CIVILIZATION and constipation go hand-in-hand because refined food clogs the bowels. We live on a smooth diet which is eliminated seems to stimulate the bowel into activity and the mineral elements and vitamins of which we are deprived are important factors which stimulate our system. People who live on coarse wholemeal bread, who take Demerara sugar of black treacle instead of the refined and harmful white sugar, and who eat plenty of raw fruit, salading, vegetables boiled without soda, etc., are absolutely regular, as are naturally living animals and savages.
It is, of course, quite easy to stimulate a torpid bowel into activity with the pills, salts, enemas, etc., which are usually employed. Unfortunately all these artificial helps do much injury. All the ordinary laxatives and purgatives produce bowel activity by severe irritation. Daily continued irritation of the bowel naturally leads to its weakening degeneration, and possibly to other exceedingly undesirable and dangerous developments. The alimentary tract of the civilized is a disgrace.
It is diseased magnificent teeth, roomy mouths, noses and throats, they do not suffer from swollen or septic tonsils or adenoids ulceration, appendicitis, colitis, and cancer of the mouth, oesophagus, stomach and bowel are practically unknown among them. But then they live on natural food in its natural condition, not on de- vitaminized and de-mineralized white flour, to which dubious or dangerous chemicals have been added.
We cannot very well adopt the food of the savages and animals, but we can easily regulate our bowels without weakening then by the medicines and methods currently used. We must take a sufficiency of liquid. Otherwise the bowel contents become dry and immovable. We should live on wholemeal flour, not using white flour for any purpose whatever.
Further, we should add to our porridge and other cereals, to our milk puddings, etc., clean bran, such as the washed bran produced by the Pitman Health Food Company, Vitaland, Four Oaks, Birmingham. Bran is the outer skin of the wheat berry which contains an abundance of the richest protein and of the most indispensable mineral elements, such as iron, calcium, phosphorus, etc. In many cases the use of wholemeal bread and bran will suffice to establish absolute bowel regularity.
Bran seems rough and coarse in its dry condition, but it gets as soft as wet blotting paper in our insides and fully ninety-five per cent of people can digest it. Those who cannot digest it should make a bran decoction, simmering a few ounces for ten minutes, and drinking in the course of the day the very thick liquid which tastes like barley water, sweetened, with lemon juice added to it.
Black treacle is also an invaluable laxative, and natural brown sugar. Unfortunately many of the brown sugars sold in shops are chemically dyed and injurious. Excellent wholemeal flour, crushed wheat, Rolled Wheat Kernels, Crumbled Bran, Finely Ground Bran, wholemeal biscuits, delicious laxative blacks figs, etc., can be obtained from the Pitman Health Food Company, or from any of the health food stores mentioned in this journal.
Those who cannot regulate their bowels by diet alone might use liquid paraffin, which I think was introduced by Sir Arbuthnot Lane, the famous surgeon. It should be viscid and thick. Perhaps the Colonol brand is the best. Paraffin acts as a lubricant to the bowel, is non-irritatings and unobjectionable. It has been daily used by thousands for decades without harmful results.
In many cases constipation is due to a “greedy colon” which rapidly absorbs the moisture of the motions. People who suffer from this condition will easily find relief by employing Herbaras, tiny seeds which absorb a good deal of moisture and form a jelly-like mass.
If taken with foods they produce soft natural motions. A similar purpose is fulfiled by the Is-o-gel Granules produced by Allen & Hanbury. There is an advertisement of Herbaras Seeds in this journal. Is-o-gel Granules can be obtained from every chemist and so an Herbaras.
James Ellis Barker wrote a very large number of books, both under the name James Ellis Barker and under his real German name Otto Julius Eltzbacher, The Truth about Homœopathy; Rough Notes on Remedies with William Murray; Chronic Constipation; The Story of My Eyes; Miracles Of Healing and How They are Done; Good Health and Happiness; New Lives for Old: How to Cure the Incurable; My Testament of Healing; Cancer, the Surgeon and the Researcher; Cancer, how it is Caused, how it Can be Prevented with a foreward by William Arbuthnot Lane; Cancer and the Black Man etc.