Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/134

 internal purity, the condition of health, is reached and thereafter assured.

To the objections that the bowel is permanently dilated, and its functioning lost by continued use of the enema, a detailed reply is necessary. The intestine, as a whole, is that part of the alimentary canal, which, commencing at the pyloric opening of the stomach, is coiled in the abdominal cavity and ends at the anus. For purposes of description it is divided into several portions. Food leaving the stomach passes first into the duodenum, then into the jejunum, and next into the ileum. These three sections form the small intestine, which in man is about twenty feet in length, but is subject to great variations. The lumen of the small intestine is larger at its upper end and gradually narrows as it goes downward. The opening of the ileum into the caecum, the first portion of the colon, is valvular, and this arrangement prevents any passage backward of the intestinal contents. Beyond the ileo-caecal valve the caecum forms a large dilatation, and from it springs an elongated blind process, the vermiform appendix. The caecum is continued upward as the colon, which is described as (1) ascending, (2) transverse,