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[Illustration: _Hargrave_

  _5^{th} Ave. & 37^{th} St._,
  New York.]




                              INTESTINAL
                              IRRIGATION

                                  OR

                         WHY, HOW, AND WHEN TO
                            FLUSH THE COLON

               TREATED IN CONNECTION WITH OTHER MATTERS
                     OF PHYSIOLOGICAL INTEREST AND
                              IMPORTANCE

                                  BY

                       ALCINOUS B. JAMISON, M.D.

              AUTHOR OF “INTESTINAL ILLS,” “HOW TO BECOME
                             STRONG,” ETC.

                       _Published by the Author_

                             THIRD EDITION

                             NEW YORK CITY

                      43 West Forty-fifth Street

                                 1914




                            COPYRIGHT, 1914

                                  BY

                          ALCINOUS B. JAMISON




                 “Even from the Body’s Purity, the Mind
                 Receives a secret sympathetic aid.”

                                           --_Thomson._




PREFACE.


Within the last three decades the diagnosis and treatment of bowel
troubles have been greatly changed through improved instruments,
technique, hygienic measures, and various remedial agents.

The domain of surgery of the anus, rectum, etc., has been surprisingly
limited, and that of gastro-intestinal hygiene enlarged, together with
knowledge of man’s assimilative and eliminative organs. Systemic and
local hygiene has supplanted drugs and surgery in the treatment of
diseases of the anus, rectum, sigmoid flexure, and vermiform appendix.
Indeed, the domain of surgery will be restricted to what are still
considered incurable diseases if the suggestions of this volume are
widely adopted. From a clinical experience extending over a period of
thirty-three years, however,--as a specialist in diseases of the anus,
rectum, and intestinal machinery generally,--the author feels warranted
in maintaining that, if hygio-therapic measures were taken by both
physicians and laymen, surgical clinics and hospitals for “operating”
on anal and rectal diseases and the administering of countless
medicinal remedies would enter the stage of therapeutic oblivion.

The present work is more comprehensive in its scope than its title,
_Intestinal Irrigation_, would at first thought seem to indicate. It
is a practical book on home relief for all the symptoms of that form
of internal inflammation known as proctitis and colitis. The measures
that may safely be taken by the victim himself, without consulting a
physician, are minutely explained; and, that he may understand his own
case, every chapter goes more or less extensively into anatomical,
physiological, and pathological details.

The author has kept abreast of the advancement of science in relation
to his special branch of the healing art, and as the outcome of his
large daily experience in this line he feels qualified to speak with
authority. Victims of any of the symptoms described in this book may
therefore have confidence in its statements. It conveys a message of
common sense to the world at large and to the victims of intestinal
ills in particular. It is a compilation of clinical talks to the
author’s patients, making plain a variety of symptoms arising from a
single primary cause.

As the purpose of the book is pre-eminently practical, the author
felt warranted in describing minutely his own clinics, so far as
any patient could apply the results to his individual needs. This,
therefore, is the author’s excuse for introducing his own appliances
and describing their features and uses. Certain work must be done by
the sufferer himself, and no other invention in the market will aid him
so materially in doing this work scientifically and efficiently.

Furthermore, it was found impossible for the author to describe what
he himself was doing as a rectal specialist, or to direct sufferers on
the road to relief, unless he stated how certain appliances should be
employed. In the following pages, consequently, the reader will learn
just what to do, for the work is above all things simple and direct,
and in the writer’s judgment has the sterling quality of common sense.

Some of the chapters have already appeared, in abridged form, in
the magazine _Health_, as contributed essays; but the text has been
elaborated in the following pages and much new matter added, in order
that the work should present the most mature information concerning the
subjects discussed.

  A. B. J.

  New York, March 2, 1914.




CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER I.                                                      PAGE

    Efforts to Overcome Constipation without Seeking its Cause       1

  CHAPTER II.

    Pathology of the Anus and Rectum; or, The Genesis
      of Constipation                                                8

  CHAPTER III.

    The Formation of Channels, Piles, and Fistulas                  19

  CHAPTER IV.

    Undue Retention of Gas and Feces in the Sigmoid Flexure         28

  CHAPTER V.

    Rebellion of our Outraged Internal Economy                      35

  CHAPTER VI.

    Gaseous Obesity and our Roly-polies                             46

  CHAPTER VII.

    Irrigation of the Assimilative and Eliminative Organs           57

  CHAPTER VIII.

    Methods of Stomach Cleansing                                    65

  CHAPTER IX.

    When Enemas should be Taken                                     72

  CHAPTER X.

    How Enemas should be Taken                                      84

  CHAPTER XI.

