HOME TREATMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 26, 31 January 1934, Page 13

HOME TREATMENT.

THE FIRST QUESTION,

(By PERITUS.)

In English papers is to be seen the advertisement of a new aperient, and in the heading of the advertisement are the words above quoted. The question is supposed to be asked by any doctor, "Plow about the daily action of the lower bowel?" So general has become the habitual use of aperient drugs that enormously extended vested interests .are involved. Patent medicine vendors make fortunes, doctors seldom object, and about one-third of a chemist's trade is in such drugs and "patents." The common defect of delayed bowel action is the cause of innumerable ills, from "a bad taste in the mouth," to appendicitis. The food of civilised people to-day loads the human body with toxins, but the prompt and regular elimination of them enables the body to remain reasonably healthy, whilst delayed action keeps them in the tissues until some organ or tho blood itself gives warning, or suddenly gives trouble without obvious warning. An American doctor has had great success by advising hundreds of patients, first, to definitely abandon aperient drugs; second, to establish a daily habit and persistently, determinedly, keep to it; thirdly, to eat at eacli meal no more than is actually desired; fourthly, to eat freely of fruit and vegetable*); and fifthly, to drink plenty of water —night, morning, and all day. The American argues that bowel

action is almost wholly nervous and largely automatic, yet partly under personal control. At first,- small doses of a nerve tonic (like nux vomica, in quartergrain pill, once or twice daily) may be necessary until a fair start is obtained, and then habit, food, and fibrous vegetable, and water in plenty, will do the rest. ■ The abandonment of all aperient drugs must be absolute, or the cure is made uncertain. There must be no special exercise, no straining, and no search for a relaxing diet. When constipation is banished there is a new leaso of life, headache, rheumatism, dyspepsia, and a score of other troubles no longer cause anxiety. I know this from recent experience. My favourite aperient drugs have been cascara or sulphur, now I only order them when there is no immediate hope of getting a patient in a frame of mind to trust to what is, in its way, an adventure, a test of determination and coinage, the Mount Everest of health. It is worth all the efforts, and no special duties or business calls should be permitted to interfere. Some patients hesitate to delay a few days for a beginning, but if there is no surgical obstruction, no harm will follow. If really desperate, use a water injection, but avoid this except as an extreme measure.