Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/266

ble to locate by palpation, or feeling with the hand, the lower bowel throughout its extent, by using a copious enema after the intestine has been flushed of its contents. Filling the colon with water rounds it out, and its form and position can then readily be discovered through the walls of the abdomen. In all cases where extreme mental disturbance was noted, the transverse portion of the lower bowel had failed from its normal position to the region of the bladder. In this situation the contents of the small intestine, when discharged into the caecum, were incapable of rapid evacuation, even with the assistance of the enema, and brain congestion followed the extreme condition of auto-intoxication produced by the absorption of the ferment thus created. It has been dwelt upon in the chapter on mental and bodily reaction that physical disease induces mental disturbance. There can be no doubt that many inmates of asylums are curable through the relief of conditions identical with those here described. A regular physician, prominent as an expert on insanity, recently made the following published statement: "For the checking of insanity, the crying need is a study of the causes of the malady with a view to its pre-