> In England a quack never fails unless he is untrue to himself, that is, if he be not sufficiently outrageous in his professions; let him promise and persevere in promising the impossible - let him screw his courage to that point and he’ll not fail; the yearly sum in advertisements alone by some of those venders of nostrums (the value of which they assert, and truly, is unknown and incredible) must be immense. [...]
> – Henry Wood – "Change for the American Notes in Letters from London to New York by an American Lady." (1843)
I feel this phenomenon is still going strong over a century later and an ocean away.
The striking thing about this is how widespread a problem constipation was and how desperate people were to solve it. What were people eating in Victorian England? Gristle and paste, sprinkled with arsenic?
Not fruits and vegetables. Lots of processed grain, boiled meat, suet, porridge. Add in an obsession with tea, a diuretic, with poor drinking water and I’m not surprised.
I’d bet today most people in the US are under-hydrated and don’t eat enough fiber.
If you ever watch taped broadcasts of 1970s and 1980s daytime television, half of the ads are for some form of laxative while the other half was for some meat-heavy or sugar-laden ultra-processed food.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 27.0 ms ] thread> – Henry Wood – "Change for the American Notes in Letters from London to New York by an American Lady." (1843)
I feel this phenomenon is still going strong over a century later and an ocean away.
https://brill.com/view/journals/esm/25/2/article-p173_4.xml?... (article at https://www.pismin.com/10.1163/15733823-00252p04)
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4d89/d61ba488a87c62107ebbeb...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_water
I’d bet today most people in the US are under-hydrated and don’t eat enough fiber.