Such being the mode of action of the bowels, and such the natural agents by which it is carried on, we can now appreciate the folly of seeking to apply the same remedy to every kind of costiveness, no matter from what cause it proceeds. If a clerk who sits motionless all day in an office, who indulges his appetite, and has no bodily exercise to facilitate respiration and give a natural impetus to the bowels, begins after a time to complain of constipation, it is not difficult to tell what is required for his cure. The first step which a knowledge of the animal functions would suggest, is to diminish the food to such a quantity as the stomach can digest; the next, to use such a diet as is calculated to excite the muscular coat of the intestine to healthy activity; the third, to seek the natural aid arising from exercise of the abdominal and respiratory muscles; and the last of all, to have recourse, when necessary, to such medicines as may be required for a time to restore the tone of the bowels, and enable them to act without further assistance. The course usually adopted, however, is widely different from that here described. From ignorance of the laws of organization, the patient is not aware of the extent to which he infringes them in his conduct, and consequently rests satisfied with lamenting his hard fate in possessing such a bad constitution, and resorting to strong medicines to _force_ that action which he feels to be essential to health, but which he will not consent to elicit by the means with which Nature has furnished him. Among the middle and higher classes, very many females act on the same erroneous plan, and with equally unfortunate results. In them the evil is aggravated by the tightness of their clothing impeding almost entirely the descent of the diaphragm, and the free play of the abdominal muscles, in respiration. From this view of the nature and causes of costiveness, it will be evident, that, as a general rule, the bowels are perfectly competent to the discharge of their functions, when the conditions essential for their healthy action are duly fulfilled. And hence, whenever they become morbidly inactive, we may rest assured that, in some point or other, our own management is or has been defective; and the surest way to remedy the evil is, not to have instant recourse to medicine, but to begin by discovering and amending the defect. In the rare occurrence of constipation among children and other actively employed persons, we have ample proof of the fundamental principle that the bowels do not naturally stand in need of the stimulus of medicine, but require only to be properly treated to fit them for the office with which they are charged.