When arthritics get themselves constipated, not only do they fail to eat enough of the right foods, but they tend to go on liquid diets. That’s the greatest danger. Because liquids can disqualify whatever good food they may have eaten.
If, in addition, people with constipation choose lemon juice and water, they will soon find that their skin, scalp, hair, ears, and nails are gradually drying out. Their gum lines may even start to recede. Lemon may help a very few people with arthritis, but in the majority of cases it does harm.
Haste makes Waste
The fast ways to regularity are not always the best. If constipation is present at the time of an appendicitis attack, harsh laxatives can lead to serious complications. The reports about burst appendices in the bodies of constipated people are not myths. All too many patients with colon discomfort have also found themselves with a ruptured appendix. The manufacturers of cathartics concede this fact, and mark appropriate warnings on the labels of their wares.
*46\146\2*

Some patients return to their extreme state after only days, saying as one woman said to me, ‘Doctor, it was so beautiful to be on the moon. I was so happy there, why do you torture me by asking me to live in your harsh world? I do not have the strength to bear it here.’ Several hours later she was back in the psychosis once again with a euphoric expression lecturing to all about the moon and other planets. Who is to say that she should be in a different place? She had a choice, made a decision, and kept to it.
I have heard of other cases in which the physician gave a patient drugs, brought him out of his extreme episode only to report the resulting suicide.
An elderly gentleman I treated had been living alone with only his ‘devils’ (auditory hallucinations) for companionship for many years. After carefully adjusting his medication we were able to get rid of the ‘devils,’ at which point he fully realized how lonely and isolated he was and he drowned himself. Given the symptom-caused torment and social isolation which many schizophrenics must endure, in truth I find it surprising that the suicide rate among them is not higher than it is.
What this doctor does not mention is the possibility that the schizophrenic had his ‘devils’ as friends; his extreme state gave life meaning and prevented him from dying. Without the devils, it is fully possible that there was no longer any reason to live. Or, it is possible that one of his devils was no longer friendly to him and helped him to drown! Or, it could also be possible that the medication blocked the auditory channel through altering neurotransmitters so that the devils were no longer located there but took over his movement, whereupon he killed himself. I do not know what happened, but I would like the reader to suffer some of the philosophical uncertainties involved in working with psychotic states. My philosophy is doubt and observe, try to follow the individual process as closely as possible.
*49\227\8*

The skin may be afflicted with so many diseases that one might think that it has little protection against infection, yet we have reason to believe that the intact skin is germ-proof. We know now that for centuries surgeons carried infections on their hands and, when they operated, it was taken as a matter of course that the wounds would become infected. Then Pasteur showed that infection was due to germs, and Lister of England demonstrated that these infections were carried by the surgeons. Meanwhile the surgeons were fairly safe themselves. If they refrained from sticking needles into their fingers or cutting themselves with scalpels, it was their patients and not themselves who died of erysipelas or pined with suppurating wounds.
But a skin without the slightest break through its surface is a difficult thing to achieve. A bacterium is exceedingly minute. Wounds invisibly small may let a horde of them into the moist warm flesh where they thrive. Even the surgeon’s eagerness to obtain great cleanliness may itself defeat his purpose. Frequent washes with soap remove the soft grease normal to the skin, which then dries and cracks. But only to an unusually discriminating congregation can it be hinted that cleanliness is not an absolute law. It is a highly important one. Mankind has been afflicted with many diseases which could have been avoided by reasonable cleanliness.
*13/276/5*