Perhaps the first marked symptom of disease of the rectum is constipation, semi-constipation or of chronic character. The function of the anus and rectum being disturbed by the inflammation, the fecal mass is unduly retained and its moisture is absorbed by the system. This accounts for the condensed and hardened fecal mass in isolated lumps of various proportions. A hard-formed stool is abnormal, and is evidence of auto-infection. When three-fourths of the normal fecal mass has been re-absorbed by the system, does it not stand to reason that the blood and tissues have been poisoned by their own waste products (auto-intoxication) and that anemia, emaciation and local disturbances of other organs of the body are symptoms of such intoxication? The loading and blocking of the sigmoid flexure come from _too much activity or irritability, due to inflammation, of the upper half of the rectal tube_. A consequence of this excessive sensitiveness is a diminished or perverted normal stimulus, notice or desire, that the act of defecation should take place. The victim of proctitis simply forms a habit of daily soliciting an evacuation, though the normal invitation or desire to stool may be entirely absent, and the evacuation in such cases is attended with more or less delay and straining effort to accomplish partially or wholly the expulsion of the more or less inspissated feces. As the extreme sensitiveness of the inflamed upper half of the rectum offers resistance to the passage of the fecal contents of the sigmoid flexure; so, in a somewhat similar manner, the inflamed anal tube, in its more or less constricted state, prevents the passage of feces and gases as they approach the terminal part of the rectum. As a consequence, the feces and gas deposit and lodge at this latter location, producing in so doing the abnormal cavity called ballooning of the rectum, so often found just above the anal tube.