ing of the sigmoid flexure come from _too much
activity or irritability, due to inflammation, of the upper half of the
rectal tube_. A consequence of this excessive sensitiveness is a
diminished or perverted normal stimulus, notice or desire, that the act
of defecation should take place.

The victim of proctitis simply forms a habit of daily soliciting an
evacuation, though the normal invitation or desire to stool may be
entirely absent, and the evacuation in such cases is attended with more
or less delay and straining effort to accomplish partially or wholly
the expulsion of the more or less inspissated feces.

As the extreme sensitiveness of the inflamed upper half of the rectum
offers resistance to the passage of the fecal contents of the sigmoid
flexure; so, in a somewhat similar manner, the inflamed anal tube, in
its more or less constricted state, prevents the passage of feces and
gases as they approach the terminal part of the rectum. As a
consequence, the feces and gas deposit and lodge at this latter
location, producing in so doing the abnormal cavity called ballooning
of the rectum, so often found just above the anal tube.

The greatest depth of the dilated pouch is on the posterior wall of the
rectum, or just in front of the tip of the coccyx. In some cases the
pouch measures two and a half inches in depth at the back and gradually
diminishes in depth on each side as you near the anterior wall of the
rectum. Often the upper end of the anal canal is higher than the
depressed circumference of the spacious cavity that almost surrounds
it. The irritable orifice of the cavity will invariably compel a
quantity of liquids and feces to lodge in the cavity as a permanent
cesspool, allowing the absorbent vessels to absorb as much as they can
by incessant work. The height or length of this abnormal cone-shaped
rectal cavity is from two to three inches, involving usually the lower
half of the rectum. The anal canal frequently becomes shortened by the
dilating process to a quarter of an inch, leaving two frail, irritable
muscles at the vent, to guard the rectal cavity. And fortunate are
these two thin, sore, contracted muscles, and the possessor of them, if
they escape the surgeon's barbarous notion of operating on them.

If the medical butcher has operated on them, you will find an anal
canal open to such an extent that two fingers can be inserted without
distending the tissues in the least. And when the victim of bal