al is
desecrated on all hands, though part of a house not made with hands--a
house that should be a home for the soul of man.

CHAPTER XVII.

COSTIVENESS.

The words constipation, obstipation and costiveness are often employed
as if of exactly similar meaning, but it is well to let each stand for
a particular condition. Obstipation implies that the canal of the
intestine is stopped up or closed. Constipation carries the idea that
the canal is completely filled up with refuse matter. In the normal
condition the intestine is divided by transverse bulges or valves or
dams into a number of separate segments, the entire arrangement having
the effect of preventing too rapid descent of the feces. These folds
within the canal may become too much narrowed by disease and thus
prevent the movement of the matters inside; this is obstipation.
Constipation, stuffing of the gut, may be the result of neglecting the
call of nature, and after a time the ability to recognize and answer it
is lost; or it may result from inflammation which itself comes from the
bad habit mentioned.

The author prefers to use the term costiveness for the general debased
condition of the system from auto-intoxication depending upon proctitis
and similar conditions of the intestinal tract. And it must be
remembered that the same patient may have two or more of these
conditions at the same time. Constipation, obstipation and diarrhea may
alternate through the progress of the case.

We would expect people suffering from constipation or obstipation to
pass as fairly well people for a time, but the same is not true of
patients having the other condition, costiveness. As we may speak of
the stages of a disease like consumption, so we may speak of these
three conditions as different stages of one affliction, the worst being
costiveness with its progressive self-poisoning by the products of
intestinal decomposition. Early in the case the system may pass these
poisons out of the body with comparative ease, by way of the lungs,
skin and kidneys. In time the second stage begins to make itself
apparent, vitality becomes less and less, calling for a greater variety
of medicines to correct the condition, as in the second stage of
consumption, and also to arrest the progress of emaciation and anemia
or anemic obesity.

The third stage of auto-intoxication is a most unhappy one. The
impoverished tissues offer a most favorable soil for the development of
dise