Medicine: The Clyster Craze

A Brooklyn specialist, Dr. William Lieberman, is one of the foremost U.S. authorities on the history of the enema. Last week, in the Review of Gastroenterology, he wrote with scholarly authority on his cathartic theme.

Ancient Art. The origin of the enema is veiled in the mist of antiquity. The Hindu Vedas hint of its use in 2000 B.C. In the sth Century Herodotus noted that “the Egyptians clear themselves on three consecutive days every month.” The Egyptians learned the art, said the Roman Naturalist Pliny, from the long-beaked ibis, who “washes the inside of his body by introducing water with his beak into the channel by which … the residue of our food should leave.”

Hippocrates preferred enemas to purges, but the Greeks rejected the strange concoctions of bile, vinegar, etc. used by other peoples in favor of water or simple salt solutions, perhaps with a little oil or honey added. Centuries later, physicians in medieval Spain described the nutrient enema and the first bulb syringes.

French Fashion. The17th Century was the Golden Age of the enema, or clyster as it was then called. The crude instruments of yesteryear—tubes of bone or wood attached to animal bladders or silk bags—were replaced by a formidable piston-&-cylinder device. An apothecary or doctor’s assistant, marching through the streets with a clyster tube on his shoulder (see cut), became a common sight, as a mania for enemas swept France.

Fashionable Parisians, convinced that inner lavements purified the complexion and produced good health, took as many as three or four enemas a day. The craze was often burlesqued on the stage, notably by Moliere, and it was a lively topic of elegant discourse in the salons.

Louis XIV had over 2,000 enemas during his reign, sometimes holding court while the ceremony progressed. Aristocratic enemas were delicately tinted and scented. They were also so widely used as a means of poisoning that Louis XIV set up a special detective agency to combat the wave of enema-murders among his nobility.

Scientific Sobriety. About 1800 the carnival spirit dwindled sharply, and the age of scientific sobriety began. An extension of the enema principle came in 1895 with the invention of colonic irrigation by Professor Ismar of Berlin—a controversial treatment which Historian Lieberman dismisses as very rarely necessary and “on the wane at the present time.”

Simplicity is the enema keynote in the Atomic Age. Best ingredients: “plain lukewarm water, or perhaps just a trace of bicarbonate of soda or ordinary salt.” Warns Dr. Lieberman: “Soap is a very popular ingredient now, unjustly so, because in most cases it is unnecessary and irritating.”