Page 12 - Pharmacy History 29 July 2006

Clysters & Enemas
The enema – heir to the clyster
By Vin Gallici
Autointoxication is an ancient theory based on the belief that intestinal waste products can poison the body and are a major contributor to many, if not all, diseases. In the 19th century, it was the ruling doctrine of medicine and led ‘colonic quackery’ in various guises. By the turn of the century, it had received some apparent backing from science. When it became clear that the scientific rationale was wrong and colonic irrigation was not merely useless but potentially dangerous, it was exposed as quackery and subsequently went into a decline.
With raised brows we view today a fashion
of medicine which had its peak in the 17th century – the clyster. Still there was a good and true core hidden under a mountain of exaggeration and hysteria.
They were ridiculed and burlesqued in Moliere’s comedies; as he ridiculed and burlesqued everything concerning physicians, apothecaries and medicines of his period. It
was part of the daily life to see an apothecary or a doctor’s assistant marching through the streets of Paris with a clyster tube on his shoulder accompanying the learned doctor in his hand-drawn carriage.
Golden age of the
clyster
The 17th century, indeed, was the golden age of the clyster as the
enema was called in former centuries. Fashionable Parisians had three to four ‘lavements’ every day, in order to regain their vitality and to purify their complexions.
We have extensive descriptions how French royalty and the Court used the enema in the most elaborate manner. Plain water enema was not refined enough, the enema fluids were tinted with various colours and perfumed with odours of rose, orange and angelica.
Louis XIV had over 2000 enemas or ‘enemata’, during his reign, sometimes holding court while the procedure progressed.
The clyster tube. Sign of physician’s and pharmacist’s dignity
12 ■ Pharmacy History Australia
volume 3 ■ no 30 ■ NOVEMBER 2006
Even feminine ambition used the clyster craze to enhance personal prestige: One fashionable lady had her physician administer her an enema in Versailles in the presence of the court. Louis XIII preferred enemas of almond milk. It was calculated that, within a single year, he had received 212 enemas, 215 purgatives, and 47 venesections from his court physician.
Through many centuries of medical history we can follow the careful attention for regular activity of the bowels and at all times enemas or laxatives were used when nature failed. The art of the enema belongs
to the age old methods of medical treatment, and primitive tribes used them in prehistoric times.
In the fifth century, B.C., Herodotus, a Greek historian, noted that the Egyptians cleared themselves on three consecutive days every month. Hippocrates, the ‘Father of Medicine’ (460-370 BC) frequently mentions the use of the clyster in his works.
In Rome people who suffered from indigestion were treated by means of enemas; part of a syringe was probably discovered in the ruins of Herculaneum.
Celsus (25 BC to 50 AD), author of De re medicina, a book which