“Cleanliness of body was ever esteemed to proceed from a due reverence to God, to society, and to ourselves.”—Bacon. The International Congress on School Hygiene ended its fourth meeting at Buffalo recently to meet two years hence in Brussels. In the interim the Board of Education in this city, the Department of Health, and the New York School Luncheon Committee will continue their investigations as vigorously as in the past, and the information thus gained will be an important contribution to the next Congress. Too much attention cannot be given to the question of hygiene, diet, and excretion to meet the psycho-physical requirements of the mind and body in normal health. As a rule, diet is prescribed for the purpose of relieving the various annoying and painful symptoms caused by chronic impairment of the functions of the stomach and bowels, but when we find the cause of these various symptoms arising from a disturbed gastro-intestinal tract, the question of diet will receive less attention. Why has not the subject of normal intestinal The chief enemy of health among school children (and older persons as well) is the accumulation and retention of waste matter and gases in the intestinal canal, where are generated ptomaine, toxic, and other poisons which enter into the system, resulting in self-poisoning or auto-intoxication. What do we mean by school hygiene? Is it only the school building, or the external appearance of the children, their eyes, teeth, mouth, nose, hands? What about the coated tongue, foul breath, fouler stomach, and putrefaction of the contents of their intestines? A human being is only an extension of his gastro-intestinal apparatus, hence it is very essential that such apparatus should be in a hygienic state to ensure his physical and mental resistance and efficiency being at their normal strength. There is one symptom that causes more sickness and suffering from infancy to old age than all others combined—that is, constipation with its attending putrefaction and foulness of digestive organs. Only a small percentage of people escape its baneful effects or the secondary diseases induced by fecal and mucus auto-intoxication. The Department of Health, in examining the sanitary or hygienic condition of a school building, would not devote all its attention to the top story The absorption into the system of serous, fibrinous or albuminous mucus exudations from the invasion of chronic inflammation through all the layers of the tissues of the anus (Figure1), rectum, and sigmoid flexure, as well as through the adjoining fatty tissue in the pelvic space around the organs (Figure5), under the skin and between the muscles of the buttocks, goes on continuously, creating an extensive inflammable area and source of exudation of broken-down tissues. (See Chapter III.) It is a grave pathological condition and the source of mucus auto-intoxication, and its symptoms ought to be differentiated from those of fecal auto-intoxication. This mucus exudate has an intensely irritating effect on the nervous system, especially when an acute intestinal mucus storm has developed, torturing its victims and unfitting them mentally to attend to the ordinary duties of I am pleased to inform such sufferers that their ills can be properly diagnosed and treated; and the earlier in life they seek treatment, the sooner they will escape the accumulative ills that make existence so painful to endure. We have mentioned Proctitis and Sigmoiditis as the primary cause of intestinal stasis in the majority of cases; later, other sections of the intestinal canal may be invaded by inflammatory process, causing a more serious intestinal stasis, not infrequently bringing about dislocation of the stomach, intestines, and other abdominal organs. We have enumerated the symptoms and maladies that are now, in the light of latest medical science, traceable directly or indirectly, to this primary cause; in short, it may be said that, with the exception of a few diseases caused by toxic agents, most of the illnesses that cause so much invalidism, cutting short our lives, can be traced to mucus and fecal auto-intoxication. The purpose of this book and others I have published is to educate my fellow beings as to how to prevent or avoid the many diseases and symptoms that afflict them from the cradle to the grave; already I feel that I have accomplished something in helping humanity, and I trust others will do their part to lessen the ills that flesh is heir to through neglect and ignorance. |