In health, the anal canal is from two to three inches in length, and it will distend about two inches--an elasticity quite equal to that of any other orifice of the body. As the anal tissues are usually the first to be invaded by disease, it is but natural that the obstipation or constipation should occur right above it--namely, in the rectum. The average length of the rectum is about six inches, and when the disease invades its whole length the constipation occurs in the sigmoid flexure and may thence extend to the colon. The filling of the intestine with feces and gases usually occurs just above the diseased portion of the gut; but at the same time the walls of the affected part of the canal are more or less coated with feces, and its abnormal pouches here and there contain more or less liquefied or dried feces. A diseased canal cannot expel all of its contents, since its normal expulsive power is gone. Some of the feces somehow or other gets down and out, but a larger portion inevitably remains. It is for this reason that a diseased intestine always reminds one of the Augean stable. It is simply marvelous that the human body continues as a living organism with so much filth and bacterial poison stored in its alimentary canal, and the vaults that result from abnormal pressure during periods of fecal impaction (Fig. 4). When the inflammatory process extends up the rectum and at the same time into the spongy, fatty, or areolar tissue under the mucous membrane (Fig. 1, 3–3), thence to the muscular and serous layers (Fig. 1, 2–1), or through the four layers of tissue comprising its wall, we have a more marked and serious occlusion (closing) of the organ than when only the mucous membrane was affected. When muscular tissue is inflamed, its tendency is to contract and become solidified by an adhesive inflammatory product secreted between the circular and longitudinal muscular fibres (Fig. 1, 7, and Fig. 7). Often the circular or sphincter muscles forming the anal canal have to be distended to bring about a more normal vent. The same pathological conditions that occasion contraction of the anal bore or caliber occur, more or less, as far up the gut as the disease has advanced.