CHAPTER VI.

HOW AUTO-INFECTION AFFECTS THE GASTRIC DIGESTION, AND VICE VERSA.

Frederick the Great said that all culture comes through the stomach.

This saying emphasizes pithily the dependence of psychology upon physiology. The stomach with the intestines is certainly the source from which every portion of the body receives its nourishment and most of its diseases. The physiological _plus_ and _minus_ processes leave their reflex on the mind.

Prof. Ch. Bouchard, in his lectures on Auto-Intoxication (Oliver's trans., p. 14), says: "The organism in its normal, as in its pathological state, is a receptacle and a laboratory of poisons.

Amongst these some are formed by the organism itself, others by microbes, which either are the guests, the normal inhabitants of the intestinal tube, or are parasites at second-hand, and disease producing."

In the preceding chapters we have mentioned some of the most common cases of retention of excreta in the r.e.c.t.u.m, sigmoid cavity, colon, cec.u.m, 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. The disturbance of the various organs throughout the system sets up such a multiplicity of symptoms that one gets the impression of a pandemonium--a veritable council-hall of evil spirits. The visitation is omnipresent.

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 cla.s.sify scientifically the symptoms of auto-infection. A cla.s.sification, 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 sympathy, good understanding and responsiveness between the brain and the digestive apparatus are so close and intimate that the physician must take into consideration the inter-relationship of these organs before deciding which one is reporting reflex nervous symptoms, and which direct symptoms. Plutarch says in one of his essays: "Should the body sue the mind before a court judicature for damages, it would be found that the mind had been a ruinous tenant to its landlord." The digestive apparatus is, or should be, a farm for the mind, but unfortunately it usually has to wait twenty or more years before the tenant understands how to cultivate it for the uses of his intellectual and esthetical life.

I have referred to the fact that the most common causes of constipation, indigestion and other foul conditions of the alimentary ca.n.a.l favorable to the production of autogenetic poisons and their auto-infection, are such common and every-day matters, so familiar to almost every one that the victim, the parents and the physician feel no alarm of the coming danger for years. During these ignorant and innocent years the poison and filth were being absorbed, infecting the system with their morbific taint and lowering the quality of the blood and lessening its quant.i.ty, producing the state known as anemia.

a.s.sociated with progressive anemia is mal-a.s.similation, improper nutrition, ebbing of the nervous and vital forces and the lessening of the secretory, excretory and digestive powers. By the time the poor victim is weighing fifteen to twenty-five pounds less than he ought to the symptoms of ill-health are sufficiently alarming to compel the sufferer to seek medical aid for disease of the stomach, bowels, liver, kidneys, lungs, etc.

_Slow digestion_ is perhaps the most common form of functional disturbance of the stomach, due to an insidious auto-infection for years. The eyes and the skin begin to show the effect of the poisonous infection. The skin becomes dry, pale and muddy in color; has more or less annoying eruptions, and exhibits a jaundiced appearance. The body is ill nourished, the nervous system depressed, the blood impoverished, the memory failing, the general appearance languid, irritable, anxious.

What a household picture this is to every one of the human family! But let us fill it out somewhat more fully. Note how the undue delay of food in the stomach occasions a sense of weight and oppression, the feeling beginning about an hour after a meal and continuing for hours, sometimes attended with fermentation and sometimes without it. At times there is a feeling of drowsiness due to the absorption of an excessive amount of the gases which distend the stomach and bowels, and this absorption is accompanied by pains in the stomach, head, between the shoulders and in the region of the heart. Sleep is disturbed by dreams, or one is awakened with a feeling of numbness and palpitation of the heart. At times the urine is scanty, strongly acid or high-colored. The tongue is more or less foul, with white or creamy coating. Now and then tasteless or saltish eructations occur. The appet.i.te may be too good, or there is no appet.i.te at all. Note the careworn expression, the wondering what to eat, what to drink or what remedy to take. So between much worse and some better, the trouble continues--both of body and mind.

_Indigestion_, however, with undue formation of acids proper, or acids unnatural, to the stomach, is a much more annoying affliction than slow digestion. The sufferer from indigestion may be debilitated, anemic, may have a general want of tone; or he may be a more or less vigorous and plethoric person. In some cases flatulence is very troublesome. But the most usual symptoms are heartburn, acid eructations that produce burning sensations, sour taste at intervals or constantly in the mouth, setting the teeth on edge. In the more vigorous or plethoric sufferers a gouty diathesis may exist, which may result in a tendency to inflammation, bringing on neuralgia, rheumatism, gout, etc. Tongue more or less foul; uric acid in the system; confusion in the mind; headaches; pains in the loins, legs and feet; in fact, more or less shifting pains everywhere: these are the common exhibits of indigestion. On the whole, the sufferer is a victim to an irritable body and a fretful mind, necessitating the cultivation by him of patience and the effort to be agreeable.

