Constipation : its causes and consequences with some hints for its prevention and cure / by a country clergyman.

  • Country clergyman.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Constipation : its causes and consequences with some hints for its prevention and cure / by a country clergyman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    5/18 (page 3)
    severe cases of costiveness, sucli as mine was, after all other remedies had been tried in vain, a similar dose might be most effective, if not too powerful. Some of the simpler means to avoid, rather than cure this most serious and sometimes fatal ailment, may now be enu¬ merated ; the results given will mostly be the fruits of personal experience : one most simple, yet frequently recommended, method of ensuring a regular diurnal visit to the temple of Cloacina, is the drinking a tum¬ bler of cold water at bed-time, followed by another in the morning. With some persons so large a body of liquid is apt to create flatulence, and other disturbance, and in my own case I dont think it has proved success¬ ful, the result may depend in part upon the quality of the water, which if impregnated with chalk or iron, as is the case with hard water, may cause the evil it is intended to remedy. A better, and certainly more palatable remedy, is one of which I can speak hope¬ fully from my own experience, confirmed by that of an old clergyman, who first recommended it, and that is a cup of hot tea taken very early in the morning, the effects of which were sometimes so inconveniently rapid that I often had to make a hurried toilet. I may add here that the cup of tea is a most valuable remedy for cold, especially in its earlier stages. Whenever you have reason to fear, from being exposed to severe draughts, after being very hot, or from sitting still in wet clothes, or sleeping in a damp bed, that you have caught cold—a fact which makes itself known by chilliness of body, sneezing, running at the nose, &c.— you cannot do better than retire early to bed, after putting your feet in hot water, as hot as you can bear it, for the space of twenty minutes, then taking some sweet spirits of nitre or other sudorific, followed by a bason of oatmeal-gruel the last thing before going to sleep, and a cup of hot tea in the morning, which last has the most powerful effect in promoting the efficiency of the sudorific remedies made use of the previous