    The Internal Fountain Bath                                      90

  CHAPTER XII.

    Benefits of the Inner Bath                                     101

  CHAPTER XIII.

    Objections to the Use of the Enema Answered                    108

  CHAPTER XIV.

    Lame Back                                                      121

  CHAPTER XV.

    Uric Acid                                                      126

  CHAPTER XVI.

    Rational Sanitation and Hygiene                                136

  CHAPTER XVII.

    Personal Cleanliness                                           145

  CHAPTER XVIII.

    Hot Water in the Treatment of Proctitis and Colitis            152

  CHAPTER XIX.

    Hot Water in the Treatment of External Symptoms                162

  CHAPTER XX.

    The Health of School Children                                  165

  CHAPTER XXI.

    Internal Hemorrhoids or Piles versus Mucous Sac, Recto-Anal
      Mucous Sac                                                   171

  CHAPTER XXII.

    External and Thrombotic Piles versus Muco-Cutaneous Sac and
      Thrombus                                                     181

  CHAPTER XXIII.

    Abscess and Fistula Involving Anus, Rectum and Neighboring
      Regions                                                      190

  CHAPTER XXIV.

    Nine Radiograph Illustrations Showing Mucus Channels and
      Cavities                                                     200

  CHAPTER XXV.

    Chronic Mucous Proctitis and Sigmoiditis--Usually Diagnosed
      as Chronic Mucous Colitis                                    202

  CHAPTER XXVI.

    Antiseptic Employment of Powders and Oils                      208




INTESTINAL IRRIGATION.




CHAPTER I.

EFFORTS TO OVERCOME CONSTIPATION WITHOUT SEEKING ITS CAUSE.


In the year 1496 an Italian, Gatenaria, invented an appliance for
taking an enema; since that time depuratory instruments have had more
or less vogue in all civilized countries. Of late years inventive
powers have been taxed to construct more convenient and effective
appliances, and now perfection has been almost reached, and the poor
civilizee, whose habits are really very bad from the savage point of
view, may enjoy the delicious privilege of an internal bath whenever he
feels the need of it. By any other name this bath is just as purifying:
call it irrigation, injection, lavement, clyster, enema--its many names
and what they mean testify to the fact that it is for the disease of
civilization.

The medical profession is really behind the layman in
genuine therapeutic measures. It still cares more for the
pill-and-powder-prescription-earning fee than for the real health of
the patient. When it shall wean itself from its sordid commercialism,
it will make the use of the enema a fundamental factor in most forms of
therapeutic treatment, and then the enema will become universal.

From the origin of the enema to the present day, the layman has not
been unmindful of this valuable resource for removing morbid matter
from his physiological sewer. The great relief he thus obtained, and
the invariably good results that followed its use, established as a
necessary toilet article some form of depuratory apparatus in many
homes for all time to come.

But of the nature of the disease that had occasioned its use, both
layman and physician were, and for the most part are, ignorant. Local
obstruction and discomfort were sufficient to suggest this mode of
relief; yet no truly scientific inquiry seems to have been instituted
to discover the cause of the obstruction. The author, during an
experience of over twenty-three years as a specialist in diseases
of the bowels, rectum, and anus, has found the true cause, namely,
PROCTITIS; that is, the chronic inflammation (dating often from infancy
and childhood) of the anus, rectum, and frequently of a portion of
the sigmoid flexure and colon. Proctitis is practically the universal
cause of chronic constipation. Victims of constipation have more or
less haphazardly resorted to the enema as a ready means of relief--a
recourse that was often, nay generally, against the advice of their
medical counselor: a professional opposition that indicates either
ignorance, mistaken judgment, or fear of losing a profitable patient.
But the layman has not been uniformly wise. He is an experimenter on
his own hook--encouraged in his experiments by the most promising
and seductive of advertisements in the whole gamut of advertising.
He experimented on his organism, tinkering it now with cathartics or
purgatives of multiform nature, and again with digestive and other
agents. This tinkering habit seems to have become all but universal
with civilized man. Constipation--which is caused by proctitis--will,
of course, bring indigestion and biliousness and diarrhea and
nervousness and headache and a host of other maladies in its train; all
of these induce the civilizee to increase his tinkering with his divine
abode until it eventually falls in ruins. The tinkerer loses sight of
the fact that his abode is not a body like the bodies of wood, stone,
and iron that he handles and putters with daily; he forgets or ignores
the fact that it is a vital organic machine, which, when tinkered too
much, will stop, “never to go again.” 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.

