Pregnant women belonging to this class go into confinement with their blood so heavily charged with the by-products of an imperfect metabolism that they are very liable to have septicemia. People who think they must have "three square meals a day" must have catarrh, rheumatism, tonsilitis, quinsy, pneumonia, typhoid fever, and all sorts of bowel trouble including appendicitis. Why! Because three meals a day consisting of bread, potatoes, eggs, meat, fish, butter, milk, cheese, beans, etc., overwork the metabolic function and as a consequence organic functioning is impaired, cell proliferation falls below the ideal, bodily resistance falls lower and lower, the intestinal secretions lose their immunizing power more and more, until at last the body becomes the victim of every adverse influence. At first fermentation--indigestion--shows occasionally; the intervals between these attacks of acid stomach, or fermentation, grow shorter and shorter until they are of daily occurrence; accompanying this fermentation there is gas distention of the bowels, and this inflation in time interferes with their motility and weakens them so that sluggishness is succeeded by obstinate constipation. Every step of this evolution shows an increasing toxic state of the fluids in the bowels. After constipation is established the efforts at securing evacuations are of such a nature as to irritate the cecum. Drugs to force movement cause painful distentions of this portion of the bowels. The drugs stimulate peristalsis of the small intestine; each wave from the small intestine breaks on the walls of the cecum, for the colon is loaded with fecal accumulations so that the onrushing contents of the small intestine can not be received by the colon; hence the force of the whole peristaltic impact is spent on the cecum, which must endanger the integrity of the mucosa as well as the musculature. This point of the bowels, the cecum is more endangered from diarrhea than any other. The toxic ptomaines are especially liable to create a local infection if nothing more. This state of the intestines--toxic state--is a constant menace to health; in fact the organism is heavily taxed to maintain its defense. The overcrowding of metabolism, as explained above, the chronic constipation and toxic bowel secretions, I recognize as the chief factors--the necessary and leading factors--in the building and maintaining of that constitutional state which I am pleased to denominate _Constitutional Catarrh. _When this state is established, it can be said that the individual is ready to develop any phase of disease that circumstance, accident, or caprice of fortune or environment may offer. The constant presence of gas in the bowels becomes more and more menacing to the cecum as the constipation increases. The filled-up condition of the bowels--the colon and rectum--prevents the easy passage of gas from the bowels, hence it accumulates in the ileo-cecal region and keeps the cecum distended.