It is astonishing what a number of people there are who drink little or
nothing, and especially amazing is it to find this lack of sense in
people suffering from constipation. One would suppose that they above
all others would see the wisdom of irrigating their bowels. But it is
seldom that there is one who thinks of such a thing. A cup of coffee or
tea at meal-time, in addition to the liquid contained in the food, is
the extent of water consumption by ever so many teetotalers and other
"totalers," especially women, until they reach, say, thirty years of
age. Such persons as a rule are not long-lived, inasmuch as their power
of resistance is small, owing to their lack of blood, a lack in quality
as well as in quantity. The blood pressure in their arteries and veins
is light, as evidenced by their pale, sallow complexion, and the dry,
scaly, feverish skin, which seldom or never perspires. The body garden
has not been properly irrigated and is slowly drying up as age
advances. Did you ever notice how like death such persons appear when
they are asleep? Their dull, pasty complexions alarm us then. When I
see them a desire to soak these dried specimens of humanity possesses
me. Is it not unfortunate that we were not born with an automatic
irrigator? We even lack a tube on our boiler to indicate the danger
point! Deficient by nature in these little conveniences, and unaided by
science, man is compelled to give some attention to the irrigation of
his physiological soil, however indifferent or careless he may be.

Planters and gardeners have treatises on irrigation. Have mothers or
nurses any similar guides? Such books are unknown to modern
civilization. Infants, boys and girls, and adults are brought up
haphazard, and their garden of life becomes choked with weeds. The
drought soon makes itself felt, and a little graveyard mound is their
usual fate. Before some of us wither and fade, to what a pest-weed is
our adipose changed for want of life-giving water.

Man's most serious physiological fault is the toleration of
constipation; or even of semi-constipation induced by the
twenty-four-hour habit of stooling. In other words, his fault is the
toleration of intestinal uncleanliness. And next to this foolhardiness
is his negligence in the matter of drinking daily a quantity of pure
soft water sufficient to aid in the proper stimulation and circulation
of the blood, in the proper elimination of the waste material from the
body,