The result is that to some extent at least, intestinal function would almost seem to have broken down in our day. Everywhere one sees advertisements of medicines and remedies and treatments of various kinds that will aid in the evacuation of the bowels. {219} Most of them are guaranteed to be perfectly harmless and all of them are pleasant to take, they work while you are doing nothing else and are just engaged in saving mankind not only suffering but complications of various kinds that may lead to serious results. Some years ago, when Matthew Arnold was in this country, he declared in one of his lectures that what the world needed was "leading and light," but a well known American physician who is closely in touch with American life declared not long since that what we needed in America manifestly, if advertisements were any index of the needs of a people, was laxatives and more laxatives. Advertisements cost money; it is said that at least four times as much as the advertising costs must be spent by the public on any object advertised in order to make it pay, so that very probably nearly a billion of dollars a year is spent in this country on laxatives. Only whiskey and tobacco present a higher bill to the American people annually. Practically all of the laxative medicines do harm if taken over a prolonged period. Over and over again physicians have found that laxative remedies introduced even by scientists, with the assurance that they were quite {220} harmless and had no undesirable after effects proved the source of annoying or even serious symptoms after a while. It is true that when constipation has become habitual, it may be necessary to give laxative medicines for a prolonged period, but this is only another instance of the necessity that is often presented to the physician of choosing between two evils and trying to find the lesser one. Even the heavy oil that has become so popular in recent years has been found on careful investigation and prolonged observation to have certain undesirable effects and it must not be forgotten that it has not been used generally for a sufficiently long time for us to be absolutely sure what its sequelae may be.