The dissolving fluids, or digestive fluids, have the power to overcome fermentation when the general health standard is normal; when the tone of the general health is lowered these digestive juices are lacking in power; hence they are not able to control fermentation if food be ingested to the amount usually taken in health.  The power to oppose fermentation by the digestive juices ranges all the way from nil to the resistance usual to a man of full health and vigor.

It being the function of the bowels to digest food and overcome fermentation, it stands to reason that to accomplish this function they must be normal—­they must have a proper supply of nerve force and the supply of nutrition must be normal or they can not furnish the proper amount and quality of secretions.  To have all these needs supplied they must be reciprocally related to every other organ associated with them in the organic colonization which totals a human being.

On account of the reciprocal relationship between the bowels and the rest of the colony of organs, the bowels must share alike; that is, in the matter of distribution of forces no organ of the body can be favored; all must go up and all must come down together.  They must all share alike; hence the bowels have their share of the general tone and, if they are required to do more than a reciprocal amount of the work, it stands to reason that they can not do good work; and, if they can not do good work, the whole colony must suffer in a general way, while the bowels must also suffer in a special way.  The function of drainage or sewerage is very important, and the perversion of it brings on much ill health.  The principal perversion to the function of sewerage is that of constipation, the location of which is limited to the lower portion of the large intestine, a section of the canal least endowed with digestive and absorptive power.

The result of overwork is depression—­exhaustion—­prostration; and what does that mean to an organ?  Is it possible for an overworked organ—­a depressed organ—­an exhausted organ—­a prostrated organ—­to function normally?  Is it reasonable to believe that an organ that is inflamed can function properly?  Such questions are absurd, I acknowledge.  Questions that carry foregone conclusions on the face of them write the questioner down an ass, which I also acknowledge.  But I desire to rebut the inference these questions reflect on me by making a few requests which show that there is a lot of professional reasoning based on that sort of logic which justifies my childish, senseless questions.

Show me a physician, or if you can not show me one, give me the name of a physician who does not feed children in cholera infantum.  I want to know a few physicians who do not feed in typhoid fever.  I should like to make the acquaintance of a few physicians who do not feed in appendicitis until the disease is made desperate, and who do not begin to feed long before it is safe to feed.