Take, for instance, such a painfully familiar and unheroic episode as an attack of colic. It makes little difference whether the attack is due to the swallowing of some mineral poison, like lead or arsenic, or the irritating juice of some poisonous plant or herb, or to the every-day accident of including in the menu some article of diet which was beginning to spoil or decay, and which contained the bacteria of putrefaction or their poisonous products. The reaction of defense is practically the same, varying only with the violence and the character of the poison. If the dose of poisonous substances be unusually large or virulent, nature may short-circuit the whole attack by causing the outraged stomach to reject its contents. The power of "playing Jonah" is a wonderful safety-valve. If the poison be not sufficiently irritating thus to short-circuit its own career, it may get on into the intestines before the body thoroughly wakes up to its presence. This part of the food-tube being naturally geared to discharge its contents downward, the simplest and easiest thing is to turn in a hurry call and cut down the normal schedule from hours to minutes, with the familiar result of an acute diarrh[oe]a. Both vomiting and purging are defensive actions on nature's part, remedies instead of diseases. Yet we are continually regarding and treating them as if they were diseases in themselves. Nothing could be more irrational than to stop a diarrh[oe]a before it has accomplished its purpose. Intelligent physicians now assist it instead of trying to check it in its early stages; and paradoxical as it may sound, laxatives are often the best means of stopping it. It is only the excess of this form of nature's house-cleaning which needs to be checked. Many of the popular Colic Cures, Pain-Relievers, and "Summer Cordials" contain opium which, while it relieves the pain and stops the discharge, simply locks up in the system the very poisons which it was trying to get rid of. Laxatives, intestinal antiseptics, and bowel irrigations have almost taken the place of opiates in the treatment of these conditions in modern medicine. We try to help nature instead of thwarting her.