Tokology : $b A book for every womanStockham, Alice B. (Alice Bunker)
Science
Tokology : $b A book for every woman
Stockham, Alice B. (Alice Bunker)
Women -- Health and hygiene
Eggs and milk are constipating to many. The latter is especially so
if boiled or if the two articles are combined in custards, puddings,
etc. Among the vegetables, beans (dried) are constipating. This,
however, is largely the result of the mode of preparation. They may
not be sufficiently cooked, and the fat incorporated with them renders
them indigestible. Cheese is constipating to many, also chocolate and
cocoa. Of the fruits, blackberries and raspberries are constipating,
especially if the seeds are taken. More than any other articles of
diet, these induce and aggravate hemorrhoids.
Any of the above mentioned foods may not prove constipating when eaten
with a mixed diet.
THE ERRORS IN DRESS conducive to torpid bowels, are lack of covering
to the extremities, and excess of clothing in the abdominal region,
thus favoring congestion of the vital organs. Garments that are tight
and improperly supported restrict respiration, infringe upon all the
digestive organs, and impede the circulation.
When women are freed from the trammels of dress, they will have taken a
long stride toward freedom from invalidism. Is it Utopian to hope that
it will also aid in giving them both political and social freedom?
A very common means taken to overcome constipation only increases it
and renders it less amenable to common sense treatment, and that is the
prevalent use of _cathartic drugs_. “They all depend for effect upon
a certain quality they possess of exciting secretion and peristaltic
activity. Of course they do this through the nervous system, few if
any of them being mechanical in their action, but accomplishing their
results by stimulating the nervous system to extra effort. In doing
this, they necessarily exhaust the source of supply; for the tendency
of all stimulation is to induce exhaustion as the consequence of
unnatural exhibitions of nervous force. Persons using these so-called
remedies--laxatives, cathartics, and purgatives--thus securing
temporarily the movement of the bowels, find that after their use it is
more difficult to secure natural passages, and that the dose must be
increased to produce any effect. Meantime the continued use of these
drugs not only exhausts nervous force, but often creates inflammation
of mucous surfaces, disturbing digestion, and poisoning the blood.”
This is more especially true of the saline cathartics.
Such cases are much more rationally, comfortably and effectively
treated by the use of enemas. (Chap. IV).
Pregnancy aggravates or causes constipation, by reflex nervous action
from an irritable uterus or mechanically by pressure of fetus upon the
colon or rectum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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