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by James C. Whorton, 315 pp, with illus, $39.95, ISBN 0-19-513581-4, New York, NY, Oxford University Press, 2000

JAMA. 2001;285:943-944.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

The public and health professions' fixation on constipation has never been, well . . . fleeting. Jokes and titters aside, Whorton's scrutiny of constipation illuminates the rich legacy responsible for our continued fascination with intestinal regularity.

Whorton focuses on the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when, as a "civilized" disease, constipation became part of the clarion cry of all who worried about the compromised state of our "inner hygiene." City dwellers, as Whorton shows, were often plagued by difficult, infrequent, or nonexistent bowel movements owing to poor bathroom habits brought on by many characteristics of their urban industrial life. Crowded living conditions, dreadful diets, nervous tensions, and lack of exercise were a few of the features germane to this "unnatural" environment.

Whorton explains that this costive populace was further compromised by the medical and lay communities' insistence that bowel contents could become pathologically toxic, reinforced in the late 1800s . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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