Home Health Book Browsing

When I was a boy my mom kept a large, hard bound reference manual titled: Home Health Care. In it an entire chapter was devoted to enemas. In addition to the common soapsuds enema, whole chapters were devoted to "high & low" enemas of every kind. I can remember spending long hours going over every one of the illustrated pages, both wishing and dreading that my mom would administer some of these to me.

My mom had a headboard filled with her books from nursing school. They had a chapter on enemas and showed a doctor giving a young lady an enema and included a picture of him spreading her cheeks and then one of the tube firmly planted between her cheeks. For a teenage enema affectionado this gave me countless wanking opportunities.

My Dad says that's where a lot of his enema knowledge before he met my Mom came from.

Not just the books in the house but at the public library and community college library and before that the high school library, even book stores

My dad had both of Kinsey's books on male and female sexuality tucked away in the closet. I remember looking at them quite often but don't remember what it was that I got off on. The only other medical book my folks had was Gray's Anatomy - unless I can count portions of the Sears Catalog as being medical/sexual in nature!

We have a homeopathic book that suggests enemas for about a third of the prospective"cures" or assists with issues. My sub loved the suggestion, me . . . not so much.

As a young teenager I had no access to enema information other than our home health book. I was surprised to read About the different things you could put in an enema. I only knew plain water and soapy water at the time and did not have the balls to try the others. Do I remember correctly there was a turpentine enema? No way would I try that.

There were suggested enema solutions for just about any ailment. Now, most home health books discourage enemas, even for things like constipation.

Do I remember correctly there was a turpentine enema? No way would I try that.

Pine turpentine, olive oil and soapsuds. Google it- seems that some homeopathetic practitioners still peddle their “special” turpentine for enemas. Cures pinworms among other things.

Won’t find it in my bag!!!☹️

The amount of turpentine in those enemas was small.

According to a 70 year old Dorlands Medical Dictionary, the "turpentine enema" was one ounce of turpentine, two ounces of olive oil and 16 ounces of soapsuds. It made a milky, slightly off-white solution.

This does not sound at all appealing to me, especially since besides being toxic on inhalation, if turpentine is ingested or absorbed through the skin, it can cause gastrointestinal burning and pain, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. As you might expect from the poison label on a bottle of turpentine, consuming turpentine can cause hydrocarbon poisoning.

I don't even use turpentine to clean my artistic oil painting brushes any more.

DO NOT USE TURPENTINE IN ENEMAS

.

DO NOT USE TURPENTINE ENEMAS.

TURPENTINE IS A DANGEROUS CHEMICAL.

.

Turpentine isn't used anymore by medical practitioners. It's even hard to find in paint stores these days because it is dangerous.

http://www.kleanstrip.com/uploads/documents/GGT69_SDS-LL1901.pdf

If this doesn't convince you, I don't know what will:

My mom used to have a Dr Spock book that gave descriptions of how to give enemas to children of varying ages. I used to sneak off the shelf and look at it in my closet. I looked at those descriptions so many times the book automatically opened right to the enema page.

My parents also used to have this giant medical reference book for medications. There were a number of pictures of suppositories and disposable enema kits. Although they weren’t nearly as interesting as the Dr Spock book, that book also opened right to the enema section.

DO NOT USE TURPENTINE IN ENEMAS

.

DO NOT USE TURPENTINE ENEMAS.

TURPENTINE IS A DANGEROUS CHEMICAL.

I suppose jet fuel is totally out of the question.

I suppose jet fuel is totally out of the question.

Jet fuel is probably slightly safer. Not recommended, but still likely safer.

There is no question that those old medical encyclopedias, home health guides, and other print media contributed to my affection for all things relating to enemas and feminine hygiene. We had several texts around the house. I would also seek things at the library and an old book store that kept many old used books.

Lately, I have found that Google Books and the Wayback Machine have many of the older books digitized and readily accessible on line. I'd encourage inquiring minds to check out those resources. Google Books also has some old newspaper clips and columns regarding enemas.

Talk about the "Golden Age"!

Jet fuel is actually Kerosene!

It's not going anywhere inside ME!

I suppose jet fuel is totally out of the question.

We have been over this before in the solutions NOT to use thread.

Gasoline, benzene, toluene, methy ethyl ketone, carbon tetrachloride, ethyl ether, paint strippers, #2 heating oil/diesel oil and other hydrocarbons are not for internal use.

When I was a boy my mom kept a large, hard bound reference manual titled: Home Health Care. In it an entire chapter was devoted to enemas. In addition to the common soapsuds enema, whole chapters were devoted to "high & low" enemas of every kind. I can remember spending long hours going over every one of the illustrated pages, both wishing and dreading that my mom would administer some of these to me.

