Editing Constipation (section)

==History==
[[File:A monkey rejects the old style clyster for his new 'clyso-pompe', which he fills with opium and marshmallow Wellcome V0011775.jpg|thumb|19th century satirical cartoon of a monkey rejecting an old style clyster for a new design, filled with marshmallow and opium]]

Since ancient times different societies have published medical opinions about how health care providers should respond to constipation in patients.<ref name="inner hygiene">{{cite book|last1=Whorton|first1=James C.|title=Inner hygiene: constipation and the pursuit of health in modern society|date=2000|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York|isbn=978-0-19-513581-7|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/innerhygiene00jame_0}}</ref> In various times and places, doctors have made claims that constipation has all sorts of medical or social causes.<ref name="inner hygiene"/> Doctors in history have treated constipation in reasonable and unreasonable ways, including use of a [[Spatula Mundani|spatula mundani]].<ref name="inner hygiene"/>

After the advent of the [[germ theory of disease]] then the idea of "auto-intoxication" entered popular Western thought in a fresh way.<ref name="inner hygiene"/> [[Enema]] as a scientific medical treatment and [[colon cleansing]] as alternative medical treatment became more common in medical practice.<ref name="inner hygiene"/>

Since the 1700s in the West there has been some popular thought that people with constipation have some moral failing with [[gluttony]] or [[laziness]].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Hornibrook|first1=F. A.|title=The culture of the abdomen;: The cure of obesity and constipation|date=1929|publisher=[[Heinemann (publisher)|Heinemann]]}}</ref>