Welcome again, Dear Reader, to the fields of excrement. No, I am not fixated at the anal compulsive developmental stage identified by those two great medical philosophers and savants, Dr. Sigmund (“Vy you don’t like your mommy?”) Freud and Dr. Benjamin (“Let the little monsters do anything they want or you will damage their fragile self-esteem”) Spock. No, no, no. I am a mature and sophisticated adult. But the cannonade of insanity inundating us forces me to speak.

A scholarly scientific article was published just last week indicating that recent results indicate that fecal enemas are not as effective as previously claimed. Fair enough. However, my own experience, both on a personal level and in terms of my interaction with my young children, was that enemas were used to cause fecal material to leave the body. I was surprised (an inadequate word) to discover that the enemas they were discussing were reverse enemas, id est, they involved putting alien  poop into the victim, excuse me, patient.

The study indicates that one of the reasons that the efficacy of this treatment  was overstated was that it was based on a small number of cases. How surprising. I would have expected throngs to be hammering on the clinic door begging to have somebody else’s poo squirted up their rear end. BLECCCHH!

Now, in all fairness to the medical profession, this revolting treatment was developed to treat extremely difficult cases of infections by clostridium dificile which, as its name indicates, is dificile to cure. It is amusing to speculate on how anyone came up with this concept. I see two white coated physicians standing around in the hospital, outside the room of a particularly difficult case, when one says to the other “Hey! Why don’t we try shoving somebody else’s poo up her butt!”

But this is great!

The ingenuity of the medical profession knows no bounds! This conceptual breakthrough heralds oodles of new and interesting treatments.

But oh no!! It’s too late! All the really revolting approaches from the Dark Ages have been resurrected already. The Three Weird Sisters from Macbeth have nothing on our contemporary medicos! Eye of newt and wing of bat, hah! We once again use leeches to drain black eyes. We use maggots (sterilized, of course) to eat the dead flesh off of  victims of chemical burns and fires. We use creepy molds to make antibiotics.

Where is a witch doctor when you need him? I’d prefer the old mask and rattle any day.