Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/343

 tion had taken place, in length about two and one-half inches ; this was of long-standing, since the walls of the bowel had become cartilaginous and thickened, and in so doing had closed the opening of the gut so that it would have been difficult to insert a lead pencil into the passage; the only section of the colon that was in a natural state was the cecum, but thence to the rectum the organ was of infantile proportion; in fact, there was not one inch of this part of the bowel into which the end of an index finger could have been introduced; the sigmoid flexure was less deveolped than any other portion of the gut ; its bent form was absent, and it had become merely a straight, vertical canal continuing the descending colon to the anus; the liver was badly congested, with its left lobe partially cirrhosed, but its functions had probably been performed with better success than those of the other digestive organs ; the gall bladder was distended with bile; the pancreas was extremely small, and the spleen was that of an infant; the kidneys were disintegrated and pocketed with pus, which discharged through the ureters into an inflamed and congested bladder; the latter was very undeveloped and held within its