PHYSIOLOGICAL IRRIGATION.
The scientific irrigation of land is pretty well understood by those
who have financial interest in soil requiring it. The wonderful beauty
and freshness of flower and fruit give evidence of what scientific
irrigation can do. So from a commercial and esthetic point of view the
proper amount of daily moisture for land, tree or vine, is of such
importance that it receives the consideration of those interested. How
many persons, however, in the course of a lifetime have given ten
minutes to serious consideration of the question: _How much water
should be imbibed daily under the varying conditions of the body's
garden?_ Those who give no consideration to the problem of how to
attain and maintain a healthy and vigorous physical basis are persons
who usually drift into habits for which they will, sooner or later,
have to pay the penalty.
For the first twenty or more years the body is, as a rule, unfortunate
in not having an intelligent tenant. For man misuses his physiological
estate, and lets things go to rack and ruin ere he wakes to realize how
it might have been as to length of days and strength of body and mind.
Enlighten him, after he has reached adult years, on the values and
needs of physiological and psychological functions; you will find that
however eager he may be to follow the light he is handicapped by
vicious habits and by confirmed, destructive changes which had seized
on him when he was quite too young and incompetent to care for his
body. What a topsy-turvy world this is, to be sure!
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, and in the proper assimilation of nutriment by the system.
If parents would encourage their children to become bibbers of pure
spring water daily it would not be easy to make them bibbers of
intoxicants in after years. I would give a child all the liquid it
desires, I would even encourage it to take more rather than less, and
the best liquid of all for this purpose is pure soft water. Man's body
is 70 per cent water. It is therefore a good-sized water cask with a
ramification of countless canals or pipes imbedded in soft connective
tissues, nerves and muscles, all of which are supported by a bony
framework; through the centre of this runs the alimentary canal, down
which waters may flow and disappear like unto a stream lost in the
sand, to reappear and ooze from skin, lungs, kidneys and intestinal
canal. Every organ and tissue luxuriates in water; they lave and live
in and by it. With all kinds of food it is introduced into the body.
Water acts as a solvent for the nutritious elements and as a sponsor
for the elimination of foreign substances and worn-out tissues of the
system. It also serves to maintain a proper degree of tension in the
tissues, which tension is essential to the proper circulation of the
lymphatic fluids.
The tonic reaction of externally applied water is well known. But the
advantages of the internal use of water are hardly known at all because
the reactions of the circulation, temperature, respiration, digestion
and secretions are less noticed.
Two or three pints of cold water at a temperature of forty to
forty-five degrees drunk at intervals of half an hour will reduce the
pulse from eight to thirty beats. The copious drinking of cold water
will act as a diuretic, removing stagnated secretions, and will at the
same time improve the quality of the pulse and the arterial tone. The
drinking of warm water will increase the pulse from five to fifteen
beats, and at the same time will relax the vessel walls and also
increase the cutaneous secretions to a marked degree.
The drinking of a large quantity of water not only increases the
secretions of the kidneys--assisting them in the work of carrying off
solid constituents, especially urea--it also increases the secretions
of the skin, saliva, bile, etc. Under proper conditions the internal
use of water acts as a stimulant to the nerves that control the
blood-vessels, a stimulant similar to that produced by its external
application.
I advise the drinking of a copious quantity of water daily. There need
be no fear that this practice will thin the blood too much, as the
ready elimination of the water will not permit such a result to ensue.
I would further advise the generous use of water (temperature 60°) at
meal-times. I pray you do not drink to wash down food: a bad habit of
most of us. Drink all you desire; and if you are like many who have no
desire for water, cultivate it, even if it takes years. The imbibed
water will be in the tissues in about an hour; and the entire quantity
will escape in about three and one-half hours. The demand on the part
of the system for water is subject to great variation and is somewhat
regulated by the quantity discharged from the organism. Physiologists
declare that water is formed in the body by a direct union of oxygen
and hydrogen, but those who have cultivated the drink-little habit need
not hope to find an excuse for themselves in this fact: chronic
ill-health betrays them. Water in organic relations with the body never
exists uncombined with inorganic salts (especially sodium chloride) in
any of the fluids, semi-solids, or solids of the body. It enters into
the constitution of the tissues, not as pure water, but always in
connection with inorganic salts. In case of great loss of blood by
hemorrhage, a saline solution of six parts of sodium chloride with one
thousand parts of sterilized water injected into the system will wash
free the stranded corpuscles and give the heart something to contract
upon.
When water is taken into the stomach, its temperature, its bulk, and
its slight absorption react upon the system; but the major part of it
is thrown into the intestinal canal. When it is of the temperature of
about 60° it gives no very decided sensation either of heat or cold;
between 60° and 45° it creates a cool sensation, and below 45° a
decidedly cold one. Water at a temperature of about 50° is a generator
of appetite. A sufficient quantity should be taken for that end; say,
one or two tumblers an hour or so before each meal, followed by some
exercise. Those who have acquired the waterless habit, and the many
ills resulting from it, will hardly relish cool water as an appetizer;
but if they would become robust they must adopt the water habit--a
habit that will refresh and rejuvenate nature.
Water of a temperature between 60° and 100° relaxes the muscles of the
stomach and is apt to produce nausea, especially if the effect of bulk
be added to that of temperature. Lukewarm water seems to excite an
upward peristalsis of the intestines and thus produces sickness.
Hot water acts as a stimulant and antiseptic, as a sedative and as a
food. Water at a temperature of 110° to 120°, or more, will nearly
always relieve a foul stomach and intestines. It should be slowly
sipped, so that the stomach may not be uncomfortably distended. After
imbibing a pint or a pint and a half, wait for fifteen or thirty
minutes to give it time to pass into the bowels, then drink more if
thought advisable. Drink it an hour before meal-time. It will excite
downward peristalsis, will dilute the foul contents of the stomach, and
will thus aid the escape of these contents into the intestines, which
latter require the washing process as well. Sometimes it is a good
thing to omit one, two or three meals while the washing process is
being continued. Commence treatment with pure hot water. To make it
appetizing, add a pinch of salt or of bicarbonate of soda; with
children add sugar. It will pay you to follow this treatment for the
cleansing of the alimentary canal.
The vitality of the body may be sustained for days and weeks on water
alone; there is therefore no hurry about food. If human beings would
only keep their bowels and stomachs clean they would avoid all the ills
that flesh is heir to, except, of course, those due to accident.
My remarks have been confined to irrigation _per orem_ (that is, by way
of the mouth), and nothing has been said of irrigation _per anum_ (by
injection), since I have treated the latter subject fully in several
previous chapters, to which the reader is referred. Be sure to follow
the counsel there given, and use the enema two or three times a day in
moderate quantities as indicated.