Since ancient times different societies have published medical opinions about how health care providers should respond to constipation in patients.
In various times and places, doctors have made claims that constipation has all sorts of medical or social causes.
Doctors in history have treated constipation in reasonable and unreasonable ways, including use of a spatula mundani.

After the advent of the germ theory of disease then the idea of "auto-intoxication" entered popular Western thought in a fresh way.
Enema as a scientific medical treatment and colon cleansing as alternative medical treatment became more common in medical practice.

Since the 1700s in the West there has been some popular thought that people with constipation have some moral failing with gluttony or laziness.
Since ancient times different societies have published medical opinions about how health care providers should respond to constipation in patients. In various times and places, doctors have made claims that constipation has all sorts of medical or social causes. Doctors in history have treated constipation in reasonable and unreasonable ways, including use of a spatula mundani.
After the advent of the germ theory of disease then the idea of "auto-intoxication" entered popular Western thought in a fresh way. Enema as a scientific medical treatment and colon cleansing as alternative medical treatment became more common in medical practice.
Since the 1700s in the West there has been some popular thought that people with constipation have some moral failing with gluttony or laziness.
Constipation