Apis is no less effectual against _chronic diarrhœa_, more particularly if resulting, not from any deep-seated disorganizations, but from some permanent inflammatory irritation of the intestinal mucous membrane, and which causes and fosters so much distress, by rendering all normal digestion impossible and finally bringing on its inseparable companion, the last degree of hypochondria. This misery is so much more lamentable, as it is, so to say, forced upon mankind from the cradle to the grave by the still prevailing and almost ineradicable delusion of _cathartic medication_. Scarcely has the little being seen the light of the world, when the process of purgation begins. Nurse, aunt, grandmamma, everybody, hasten to hush the cries which the rough contact of the outer world extorts from the little being, by forcing down its throat a little laxative mixture, and the family-physician, who goes by fashion, approves of all this. It is his habit, in after-life, to combat every little costiveness, every digestive derangement, every incipient disease, by means of his cathartic mixture, and his skill is considered proportionate to the quantity of stuff which the bowels expel under the operation of his drugs. Laxative pills, rhubarb, glauber-salts, bitter-waters, aloes, gin, etc., etc., are in every body's hands, and become an increasing necessity for millions. An ancient prejudice decrees that, to permit a single day to pass by without stool, would be to expose one's life to the greatest danger. Every year we see thousands rush to warm and cold springs that have the reputation of being possessed with dissolvent and cathartic properties. Those who cannot afford to go to the springs, use artificial mineral water in order to accomplish similar purposes. Very seldom a disease is met with, that is permitted to run its course without dissolvent or cathartic means. It is still a profitable business to sell patent purgatives, such as cider in which a little magnesia has been dissolved. Everybody feels how offensive these things are to nature; how they attack the stomach and bowels; how they derange digestion and nutrition; how slowly patients recover from the effects of such drugs; how chronic abdominal affections, after having been eased for a while by such drugs, soon return again with redoubled vigor; how the dose has to be increased in order to obtain the same result; how the intervals of relief becomes shorter and shorter, and how, in the end, the stomach is totally ruined, and the abnormal irritation and paralysis of this viscus, with the diarrhœa and constipation, corresponding to these conditions, gradually lead to the complete derangement of the reproductive process.