Besides the symptoms mentioned, indigestion may also be accompanied by gastric pain or by uneasiness at the pit of the stomach. It may be a sense of fulness or tightness, or a feeling of distention or weight, or again, a feeling of emptiness, goneness or sinking. Now and then there are burning, tearing, gnawing, dragging sensations under the breast-bone; and there is a general complaint of a capricious appet.i.te, heartburn, vomiting, nervous headache, neuralgia and cold extremities.

Other symptoms are pain from lack of food at the proper hour, or from food taken at the improper time; both of which practices may be followed by flatulency, occasioning a swollen, drum-like condition of the stomach and abdomen; the body of the tongue will be coated white, while the edges will present a redder appearance than in health.

_Impaired digestion_ with nervous symptoms--in which the morbid sensibility of the mind is apparently the greatest--is called _hypochondria_. This cla.s.s of sufferers, whose bodily and mental ills and morbid fears are so chaotically interwoven, are deserving of much consideration. So numerous are their fears and so fertile are their reasons for the many changes they arbitrarily make in their efforts to get well or keep from getting worse, so obstinately sure are they of being always right--that we can but give them our sincerest pity.

In some cases the functional troubles of the stomach and mind are aggravated by disease of the pelvic organs, which adds to the depression of the mind through nervous sympathy with the abdominal organs.

Dr. Cullen says on this point:--

"In certain persons there is a state of mind distinguished by a concurrence of the following circ.u.mstances: a languor, a listlessness, or want of resolution and activity with respect to all undertakings; a disposition to seriousness, sadness and timidity as to all future events; an apprehension of the worst or most unhappy state of them; and therefore, often upon slight grounds, an apprehension of great evil. Such persons are particularly attentive to the state of their own health, to every smallest change of feeling in their bodies; and from any unusual feeling, perhaps of the slightest kind, they apprehend great danger and even death itself. In respect to all these feelings and apprehensions, there is commonly the most obstinate belief and persuasion." (Quoted in Leared, _On Imperfect Digestion_, p. 106.)

CHAPTER VII.

HOW AUTO-INFECTION AFFECTS INTESTINAL DIGESTION, AND VICE VERSA.

Intestinal indigestion is a more common form of functional disturbance than is gastric indigestion. It is a well established fact that the greater portion of the digestive work is done beyond the stomach, in the duodenum, by the hepatic and pancreatic fluids. The duodenum--very properly called the _second stomach_--has none of the peculiar characteristics of a receptacle that receives crude substances--the office of the stomach. Much greater sensitiveness characterizes the digestive ca.n.a.l than the stomach; which is accounted for by the fact that a network of nerves, forming the sympathetic system, surrounds the bowels. The symptoms of intestinal indigestion are not always clearly defined and distinguishable from gastric indigestion, especially as the two are frequently a.s.sociated.

The cec.u.m, more than any other portion of the digestive ca.n.a.l, resembles the stomach, and it secretes an acid, alb.u.minous fluid having considerable solvent properties. It is to be observed that as the cec.u.m is only three inches in length and two and a half in diameter, and as its contents are necessarily propelled in opposition to gravity, a slight casualty will hinder or obstruct the upward movement of the pultaceous ma.s.s of the effete ingesta. The turning point in the ascending colon affords another ready hindrance to the upward and onward movement of this ma.s.s; and the gases and ancient feces beyond the turn conduce to further sluggish peristalsis, bringing about more or less obstruction and reflex irritation of the remaining length of intestinal ca.n.a.l. Undue retention of the contents of the cec.u.m, and the disturbance and obstruction of the duodenum by the pressure incident to the distention of the colon with feces and gases, lead to congestion, inflammation and occasionally to ulceration of the mucous membrane in various parts of the intestinal tube.

