206 NUTRITIONAL PHYSIOLOGY 



who are selecting precisely what they please to eat, while 

 compelling little children to swallow food which repels. 

 To oblige a child to finish a plateful of food against its 

 inclination may be crass brutality. Of course, children 

 cannot be humored in the selection of eccentric diets, but 

 they need not be made to eat when they would rather go 

 hungry. There is little likelihood that they will refuse the 

 staple articles. 



Unhappiness may give rise to digestive difficulties which 

 do not disappear with the removal of the first cause. It 

 is not hard to show how this may be. Suppose that the 

 power to digest and absorb food is lessened by central in- 

 hibitions. A consequence is likely to be the accumulation 

 of unabsorbed organic material in the colon and perhaps 

 higher up as well. Bacterial decomposition will be fos- 

 tered. Some of the products of such a process may be 

 sufficiently like the normal products of enzyme action to 

 play a part in nutrition, but others will probably prove 

 distinctly detrimental. With the entrance into the circu- 

 lation of such bodies there is originated what is known as 

 auto-intoxication. 



Long ago it was recognized that the reception into the 

 system of bacterial products might be a cause of general 

 ill health, of headache, and of somnolence. Within a few 

 years the impression has gained ground that poisons from 

 the colon have a much larger and more definite share in the 

 development of disease. Much that goes by the name of 

 rheumatism appears traceable to this source. Some of the 

 toxic compounds seem to have the property of dissolving 

 the red corpuscles of the blood, leading thus to anemia and 

 the serious crippling of the energies which accompanies it. 

 Nervous symptoms are among the most frequent nowadays 

 referred to this condition, seemingly so remote from the 

 brain. 



Physicians apply the term "vicious cycle" to a set of 

 conditions in which the establishment of one tends to ac- 

 centuate the others, and these, in their turn, add to the 

 intensity of the first. We can see how a vicious cycle may 



