Inner Hygiene

"This scholarly tome is a major addition to the growing body of social history of medicine/health care literature and a very enjoyable reading experience." --Pharmacy in History "Very thought provoking."--Can J Gastroenterol, Vol 15 No 3, March 2001 "This scholarly tome is a major addition to the growing body of social history of medicine/health care literature and a very enjoyable reading experience." --Pharmacy in History "This book is exhaustive and scholarly, but, thank goodness, it is also a wry chronicle. To anyone who grew up puzzling over delicately worded radio ads for peculiar products like Serutan ("nature's spelled backwords"), Sal Hepatica and Carter's Little Liver Pills, or wondering how Grandma could have been addicted to Feen-a-Mint laxative chewing gum, Dr. Whorton's book will explain it all." --Denise Grady, Health & Fitness, The New York Times "As the title suggests, the book sprang from the notion that good health is associated with the regular elimination of waste from our system. Mr. Whorton uses references in medical literature dating from the 1700s to present to document a history of what he calls the fundamental disease of civilization ." - Nancy Melville, The Dallas Morning News, August 21, 2000 "Whorton's scrutiny of constipation illuminates the rich legacy responsible for our continued fascination with intestinal regularity. He focuses on the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when, as a "civilized" disease, constipation became part of he clarion cry of all who worried about the compromised state of our "inner hygiene." Whorton fleshes (flushes?!) out a cadre of characters and therapies that outdo one another in their eccentricities and outrageousness. For the clinician mystified by a patient's preoccupation with bowel regularity or insistence that colonic irrigation is the route to intestinal Nirvana, Whorton's nner Hygiene will prove to be just what the doctor ordered." -- Micaela Sullivan-Fowler, MS, MA, JAMA, Feb 21, 2001, Vol 285, No. 7