live.”

I hope I have made it clear that it is a most serious pathological condition--inasmuch as it prevents the normal onward progress of ingesta and feces--to permit of the continued existence of an excessively dilated gastro-intestinal canal, with one or more of its segments permanently enlarged--segments like the stomach, duodenum, cæcum, transverse colon, sigmoid flexure, rectum, etc.--and with pendulous abdomen, sallow and muddy complexion, etc.

When to this condition is added a general displacement of the abdominal viscera, or of one or more of the organs of the abdominal and pelvic cavities, you have an objective picture of chronic ill health in all its severity.

Are you sincerely desirous to know how your friends feel when you greet them? Don’t ask them the stereotyped question, “How do you do?” or, if you are a German, “How do you go it?” or, if you are a Frenchman, “How do you carry yourself?” But ask them the specific and sensible question appropriate to our civilized habits: “How are you and your bowels to-day?” And at parting it were well to say: “May peace be with you both--you and your bowels!”

The spirit of man can torment his personality, and his personality in turn can vex his spirit.

Few people are aware of the fact that the stomach and intestines can undergo alteration in position. Many are familiar with the fact that the kidneys may be displaced, and are then called “floating kidneys”; that the liver, pancreas, spleen, and uterus occasionally go on excursions, causing thereby considerable and numerous disturbances. And it is not at all strange that they should, since there is so much pressure from within, so much pressure downward, and so much pressure from without--all through the requirements of fashion, indulgence, and ignorance. But the stomach, upper portion of the duodenum, and small intestine, cæcum, the ascending colon, and especially the transverse colon and sigmoid flexure, are susceptible to various forms of displacement, inhibiting the ready flow or passage of food stuffs, gases, and feces from one segment of the digestive apparatus to another, until the vent is reached.

Reviewing the ground already gone over, we have found that proctitis, as a rule, is the primary cause of sigmoiditis and colitis; that these combined are the cause of constipation; that this is the cause of indigestion, flatulency, and distended alimentary canal, and, as matters go from bad to worse, of permanent distentions and displacement. Is it any wonder then that there are so many that suffer from _gastro-intestinal neurasthenia_?

Surely our digestive apparatus ought to have as much attention as a well-regulated house furnace. In the morning the ashes are dumped and fresh coal is put on. A similar process is gone through with at noon and night. Some may run their furnaces on two meals a day and two dumpings of the waste material.

When a boy puts a penny into a slot machine he gets what he expects and is pleased. The machine has done its work in delivering the goods. Why should he give a thought where his penny lodged? In like manner man is always ready to put food stuff, and other stuff as well, into the upper slot of his machine, for he gets immediately satisfaction thereby. But he is like the boy; he doesn’t care a fig what becomes of the stuff so long as it doesn’t annoy him too much. Eventually the machine refuses to work, and seems unable to deliver the goods at the other end; something has become clogged or out of gear. Let me advise the reader at least to keep the passage clear by dumping the systemic furnace twice or thrice daily--using the enema to effect the result.