This condition of affairs increases the occlusion (closing) of the bowels, but makes very easy indeed the entrance and propagation of micro-organisms in the sub-mucous coat of the intestine. The conditions are now ripe and rife for auto-infection. Which of the following microbes are the most active agents of progressive auto-infection: the streptococcus lanceolatus, the bacterium pyogenes, the bacillus subtilis, the staphylococci, the bacterium coli commune? They all play a part in the game, reducing the body in time to a charnel-house. Or are such substances as putrescein, cadaverin, skatol or indol--which are derived through chemical change in the putrescent ma.s.s--contributors to the spread of the poisonous taint throughout the system? Any single one or a group of the fifty or more bacterial poisons may be the responsible agents in the ensuing auto-infection. Chemical a.n.a.lysis of the gases resulting from decomposition reveals oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbonic acid, protocarbonated hydrogen and sulphureted hydrogen, ammonia, and sulphate of ammonia. Leucin, tyrosin, lithic acid, lithates, xanthin, cystin, keratin, sulphureted hydrogen, etc., are deposits in the urine and are signs of the derangement of the intestinal ca.n.a.l and liver. The external symptoms observed are the following: the tongue is large, pale, flabby and indented by the teeth at the edge of the anterior third, while its surface is white and the papillae often enlarged; the appet.i.te may be excellent, though there is great functional derangement of the liver with lithemia, so that the sufferer is tempted to eat what he knows from experience will disagree with him; a bitter coppery taste in the mouth, due to taurocholic acid--a common symptom of lithemia or of imperfect oxidation of alb.u.men; emaciation, fatigue, depression, headache, buzzing in the ears and deafness, disturbance of sight, loss of memory, faintness and vertigo, very marked in some cases; sometimes tenderness and pain under the cartilages of the right ribs; the fretting of the sensitive surface of the bowels by imperfectly digested, semi-putrescent food, resulting sometimes in convulsions, coma, paralysis, or in fetid diarrhea of an acid character producing a burning sensation or pain of the a.n.u.s when the discharges are being pa.s.sed; rumbling and twisting sensations in the region of the navel occurring with flatulency, and occasionally colicky pains which at times are so severe as to simulate poisoning.

In some people certain articles of food, without being either toxic or putrid, induce indigestion and the production of microbes in quant.i.ty amounting to one third of fecal dejections. Prof. Ch. Bouchard says:

"The consequence of this development of acid in the whole length of the digestive tube is an inflammatory condition. We notice catarrh of the stomach, ulcerative gastritis, to which patients often succ.u.mb after twenty-five years of _bad stomach_; these are the _false cancers_, as they are called, or malignant gastritis without tumor. The large intestine is inflamed; around the fecal matter are seen glairy secretions and sometimes blood (membranous enteritis)." (Op. cit., p. 159.)

In chronic inflammation of the r.e.c.t.u.m and colon there is more or less discharge of mucous, and in some cases of membranous, desquamation, with yellow or b.l.o.o.d.y mucus. The shreds, cords or complete tubular casts are discharged constantly or at varying intervals. The quant.i.ty and character often alarm the sufferer. The discharge is nothing less than a thick, tenacious mucus that had formed a thin coating on the inflamed mucous membrane, and become exfoliated in casts or thin shreds--the result of many years of morbid intestinal exaggerated action.

Microscopical examination of the desquamated intestinal membrane and mucus from a man forty years of age, revealed the following products: crystals, mostly complete; incomplete phosphates, very numerous; mucous shreds in abundance; fat globules and granules, numerous; a.n.a.l epithelia; red blood globules, few; connective tissue, scanty; pus corpuscles, very few; margaric acid and detritus (substances resulting from the destruction or wearing away of the part); undigested material, mostly cellulose; leptothrix threads, micrococci; and the bacillus coli communis. Diagnosis: foul, undigested material, due to a chronic inflammation of the lower intestinal tract. The microscopical examination of mucus and desquamated membrane from a woman sixty-five years of age, disclosed that she was suffering from proct.i.tis and colitis. She wrote: "Please tell me how long this mucous discharge must continue. I am alarmed at the quant.i.ty of membrane, cords, casts, etc., in my excreta, and I think that if this process goes on much longer there will soon be no bowels left to purify." This letter was written some weeks after contracting a severe cold, which accounts for the unusual amount of exfoliation and mucus. The sample she sent contained a large quant.i.ty of mucus, both threads and corpuscles; with a moderate number of epithelial scales, partly a.n.a.l and partly intestinal. Pus corpuscles were present in small numbers; also vegetable fibres, fat, starch, muscle fibres and cellulose--the remains of undigested material. In the membranes themselves no micro-organisms were found; in the pieces containing undigested material the bacillus coli communis was found as well as micrococci, and the bacilli of putrefaction (secondary formation) were seen.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CAUSE OF CONSTIPATION AND HOW WE IGNORANTLY TREAT IT.

One of the best preparations for active life is a first-cla.s.s intestinal ca.n.a.l.

