It is unfortunate that the perpetuation of early ignorant abuses of
Nature's pure intentions has led to a too prudish attitude toward
the one infallible evidence of health conditions as shown by the
refuse of repair and digestion, as it is only by the excreta that
ultimate indication of the results of nutrition are observable. They
are the reliable report relative to the most important thing in
health--digestion--and they must be understood in order to be read.
There is no knowledge so valuable in its relation to health as that
which enables one to read health bulletins by means of the excreta.
Different foods contain different elements of waste material and to
be able to identify or judge the economic value of food previously
consumed a knowledge of its digestion-ash is essential.
A child should be taught the difference between healthy and unhealthy
excreta in order to be on guard at the first warning of disorder,
rather than be allowed to remain ignorant until disease has taken firm
hold of the system. The knowledge is not complicated and can be easily
acquired by even young children.
When the possibility of perfect protection in the matter of nutrition
is generally known, one mission of the physician will be to teach
prevention of abuses of feeding by evidence of the excreta.
The healthy fæces of many wild animals is comparatively dry, odourless
and cleanly; and a farm barn yard or a decently kept city stable is not
an offence to even prudish prejudice.
Not so the vicinage of an open receptacle for the waste of human
indigestion.
In animals, offensive egesta are evidence of digestive disturbance
owing to some unintelligent feeding on the part of attendants; in
humans the cause and effect of offensive excreta are the same.
When a race-or work-animal shows digestive disturbance the least
intelligent owner or keeper knows that it is not fit for work or
racing, and yet this symbol of unfitness is common to the human race.
One of the most noticeable and significant results of economic
nutrition gained through careful attention to the mouth-treatment of
food, or buccal-digestion, is, not only the small quantity of waste
obtained but its inoffensiveness. Under best test-conditions the ashes
of economic digestion have been reduced to one-tenth of the average
given as normal in the latest text-books on Physiology. The economic
digestion-ash forms in pillular shape and when released these are
massed together, having become so bunched by considerable retention
in the rectum. There is no stench, no evidence of putrid bacterial
decomposition, only the odour of warmth, like warm earth or "hot
biscuit." Test samples of excreta, kept for more than five years,
remain inoffensive, dry up, gradually disintegrate and are lost. The
following observation by an eminent eye specialist and _litterateur_
illustrates the opening paragraph of this chapter.