Sometimes there is a reassertion of common sense; the poor victim becomes disgusted with himself and his credulous acceptance of the doctor’s dictation and his fatuous swilling of the druggist’s decoctions. He gets tired of chronic ill-health and bowel troubles, and, lo and behold! he does the simplest and most sensible thing in the world--a thing he ought to have done at the very start, or before he ever had the least trouble: He thoroughly washes out his alimentary canal with pure or antiseptic water. He drinks a lot of pure spring water, and he flushes his bowels with two or three enemas. Doctors and drugs are henceforth banished; he gets well! What a blessing to lose one’s faith in the magic of drugs and the majesty of doctors! Few comprehend the baneful effects of flatulency on the system, the most usual of which are fatigue, depression, headache, buzzing in the ears, deafness, vertigo, loss of memory, inability to fix the attention, disturbance of sight, drowsiness, etc. A continuous stream of carbonic acid or of hydrogen directed against muscular tissue will cause paralysis of the part. Physicians admit that in certain portions of the alimentary canal extensive dilatation may occur, independent of any permanent obstruction, in the lumen, or bore, of the gut. As a rule, however, victims of proctitis and colitis suffer from more or less occlusion of the lumen in the region invaded by the ulcerative inflammatory process. Considering that the wall of the abdomen is often greatly extended by gas within the digestive apparatus, it is not amiss to assume that this gas may cause local distention of segments of the gastro-intestinal canal, sufficient to paralyze or render inoperative the parts. Suppose we make a rubber duplicate of the abdominal walls of the average man, and place therein rubber duplicates of all the internal vital organs--pelvic and abdominal. To hold the stomach, bowels, and other organs in place, we fasten them with elastic bands here and there, and make a generous use of cotton to support the various parts, which are all connected with many little circulating tubes, with strings for the greater nerves, etc. Now let us distend our thin artificial digestive apparatus with air or gas--snugly filling the abdominal space of our model, without tension, however, or slackness of the various parts, which are happily adjusted and at rest. Now, be it remembered, persons suffering from flatulency are more or less in the predicament of the gluttonous animal referred to above: the gas will not escape at either end, however much of an effort it makes, or the victim may make to help it. [Illustration: Fig. 15. The stomach and intestines, front view, the great omentum having been removed and the liver turned up and to the right. The dotted line shows the normal position of the anterior border of the liver. The arrow points to the foramen of Winslow. (Gerrish.)]