We have already spoken of tobacco in relation to the preventive, hygienic or accessory treatment of constipation. The use of a pipe or a cigar very often constitutes in many persons a means for preventing constipation.
Dr. De Moor has published a pathogenesis of this medicine in which we find the following : Desire for stool without any evacuation. After frequent but ineffectual attempts at stool, there occurs an evacuation of hard matter several hours after the regular time.
Dr. Ozanam in a later work gives : Habitual constipation; paralysis of the rectum; spasm of the anal sphincter.
We translate, in a condensed form, several interesting passages from the supplement to Rueckert : Dr. Minnichreiter recommends tobacco and especially nicotine, for constipation. In a case of chronic constipation with marked and painful tympanitis, after a failure by heroic treatment, the patient had recourse to the following expedient : he smoked a large pipe of tobacco, and then placed the remaining secretion in a cup of black coffee which he finally drank; the patient was cured immediately and for a long time. Another patient, non-smoker, who suffered from chronic constipation, having smoked a mild cigar, was taken with diarrhoea, but was cured by Ipecac and Nux vomica.
[Tympanitic bloating of the abdomen; dyspnoea.]