Evacuations.

• Clay colored stool shows want of secretion of the intestinal glands and liver and impaired power of digestion.
• Yellow, rye mush color in typhoid, calls attention to the commencement of disease of Peyers patches.
• Deep brown or black feces with greenish tinge, sometimes yeasty, is a marked indication of typhoid condition; it calls for antiseptics.
• Vivid green discharge in children, acrid and irritating, shows excess of acids and suggests the use of alkalies.
• Extreme yellow discharge in infants shows poor digestion of food, of fats and albuminoids. It tells us more care in diet should be used, and indicates remedies that tone tip the digestive system.
• If ribbon-shaped generally shows a stricture of the rectum.
• If stool is hard generally shows that it is too long retained.
• If there is mucus mixed with substance of stool there is a catarrhal condition of the ileum.
• If hard and coated with mucus, there is a catarrhal condition of the colon.
• If too large quantity is passed every day, by weak and perhaps anemic persons it shows a lack of assimilation; that is, the food is not properly absorbed.
• If person goes 3 or 4 days and then passes large quantities, it shows lack of sensitiveness in the rectum, there being impairment or partial paralysis. Here dilation is the remedy, or remedies indicated in constipation. See part II.
• If person goes three or four days and then passes small quantity of hard pieces, it usually shows a lack of secretion of the intestinal tract. Here a large quantity of water taken about 2 hours before meals and 1 hour after meals is of advantage.

The above of course only refers to general conditions when other causes are excluded.

The Materia Medica and Clinical Therapeutics, 1905, was written by Fred J. Petersen, M.D.