"An old Scotch physician," says Sir Astley Cooper, "for whom I had a great respect and whom I frequently met in consultation, used to say to me as we were about to enter our patient's room together, 'Weel, Misther Cooper, we ha' only twa things to keep in meend, and they'll serve us for here and herea'ter; one is au'ways to hae the fear o' the Laird before our e'es, that'll do for herea'ter; and th' t'other is to keep our boo'els au'ways open, and that'll do for here.'"

A person whose mind is devoted to the realization of ideals, and whose body has a set of bowels that perform the act of defecation twice every twenty-four hours is doubly prepared for a useful life.

"If thou well observe In what thou eat'st and drink'st, seek from thence Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight, Till many years over thy head return: So may'st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop Into thy mother's lap, or be with ease Gathered, not harshly plucked, for death mature."

Milton's advice in poetic lines is all very well for those who have escaped chronic inflammation of the lower bowels, an ailment common and troublesome even under the very best dietetic regulations.

Inflammation having once penetrated the circular and longitudinal muscular fibres or bands of a section of the intestine, all hope of a comfortable existence is at an end, for such inflammation will bring on constipation and constipation nervous misery. It is inevitable that inflammation should determine this outcome since it induces spasmodic contraction of the muscular walls of the tube, lessening the bore or closing the portion of the ca.n.a.l invaded. Plastic infiltration takes place in the walls of the gut, thickening and binding them together; or, if the inflammation be of a simple catarrhal or atrophic nature, the plastic infiltration will more or less bind the circular muscular bands of the gut together in their abnormally contracted state! The presence of feces and gases above the zone of the disease will increase the irritation and contraction of the affected portion of the intestine. Consequent upon these changes wrought by inflammation, gases and excrement.i.tious material are perforce imprisoned in the intestine, inducing constipation, foul fermentation, flatulency, diarrhea, indigestion, nausea, loss of appet.i.te, sick headache and, in fine, autogenetic poisons, the source of auto-infection, ending in auto-intoxication, the chronic poisoned condition of the system.

Since the most common cause of chronic constipation, internal sluggishness and uncleanliness, is known, too much cannot be said in condemnation of the wide-spread abuse of "liver and atony persuaders"

and the use of irritating suppositories and dilating bougies, candles, etc. The numerous and various drastic purgative nostrums--which literally fill our medical literature--and the universal demand for them, are evidence of this very common disease, which disease is rendered worse by the drugs taken for the relief of a foul intestinal alveus. An abnormal amount of watery secretion is forced by the drug into the foul ca.n.a.l, to mix there with its contents, of which the major portion is retained and re-absorbed into the system. And to make the bad condition and treatment worse, all such sufferers, as a rule, drink very little water, some scarcely any.

The demand for an irritating stimulus to "open the bowels" (the exciters contribute to close them) is largely due to the popular error in thinking, "I can treat my own bowels quite as well as the doctor, if not better." No intelligent person would think of stimulating and irritating daily an inflamed region of tissue on the outer portion of the body; yet this is precisely what intelligent persons do when they habitually use liver and peristaltic persuaders. The primary disease in the lower bowels and the consequent symptoms are gradually aggravated as the "physic" habit is formed.

As in the case of opium fiends and drunkards, so with habitual cathartic drug-users, should they be suddenly deprived of the accustomed artificial stimulus and irritant they become absolutely miserable, mentally and physically. It is a well-known physiological fact that every artificial stimulation of the intestines is followed by a corresponding loss of vitality and reaction. Now that the almost universal cause of undue retention of foul, effete matter has been ascertained, it is important to communicate to the world at large the best means of cleansing the bowels without increasing the local primary disease and its annoying symptoms.

That external physical cleanliness is next to G.o.dliness is an apt proverb. That internal physical cleanliness is nearer to G.o.dliness 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 quant.i.ty 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.

It is really not an intelligent but rather a barbarous practice to prescribe liver and intestinal exciters for the purpose of throwing into the alimentary tract a sufficient quant.i.ty of watery excretions to "cleanse itself"; to succeed they must first soften and liquefy the dry, hardened feces and scybalous ma.s.ses (little ancient, bullet-like formations) imprisoned above an inflamed and fevered lower bowel, even colon.

Normal feces consist of 75 per cent water; and when unduly retained in the colon much of this fetid percentage is absorbed into the system.

Then drugs are prescribed to liquefy the hardened putrid remnant and absorption begins again: a fact very shocking to a sensitive, even sensible, person.

CHAPTER IX.

CURES FOR CONSTIPATION: "FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE."