To arrive properly at a basis for the study of constipation and tympanitis, with their coincident autointoxication, one must start well back of the condition of disability and investigate the various embryologic, anatomic, and physiologic factors which may ultimately promote the train of pathologic symptoms.
Probably no condition is more lightly viewed by physicians in general than constipation, possibly because it is so common, and possibly, also, because in many instances it is more or less easily set aside by laxatives. Unless, therefore, this symptom becomes so exaggerated as to suggest a possible obstruction, it is usually viewed with professional equanimity. There is a growing tendency to look on the various laboratories of the human body as the generating ground, not only of physiologic, but under abnormal conditions of various pathologic products, in one instance beneficent, in the other very deleterious to health. The thyroid has already taken its place