We would expect people suffering from constipation or obstipation to pass as fairly well people for a time, but the same is not true of patients having the other condition, costiveness. As we may speak of the stages of a disease like consumption, so we may speak of these three conditions as different stages of one affliction, the worst being costiveness with its progressive self-poisoning by the products of intestinal decomposition. Early in the case the system may pass these poisons out of the body with comparative ease, by way of the lungs, skin and kidneys. In time the second stage begins to make itself apparent, vitality becomes less and less, calling for a greater variety of medicines to correct the condition, as in the second stage of consumption, and also to arrest the progress of emaciation and anemia or anemic obesity. The third stage of auto-intoxication is a most unhappy one. The impoverished tissues offer a most favorable soil for the development of diseased conditions. These three stages which are clear to the experienced eye of the physician may to the patient seem to be indistinguishable, the one from the other; and it must not be forgotten that the three conditions do not mean simply that a smaller or larger part of the intestine is clogged by its contents, but that the whole system is involved as well. It cannot indeed be otherwise with the rapid circulation of the blood, nor need it excite wonder that such patients are thin and debilitated by the deadening of the powers of absorption, assimilation and elimination. As a rule the many thin and puny infants and children of either sex, with bony points well exposed under a tightly drawn skin, which latter is clay-colored and pimply; children with headache and languor, without healthy interest in either studies or play;--these are the victims of intestinal poisoning as described. If they have inherited a spare habit of body from their parents such bodily ills will manifest themselves the more quickly. They ought to be fat and hearty as are the young of animals, but alas many are not! When the young animal is spare, a few days of rest with good diet will put flesh on it, demonstrating that the state of the bowels and the powers of assimilation are intact. Why does not man take on flesh in a similar way? If the intelligent animals could talk, they would undoubtedly make all manner of fun of the intestinal canals which they see walking about, with a little flesh here and there seemingly by accident, and a skin which is clay-colored or jaundiced, anemic or flabby, the owner of it all poisoning himself by decomposition in his intestines! CHAPTER XVIII. INFLAMMATION.