When digestive enervation or fatigue sets in the rate of travel of the food mass is greatly delayed, the digestive juices are for the same reason deficient, and the digestive task is but poorly or not at all carried out, resulting in much fermentation and much retention of debris by the colon that takes part in the digestive cycle to the extent of removing the debris from the system after digestion is completed.

When the action of the colon slows down then we see the beginning of what will soon be recognized as constipation, but for a long time before movements are missed there will be a slowing down of the rate of dejection of this debris, the movement occurring today representing material that should have been dejected yesterday, or the day before, yet still a movement occurring every day.

This is obstipation, which in effect is the same thing as constipation, or missed movements.

The idea of medicine here is to use laxatives, but these do nothing except to hurry peristalsis mechanically, as they are irritants to the mucous membrane of the intestine and act in no other way.

This whole idea is a complete failure to grasp the true situation, for the trouble is not in the slowing of peristalsis alone, but in a failure of the entire system of digestion, and the whipping with a stimulant is aggravating the state of enervation or fatigue that is the very cause of the whole thing.

Like all other stimulants, the intestinal stimulants that we call laxatives soon produce a tolerance in the system, and increasingly large doses of these have to be administered, or the character of the stimulant changed frequently.

After a tolerance for stimulation has developed, then surely the last state of this case is worse than the first.

And even if tolerance did not develop, and if the stimulant continued to work, the results of such stimulation are never to empty the colon, as supposed, but merely to irritate and stimulate the mucous membrane of the entire intestinal tract, not resulting in the very thing aimed at.

Thus movements will be forced in this way for perhaps years, soft in character, representing but poorly digested materials, which have been rushed through the small intestine before time was given for complete digestion, while these same movements have passed by in the colon old masses that were in solid formation, allowing the semi-fluid mass to pass through, just as sand will filter through a bucket of shot or stones.

There is but one harmless way to empty the colon, and this is with the daily enema, a measure that can be kept up indefinitely without the slightest harm, if conducted right, but an emergency remedy at best, till normal inervation again produces normal stools before the usual time for the enema.

This will be taken up more at length in the chapter following, when the harmless technique will be outlined.

It is so common to hear a man or woman complain that a few years ago he or she could "digest nails," yet today" everything lies like a load on the stomach."

Inquiry will always also elicit the information that such case gets up in the morning always tired, has constipation, often sour stomach, lots of gas, "everything turns to gas," and the entire train indicates a digestive tract that has laid down on its job.

Here is a picture of digestive enervation not to be cured or treated, but to be analyzed as to personal habit and the faults found there corrected.

No stimulant, no medicine, no dietetic regime here is curative, no electricity will bring back the elasticity to the digestive tract; only the body itself can restore this, and to do so it must be freed from the handicaps that produced the thing originally.

These are chiefly in the degree of departure from the intended normal in dietary habit, the various things before outlined as the sources of acidosis, and where extreme fatigue is a primary cause, as in undertaking tasks too hard for the physical or mental equipment, this cause must be also eliminated before the body can readjust itself to the normal and again get the internal rest that will allow of repair of its broken resistence.

Here again, to cure disease is merely to stop causing it, and this will always be so in every condition to which flesh is heir.

We cannot improve the body's arrangements for its own care, nor can we even greatly assist these, but we can stop doing the things that interfere with the body processes.

Cases of digestive enervation in the experience of the writer have always come back faster through an entire withholding of food of all kinds than in any other way, as this plan more completely gives the body a free hand in elimination than can any other, but not every one wishes to fast, many misunderstanding the whole process and intent of the fast, so it is not recommended to all indiscriminately.

Until the body has eliminated much of the waste matter that is the cause of this state there will be little or no improvement from physical or mental rest, even though rest is ideally indicated here, for the impossibility of proper rest in a body continually overworked by eliminative tasks that it has not been able successfully to complete must be evident to any one.

External rest does not always mean internal rest, and in the very nature of things cannot mean internal rest till the internal cleanliness has reached a certain point where function will not be continually embarrassed.

Many a case of neurasthenia, which consists chiefly of digestive enervation, has gone to bed, resting under the Weir Mitchell idea, absolutely no movement of any kind, stuffed with all sorts of easily digested pabulum, and continued thus till a complete digestive breakdown ended the insane idea of forced feeding, thus giving the system time to clean house and re-establish a semblance of order, and only then did the patient experience any real improvement.

External rest would not do; it had to be internal rest before improvement could set in.

Neurologists are still scrapping with nutritionists over the question of whether the digestive breakdown, which is a part of every neurasthenia, is the real cause of the nerve break, or whether the failing nerve force is the cause of the digestive failure, and they never can settle this point, for they are both the result of acidosis, the two phases most in evidence in the syndrome that we call by the name of neurasthenia.

A number of years ago a minister's wife was just getting up from her third period spent in bed with this trouble, three distinct breakdowns in six years, the periods in bed representing by far the greater part of the six years.

She seriously objected to any "monkeying with her diet," which she was sure was all that got her out of bed at all.

This consisted chiefly of milk and eggs with meat at least once a day and plenty of white bread twice each day.

She was finally persuaded to stay three days as a test, but feared a fast or greatly diminished diet, as she said she would faint if she were not fed coffee and toast as soon as she woke in the morning, and again between each two meals she was fed coffee and toast, making six meals a day that she had to take care of in her greatly enfeebled condition.

Being so recently out of bed for the third so-called recovery she feared that she would be thrown violently back again into a bedfast state.

She was purged with three heaping tablespoonfuls of Glaubers salts each morning for three days in succession, diet limited to fruit juices during all this time, and for three days she feared to raise her head for fear of fainting, the nurses being compelled to attend her with the bed-pan during this purging period.

No food of any kind was given beyond the juices of the orange, lemon and grape.

After three days she sat up in bed, greatly surprised that she did not faint Next day she was all over the house, and the next all over the town, taking long walks with enjoyment.

At the end of three weeks she returned to her home, and discharged the maid, who had been with them for six years, and never again employed any help, as she has never in these nineteen years needed any help.

Now why did this lady who got up with difficulty after absolute rest in bed for as high as a year at one time recover so quickly when given no food and purged drastically?

To answer that it is only necessary to remember why she was sick, for the diet she was on when she came there proved that she was made of good materials else she could not have gotten up at all from a breakdown.

The daily foods in her case would require the digestive and eliminative ability of a husky backsmith to handle properly, yet in spite of this she carried on after a fashion, showing a good resistance and a hopeful outlook for immediate improvement when these damnable handicaps were removed.

A long series of similar cases could be summarised in about the same way, continued ill health, nearly complete digestive breakdown, severe enervation of digestion, coupled with an insane diet, yet carrying on. These cases all did well almost at once when freed from this terrible burden of digestion and elimination; eventually all did well, recovering completely, but an occasional case responded but slowly to the rapid detoxication and subsequent diet, apparently having so little vitality left that this had to grow by slow degrees to even a competency for the normal foods with even a light eliminative task.

So whether the digestive breakdown precedes the nerve break' down, or vice versa, makes no more difference than whether the hen is the mother of the egg or the egg the mother of the hen, for both conditions are merely differing expressions of exactly the same cause, and both can be reached as readily as either singly by removal of this toxic cause, and in no other way.

Recoveries through the Weir Mitchell plan are recoveries in spite of absolutely wrong treatment, and only serve to prove that it is hard to kill some people.

To cure disease all we have to do is to stop causing disease whether this be neurasthenia, digestive breakdown, or any of the multitude of ills that we have catalogued through the centuries past, or will ever catalogue through those to come.