THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY. 
JULT,  1878. 
EPSOM  SALT  versus  STRAWBERRIES. 
By  F.  H.  Storer,  Professor  of  Agricultural  Chemistry  in  Harvard  University. 
The  fact  that  the  ripe  strawberry  is  apt  to  induce  constipation  seems 
to  be  less  generally  known  than  it  should  be  ;  perhaps  because  the 
binding  action  would  not  naturally  be  expected,  in  view  of  the  numer- 
ous small  seeds  of  the  berry,  which  might  be  supposed  to  promote  dis- 
charges from  the  bowels  by  mere  mechanical  action. 
In  this  country  in  particular,  where  an  immense  and  well  nigh  uni- 
versal consumption  of  strawberries  is  coincident  with  the  setting  in  of 
hot  weather,  the  constipating  action  of  the  berry  is  complicated  and, 
as  it  were,  increased  by  the  excessive  waste  of  water  from  the  body, 
by  perspiration,  which  occurs  at  this  period  ;  and  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that,  taking  the  two  causes  together,  the  strawberry  season — 
though  perhaps  beneficial  to  some  constitutions — is  the  occasion  of 
much  ill  health  among  the  American  people. 
It  occurred  to  me  some  years  since — at  the  time  of  Graham's  defi- 
nition of  "  colloid  "  and  "  crystalloid  "  bodies— that  Liebig's  argument, 
that  the  cathartic  action  of  many  saline  medicaments  is  to  be  referred 
to  their  osmotic  relations  to  the  membranes  of  the  intestinal  canal  and 
the  blood  vessels,  might  now  be  carried  on  a  step  further  and  be  made 
the  basis  of  a  rational  treatment  of  constipation. 
I  argued,  in  particular,  that  it  might,  perhaps,  be  an  easy  matter  to 
annul  the  tendency  to  constipation  which  is  so  noticeable  in  the  hot, 
dry  weather  of  early  summer,  by  checking  or  diverting  the  course  of 
some  part  of  the  water  which  would  naturally  be  exuded  by  the  skin 
at  this  season,  and  causing  it  to  piss  into  the  rectum.  The  idea  was 
that  we  might  eat  or  drink  habitually  small  quantities  of  some  harm- 
less indigestible  hygroscopic  colloid  substance,  which,  while  holding 
water  forcibly,  could  not  readily  pass  through  the  walls  of  the  stomach 
or  intestines  by  way  of  osmose,  and  would  consequently  arrive  in  the 
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