Again, no doctor would diagnose an inflamed limb as paralysis, atony, etc., and dose the victim with nux vomica, tonics, physic, etc., in the hope of thereby healing it. Yet, with singular fatuity, this absurd diagnosis and treatment is given when the lower bowel is invaded with chronic inflammation. Let the common-sense reader inform himself concerning his organism. Let him remember that he has within muscular organs that demand exactly the same attention when diseased as those without. This fact is especially important for the sufferer from constipation or semi-constipation to know. Were the anus, rectum, and sigmoid flexure one continuous straight tube, the muscular action in the process of defecation would not be as complex as it is, since then the feces would drop right down and out. But these parts have so many curves and angles that when disease invades their interior they accentuate their folds and valves by contracting and do not readily respond to the nerve demand for complex, muscular, snakelike movements, when evacuation is desired. In this unreadiness to respond they cast into confusion all the functions of the whole complicated organism, all parts of which are necessarily interdependent. A wise provision of Mother Nature are these curves, angles, and valves, for they prevent the sudden dropping of the contents of the colon down to the anal orifice--a possibility that would greatly embarrass us during social and business hours. The accompanying figure shows the rectum dissected at its upper end from the sigmoid flexure. This portion of the rectum is smaller than the lower two-thirds of the organ. Now, it is this lessened diameter of the gut that is an aid to the sigmoid flexure in its capacity as a receptacle, but a most decided hindrance when it is diseased--since it will positively inhibit the passage of feces and gases, thereby occasioning a distention of the sigmoid flexure (obstipation) because of a detention of the contents, which then weights the flexure down upon the rectum. Thus we see exemplified how an aid may turn into a hindrance, as we already have observed, in an unduly contracted anal vent. The _rectum_ is not straight, as the word itself would indicate, but curves to the right, then back well on to the spine, and then forward to the anus, which turns slightly backward from the lower anterior portion of the rectum. [Illustration: Fig. 8.]