LAXATIVE, a term applied to medicines and articles of food which without causing irritation evacuate the contents of the intestines. The terms aperients, lenitives and eccoproctics are also employed to cover the same meaning. Laxative articles of food, the use of which causes daily intestinal evacuations, contain con siderable quantities of indigestible matter; some of them salts and acids which act in much the same way as the saline laxatives, and others, notably fruits and vegetables containing quantities of cellulose, which is indigestible •in the main, by increasing the bulk of the feces distends the intestines and induces easy evacu ation. Among the laxative fruits are prunes, figs, pears, apples, oranges, peaches and berries. The laxative foods consist of the unboiled meal of cereal grains, such as graham or whole wheat flour, cracked wheat, oatmeal and Indian meal and pure bran. Honey, molasses and brown sugar are likewise usually effective, in promoting a daily intestinal evacuation, and in some cases a glass or two of .cool water taken immediately after arising will produce.the same result. Laxative foods generally increase the appetite, due to the incomplete digestion of considerable nutritive matter caused by its mixture with cellulose or woody fibre. As a
rule, the articles of food most easily assimilable result in constipation unless mixed with the bulky foods which are never wholly digested. Laxative medicines are called into use when a laxative diet has Bailed to produce the desired result, or when its use is inadvisable and when other hygienic measures are •ineffective or can not be employed. They include manna, tama rindus, magnesia, salts, sulphur, castor-oil, rhubarb, senna, cascara sagrada, phenolphtha lein and the preparations of liquid paraffine. The use of liquid paraffine, promoted by Sir Arbuthnot Lane, has the effect of softening and rendering more bulky the contents of the in testines, thereby producing gentle evacuation without the paraffine's exerting other medicinal effect. The liquid paraffine is variously known as liquid albolene, liquid vaseline, Russian mineral oil, and there are many variations of the product under proprietary control.