THE TRUTH ABOUT LAXATIVES
Harding, T. Swann
The Truth About Laxatives By T. SWANN HARDING FROM what bland-voiced fellows with pear-shaped tones have to say over the radio, we Americans must be just about the most irregular people on earth....
...Old Samuel Pepys in his Diary entry for Nov...
...Preparations containing mineral oil and agar usually contain too little of the latter to do more than impress the purchaser and depend on the oil for their effect...
...Suppose we take leave of the chap with the sugar in his throat and the oil in his vowels, doff our false whiskers, and become direct and forthright...
...Hence the laxative manufacturers are probably right when they say in their advertising that doctors prescribe laxatives for this or that...
...Moreover, irregularity is a doggone bad thing and you have to do something about it...
...There is no particular virtue about all-vegetable laxatives...
...If left free from bombardment the colon performs its tasks as automatically and reliably as does the heart...
...He went on: "I must eat in a morning some loosening gruel, and at night roasted apples, I must drink now and then ale with my wine, and eat bread and butter and honey, and rye bread if I can endure it, it being loosening...
...At this point, if you'll pardon my gross vulgarity, I'd like to quote something from the Medical Officer (London) for Jan...
...Even the 17th Century physician was ready aad willing to invent a disease for his patient...
...15, 1944, to wit: "The Victorians were prudes and the freedom with which bowel evacuations and failures thereof were discussed in polite society of that age is one of the most extraordinary chapters of a most remarkable history...
...Absolutely nothing, deleterious or otherwise, is absorbed from the large bowel unless its mucous membrane has been destroyed...
...none will restore the body's alkaline reserve, remedy colds, rheumatism, neuritis, unnatural fatigue, nervousness, upset stomach, or headache, other than as caused by constipation...
...Chronic constipation exists as a direct result of the remedies used, to prevent and cure it...
...It can seriously interfere with our absorption of vitamins A, D, and K, and of minerals like calcium and phosphorus...
...Colons also have their own individual timing systems and no specified number of actions on their part can be called normal per day...
...For constipation is a most remarkable disease...
...Benning, Ga., showed that neither castor oil nor salts helped young fellows coming down with colds...
...In short, no matter how highly recommended, these are simply saline laxatives and in 99 cases out of 100 you are better off without them...
...The same may be said for many others...
...The actual physiological facts of the matter are simple...
...I must also take once a week a clyster of this last prescription, only honey now and then instead of...
...Because the material the colon contains is drier, absorption is less likely among the constipated than among others...
...It probably is not laxative but acts only by increasing bulk...
...None will correct systemic as distinguished from gastric acidity...
...But, whereas the evil results of sweating, blood letting, and other early forms of orthodox therapy tended to pass away if the patient survived, remedies for constipation constantly worsen the hypothetical disease they were invoked to cure...
...In fact those who were purged were sick longer than those who were not...
...Many tablet laxatives depend on phenolphthalein...
...Physicians probably offend as greatly in this matter as makers of what we call patent medicines, though they seldom really are that...
...17, 1668, said that his doctor had just told him to follow a diet to prevent constipation...
...Makers of nostrums and patent and proprietary remedies have in the past invented diseases and then - invented cures for the hypothetical diseases they cooked up...
...The purgation of patients.who are acutely ill or who are to undergo an operation is often a magic ritual rather than a rational treatment...
...A Great Fraud Well, this characteristic English reticence brings us ri: ht out into the wide open spaces...
...Something like 250 years after Pepys' , Diary entry a university professor of medicine delivered a talk on ritual purgation in modern medicine, saying: "I firmly believe that more people have died from purgatives than from digitalis...
...A few words about a few specifics for constipation may not be out of place...
...Eating bran can produce irritability, bloating, vague abdominal pains, or belching...
...Some laxatives which pretend to depend upon cascara are actually loaded with phenolphthalein...
...He invented the only disease known which is consistently perpetuated by its own remedies...
...A study made at Ft...
...This may or may not be injurious but, used constantly, it probably is...
...You cannot prevent autointoxication or intestinal toxemia because there just are no such things...
...Bran, like other rough foods, should be used with discretion as it can badly and permanently damage colons, at least those of certain types not easily diagnosed from the outside...
...Concentrated Epsom salt tablets usually do not consist of Epsom salts but of something else...
...Then you'll be a regular fellow no matter what all pear-tones say on the radio...
...You cannot flush out toxins that way for they just don't flush, the colon not being a plumbing pipe...
...Hence a person may really be quite regular when old pear-tone says he is irregular...
...Castor oil and crotin oil are vegetative in origin, yet are strong drugs...
...Laxatives Unneeded, Harmful There is even no reason for giving laxatives to people coming down with colds, though a study made in 1939 indicated that the majority of physicians would do this if asked to prescribe...
...Aw pshaw now, we don't really mean irregularity, you know that...
...Constipation tends rather to be conducive to low than to high blood pressure...
...the same may occur in concentrated milk of magnesia tablets...
...We must have been discussing constipation all along...
...But the prescient knave who hit on irregularity did far better than that...
...There is rarely if ever any urgency for the bowels to act via laxative aid...
...Factitious constipation has also been most lucrative both to high-class physicians and to the manufacturers of quack remedies...
...That gives you a rough idea...
...That boy had something...
...That is nothing new...
...The effects of its prolonged use are bad also for other reasons...
...The best cure for constipation is to recognize that the condition is almost wholly imaginary and to worry instead about the income tax or how to buy more bonds...
...One physician in Britain did invent a cure for constipation which consisted in hacking off a generous portion of the un-offending colon and throwing it into the trash...
...Like witchcraft and Fascism, constipation is one of the great frauds of human invention...
...butter, which things I am now resolved to apply myself to...
...He tried to make everybody else believe they had something too—not the bank account he had—but something anyway...
...There is no evidence whatever that either cathartics or enemas make the colon contents less toxic...
...It has been called "The Universal Malady...
...Patients sometimes survived this operation but rather too infrequently to inspire confidence...
...No laxative containing it can get right at the cause of constipation, cure the condition, or remove its cause...
...We really mean whatchucallem, but no matter...
...All saline laxatives are somewhat alike...
...It was then realized it would be much better to condemn sufferers to lifelong drugging than to chop them up in ways that might result in their demise, thus ending all profit that could be derived from them...
...Its increasing use in place of rationed oils for salad dressings is doubly bad because the victim, especially if he eats in a restaurant, takes it unwittingly...
...It is said that the Victorians worshipped three gods: Constipation, respectability, and the Queen, constipation being the Siva of the triad, standing first because of the fear of it and the homage it extracted from its devotees...
...The Best Cure The constant use of mineral oil or liquid petrolatum has little to recommend it...
...Excessively used, it is definitely harmful...
...In practically all cases you will be just as well off and your colon a great deal better off if you resist the impulse to use such preparations...
Vol. 8 • May 1944 • No. 22
