It is said that a Boston doctor, whose practice was largely among the wealthy classes, used to say: “There is no use in physicians pretending to be anything else--they always smell of rhubarb.” And in an address to a class of medical students an old doctor once said that he and his associate practitioners had found that calomel and opium filled every want in the ills they were called upon to treat. For ages all mankind has striven to find a remedy effectively to clean the intestinal tract. Pills, powders, tablets, wafers, suppositories, salts, teas, candies, and syrups have been administered--all with that sole purpose. Efforts have been made to accomplish this object by utilizing every possible device and contrivance known to human ingenuity. Calisthenics, massage, physical-culture exercise, mental therapy, horseback riding, “dieting,” fasting--these are some of the many means resorted to in order to “sterilize” the foul, constipated intestinal canal. Albeit that the cleaning of the digestive apparatus in the case of a sick person is regarded as a necessary first help the world over, few persons realize that it is of equal importance in the case of a seemingly healthy person. Is it not a fair inference, therefore, that where a purgative--such as calomel, or one of the innumerable similarly-acting medicines--temporarily relieves a patient’s symptoms, the timely precaution of keeping the intestinal canal and system clean would prevent a person from getting ill? The reader may think that, in these observations, I have wandered away from my text, but, as uric acid is the _symptom_ of a combination and complication of disorders of which constipation is the secondary cause, the connection and sequence of my remarks are evident. It is safe for a layman to assume that, where so many diverse schemes are employed to relieve symptoms, the diagnosis is wrong--also the treatment. A few of the many primary symptoms of proctitis and colitis are constipation, diarrhea, indigestion, biliousness, flatulency, putrefaction, and gaseous and bacterial poisons--a foul gastro-intestinal canal, through which there are daily absorbed from the bowels two-thirds to three-fourths of the excrementitious matter into the system. With these facts before us we need not be astonished at the statement that nine-tenths of human ills have their origin in the digestive apparatus.