Properly masticated, a small amount of good food is easily handled by the stomach and converted into a fluid state very much like milk, which is passed into the small intestines and here taken up into the system by a wonderful process of assimilation that subtracts the particles that go to sustain the different functions of the body. Properly digested, the intestines have no trouble in getting the nourishment that is needed and the waste matter is cast into the colon, and from there out of the body.

This entire process takes some hours. There are a great many feet of small intestines through which this food has to pass, for Nature has been economical in her plan and designs to get every bit of force she can possibly extract from the food given her. It is for this reason that a small amount of good food suffices, and is better than a large amount. A large amount of food can not be properly masticated in the first place, is not properly digested in the second, and so goes to the small intestines in an improper form from which it is difficult to subtract the needed elements in the needed state, and hence it is pushed on down into the colon, where it again clogs and often stays for weeks before it finally gets out of the system.

With most people the body is in a chronic "stuffed'' state, the stomach can not empty until the small intestines empty, and in turn the small intestines can not empty until the colon empties. Each is kept filled to its capacity, and immediately when the stomach is emptied, and is just settling down for a little much-needed rest, cerchunk! - in comes another gob of stuff that must be taken care of in some way. Many people don't even allow the stomach to get empty at all; they keep filling it up just as soon as there is a little space at the top.

It is a shame how we treat these faithful organs of ours in our selfish effort to gratify our APPETITES, which we invariably do at the expense of our bodily health.

Talk about an eight-hour day - some people work their internal anatomy an even twenty-four hours out of every twenty-four, and still we wonder why people die young. We better wonder how they live as long as they do.

But to return to our problem of digestion. I am not much of a"fan," but the stomach might be likened unto first base in a ball game. If the other three bases are open, there is a chance of making a home run, but if second and third - the intestines and the colon - are filled, the man has got to stay on first base longer than he should; he has to wait till there is a vacancy, until some Ty Cobb comes to bat and lands the ball over the fence and cleans up all the bases.

The physical Ty Cobb that the human race has been playing has been a dose of epsom salts or castor oil, but the trouble is that it don't really clean up the bases, though it usually makes a hole through the mass of clogged-up matter. The situation is still wrong. In other words, "Ty" fails to land one over the fence; he just strikes a foul, and is caught out.

The idea I am trying to give you is that you should not let your system get clogged, that you should stop the "stuffing" habit. If, however, you do get clogged up, use the water enema; it is by far the quickest and most proper way of inside cleaning.

The habitual use of drugs, pills, etc., for causing bowel action is harmful in the extreme, and falls far short of accomplishing the needed results.

Now get this: you can't continually stuff your stomach and expect your body properly to eliminate the amount of material you put into it, even though you do this in an effort to supply pure food from a lot of rubbish; the effect on the system is the same. The system can take care of some waste, is built purposely to do this, but there is a limit to its normal capacity. A five-horse-power engine, speeded up to the limit, might do for a while the work that a ten-horse-power engine working normally ought to do, but the life of that five-horse-power engine would be greatly shortened, - and that's just the thing that is happening with the race today.

We have given our bodies impossible tasks, not in feats of strength and endurance along the lines of outside activity, but in feats of strength and endurance along the lines of inside activity.

Now note again: if the food is kept in the stomach too long, it ferments, and instead of emptying food laden into the intestines, it fills them with a mess of matter in which the food properties have already been largely destroyed, some of them turned into poisons by the wonderful chemistry of the body. If the small intestines can not quickly dispose of this mess into the colon, these poisons are taken into the system and pass through the kidneys or are pushed out through the glands of the skin. Nature makes every effort to eliminate the poison quickly, but a continued congested state means that the kidneys and other organs also become overworked, and the flesh filled with putrid matter, until the body is filled with disease and fairly stinks. No wonder frequent bathing is necessary for some people to keep the body smelling sweetly.

But finally this matter, what is left of it, is pushed into the colon. Here nature has provided a large reservoir in case of emergency and to furnish ample room for normal operation. It is at this point, however, that some of the most serious complications result, for the colon, in spite of its liberal capacity, finally becomes clogged and its normal muscular action eventually destroyed by the hard feces that dries to its walls. Eventually there is just a small hole through this putrid mass that permits the egress of waste material, which, having no natural muscular action to eliminate it, is only eliminated by pressure, one wad pushing out another wad until, in the course of a week or so, the matter gets through the colon and is deposited in a dried hard chunk of blackened excrement, - and some people call this a healthy action, or fail to take any cognizance of it at all.

Human excrement should be light in color and soft in consistency. It should be deposited without straining, and regularly in the morning. The colon should be entirely cleaned by this process each day, as should every other organ of the body be permitted to do its task and have a proper rest period.

Try this test: stop eating for a week; it won't hurt you a bit. You will find if you have not been living properly that you will keep getting refuse out of your system for days and days after you stop putting anything in, and if you are observing, you will be surprised, almost dumbfounded, to know where it comes from. In such a case you are just giving your body a chance in this way to get rid of a lot of material that you have forced upon it, and that it could not eliminate in the ordinary run of the tasks assigned it.

Many of you who read this have something like a bushel of waste matter stored away in your system right now, matter that is harmful, that ought to be eliminated, that is stopping up different organs and keeping them from functioning naturally, that is causing you aches and pains and distress.

Why not be sensible and have a good inside house cleaning?

Now house cleaning is not a pleasant time of the year. When you come home some night and find the carpets all up and the rooms full of dust, and everything upside down, your easy chair in the woodshed, and your slippers in the coal bin, if a mere man, you are apt to remark, "Darn this house-cleaning business, everything is dirtier now than it was before.'' And this remark would hold true, if you judged by the visible dirt at hand. But the house cleaner does not bring into the home any new dirt, she just digs it out of the corners and from behind the pictures and other places where it has lodged. And so with your internal house cleaning, - it will not be a pleasant time, and your entire system will probably be turned upside down, and you will feel, oh, so miserable! during this period of going without food; but old Mother Nature will improve every moment you give her to set your house in the best possible shape.

And after it is all over, you will feel like a new being, and the little flesh, not counting the rubbish, you have lost in the fast will come back to you a pound a day or more, and you will be very glad indeed that you cleaned out your internal house. But don't forget at this point what got the house dirty, and be wise to the point of keeping it clean ever afterwards. Also do not try an experiment of this kind until you know just what you are doing and why you are doing it.