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Updated: June 5, 2025
Of late years the action of the bowels had been very much retarded; and at two or three different periods had, with great difficulty, been made to yield to the action of very strong cathartics.
For a discussion of this fallacy I refer you to the chapter on milk. Do not give the little ones any kinds of medicines. They always do harm and never any good. If any exception is made to this, it is in the line of laxatives or mild cathartics, such as small doses of castor oil, cascara segrada or mineral waters, but there is no excuse for giving metallic remedies, such as calomel.
To expect them to live without frequent twinges is like expecting a doctor's old chaise to go without creaking; if it did, we might be sure the springs were broken. There is no doubt that the constant demand for medicinal remedies from patients of this class leads to their over-use; often in the case of cathartics, sometimes in that of opiates.
Cathartics simply excite the excretory processes, and stimulate Nature to a violent effort to expel them, the unnatural exertion being followed by a feeling of languor, for all purgative action is debilitating. "It is a debilitating practice," the objectors urge. Here, again, I join issue. I am in a position to prove a decided negative.
Exercise, a natural diet and plenty of clean water, as well as preventing liver disorders, may be classed among the most important of all curative agents. Laxatives or cathartics, such as oils, salts, aloes, and calomel, in small doses may be given. We prefer the administration of oil or aloes to horses, Glauber's or Epsom salts to ruminants, and calomel to dogs.
Naturally we cannot consider cathartics of any kind, notwithstanding their power to produce temporary results. In all cases the after effects of their use are seriously destructive to the delicate nerves controlling the alimentary canal and its functions in general. Cathartics invariably make the real condition more obstinate and serious.
We gave her thirty drops of laudanum, and after administering eye-water, rubbing the rheumatic patients with volatile liniment, and giving cathartics to others, they all thought themselves much relieved and returned highly satisfied to the village.
As to the medical matters, I invite your attention, not only to the report of Dr. Church accompanying this letter, but to the letters of Captain Llewellen, Captain Day, and Lieutenant McIlhenny. I could readily produce a hundred letters on the lines of the last three. In actual medical supplies, we had plenty of quinine and cathartics.
The wonder would be if it were otherwise. Nor are these the only objections to be urged against purgative medication. Its effects upon the digestive functions is, in the highest degree, destructive. It would be next to impossible to find an individual addicted to the use of cathartics whose digestion was not, practically, a wreck.
Laxatives and cathartics, by irritating the digestive tract, may cause a forced evacuation of the contents of the intestinal canal, but they do not eliminate the poisons which clog cells and tissues.
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