The writer is of the opinion that constipation is the fundamental
disease that afflicts mankind; that, at all events, there are more
cases of proctitis than of any other disease; that very few “civilized”
persons are free from it; that so prevalent a disease must have a
common origin, which he traces right back to babyhood, to the wearing
of soiled diapers, a practice that cannot but result in inflammation of
the buttocks and mucous membrane of the anus and rectum; and that this
inflammation continues and finally becomes deepened and established,
producing in after years chronic constipation and its train of evils.
Of course, there are other causes that bring on proctitis among
children and adults; but careful examination shows that the severity
of the malady with its train indicates long duration in the tissues
comprising the wall of the anal and rectal canals and the adjoining
tissues of the bowels.

Proctitis, with its extension, colitis, is by no means a slight
disease, as it is supposed to be by a few members of the medical
fraternity who are beginning to apprehend its existence; on the
contrary, it is so serious that its gravity cannot be impressed too
forcibly upon both laymen and physicians. During the many years of
special attention the writer has given to diseases of the anus, rectum,
colon, etc., he has not ceased to wonder how it was possible that the
victim of deep-seated proctitis could have so dreadful a disease
and not be greatly alarmed at its ravages and dangers. The anatomy,
physiology, and hygiene of the parts involved in this inflammation
continue in some manner to permit the passage of excrement along the
diseased canal; and the victim continues to swallow drugs and tinker
with these--his irreplaceable “inards.”[1]

  [1] For numerous illustrations of the various morbid conditions of
  the anus and rectum, see the author’s 64-page booklet, entitled _How
  to Become Strong_.

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. “Out of sight, out of mind” seems to be the maxim of
almost every one as to our vital organs and the conditions for their
hygienic functioning. The purpose of the writer will be achieved if he
succeed in sounding a note of warning that will be heard and heeded by
those whose influence will extend the echoes till the world listens and
learns the claims of the inner physiological economy.

Those that possess even a modicum of sense will easily understand how
a muscular tube like the anus, rectum, sigmoid flexure, etc., when
invaded and traversed for eight to ten or more inches by disease, will
offer obstruction to the descent and escape of gases and feces. All
are familiar with the contraction that occurs when a finger, hand, or
limb is inflamed; how little we can then use the diseased part until
all of the inflammation has left the muscular tissue. Why do we give
so much attention to an inflamed external part and none at all to the
all-important internal organ for the expulsion of the sewage of the
body? The parts are not “weak” when contracted with inflammation:
weakness is not what is the matter with them. The trouble is that
the muscular fiber is then too active, made so by the excessive
irritation of the local disorder. Irritation of muscular tissue always
causes contraction of its fiber. Such contraction well accounts for
constipation.

We are a nation of constipated people, so constipated indeed that we
have developed dyspepsia and neurasthenia. As I have already stated,
the chief ill of “civilized” people is proctitis; the chief symptom
of proctitis is constipation; the chief symptom of constipation is
dyspepsia; and the chief symptom of dyspepsia is neurasthenia, and so
on and on--all of them the outcome of imperfect elimination of morbid
matter from the intestinal canal.

The common sense learned in the treatment of external parts should be
applied to such diseased portions of the body as the anus, rectum,
etc. Common sense declares that an enema ought to be used on all
occasions of undue retention of the contents of the bowels. It is the
only sensible thing under the circumstances. Yet, for the last four
hundred years, only independent men and women have had the courage to
proclaim its merits, since the subject was under the ban of both laymen
and physicians. Now that we have learned the absolute necessity of such
a device, it is to be hoped that the taboo will be removed, and that
the numerous victims of proctitis will be instructed in the wisdom of
availing themselves of the valuable aid of the enema in either curing
proctitis or preventing it from growing worse, while they are at the
same time securing relief through its use by the removal of feces and
gases several times daily, thus preventing the absorption of poison,
which the retention of waste invariably facilitates.




CHAPTER II.

PATHOLOGY OF THE ANUS AND RECTUM; OR, THE GENESIS OF CONSTIPATION.


When an affliction is seemingly universal it is reasonable to conclude
that it springs from universal conditions. Proctitis, the most
widespread disease of civilized man, originates very early in life, and
develops in after years numerous painful symptoms--such as piles or
hemorrhoids, constipation, etc.

Now, what is the most common exciter of proctitis, which, as has been
said, is an inflammation of the mucous membrane of the anus and rectum?
In my earlier work, _Intestinal Ills_, I have shown that inattention to
the soiled diaper is generally the original cause of this most grievous
of ills, with its train of malign consequences continuing throughout
the victim’s life on earth. Unnoticed by nurse or mother, the
inflammation of the anus and rectum makes headway with each subsequent
so