Electra,

So did she ever give you any enemas from the book? What were they and how did you like it? "Be careful what you wish for................."

Eric

I can remember looking through the Sears Roebuck catalog back in the day. It had a great selection of enema gear. It kept me fascinated for hours.

I can remember looking through the Sears Roebuck catalog back in the day. It had a great selection of enema gear. It kept me fascinated for hours.

I was just going to ask if the Sears & Roebuck catalogs counted as a medical book? ? That kind of stuff was great to have when I was a kid because that was the only stuff that I had, other than my imagination.

My mom used to have several Sears & Robuck catalogs, which is where I saw an enema bag for the first time. I also would take those books into my closet and look at the enema pages. When my mom got rid of those books, just a few years ago actually, I took them and cut out the enema pages. I keep them in my naughty box.

This kind of home medical care books are worldwide common. Also my parents had one, naturally there was a chapter one enemas.

My favorite was the Better Homes & Gardens Baby Book, from the late 50s

The one particular edition ( only one year , I'd have to look to remember) had real photos of rectal temperature taking ( two positions) and a mother giving a baby an enema w a bulb syringe.

I can't tell you how many thousands of times I looked at these photos and read the giving an enema description.

" hold cheeks together as movement may try to come out w explosive force"

Wonder if others here looked at this book too

Enematically

Steve

My mom had an old copy of Mothercraft. A large manual of child care. It was from the age of “experts” where a publisher would pay a stipend to respectable professionals - PHDs and MDs - to author a few words for the introduction to make it appear that they wrote the book.

It had a nice section on enemas that I studied whenever I could. There were line drawings of enema administration, body positioning and bag height. Descriptions on soap solutions and water temperature and retention times. It may have also had an age/volume chart, but I no longer recall clearly. (I devoured every child care book I came across, checking the index for “enema”, so the lines blurred over time.) I never saw my mother measure my enema liquid, she relied on her judgment on how much water to put in the bag.

I remember picking up this book published around the 1950s from the Red Cross. It was a dirty grey with the Red Cross and it covered emergency family care. It covered everything including the use and how to give an enema to a child and adult. It did have hand drawn illustrations as to the positions for the receiver to be in fir a good enema. Of course, I read that part many many times :-)

The old Red Cross books and Mothercraft are all accessible on the Wayback Machine. Many others are as well. Great reading and reminiscing!

Antique health books from the 1930s through 1960s can be a good source.

When someone else you are with wants to go into an antique shop, find the old books and start browsing.

One of the strangest things:

How really BAD women's magazines of the 1950s and 60s really are!

They all seem to have enema references, but they all refer to children, especially young children.

I guess there is the assumption that by the time you are a wife and mother you are already supposed to know what to do when it's MOM who needs the enema.

Growing up I spent a good deal of time looking for the home healh care books. We had a few at home, and there were several at my grandparents. I recall the Better Homes & Gardens Baby Book that steveEEE discussed in an earlier post. I believe it is the 1958 copy that has the illustrations. I was fascinated by those pictures well before I could read, and even brought the book to mom to read me my bedtime story opened to the photo of the infants enema. Needless to say it certainly raised questions, and I stammered out something about wanting to know what an enema was. Moms only response was that she was sure I knew what an enema was and read me something else.

To SteveEEE, yes, I remember that book and I still have it.!!

As far as reference books and home care ,I have a copy on my bookshelf , my mom had an ancient copy "Back to Eden" Jeffery Kloss is eye opening .

I also studied similar pages in the "Modern Home Medical Counselor," especially all the pages related to enemas and gynecological matters. I believe I was about 10 when I began to read it. Obsessed from early times...

I remember that when I was a young teenager experimenting with self-administered enemas for recreation the only sources of information were the various home health and first aid books. We had one at home and I looked into several others in the library. I was surprised at the variety of things people used in their enemas because I only used plain warm water, or a little bit of soap. But the thing that floored me was that an "adult" enema was usually considered to be two quarts. I know mom never gave me anywhere near that much with the bulb, and neither did I when I played around. The largest so far was maybe one quart when grandma gave me my first bag enema. The thought of TWO quarts of water in my belly was beyond comprehension. Over the years I slowly trained myself to take more and I was a married woman of about twenty before I could take a full two quarts. Maybe I didn't push myself enough, but I gave myself enemas for fun, so I stopped when it became uncomfortable or painful.

I was 17 when I found "A Textbook for Nursing Assistants" in the Library. The chapter "Giving the patient an enema" ran to over 15 pages, with drawings and photos of enema equipment. The first solution listed for a cleansing enema was "soapsuds and water"- "usually 1 ounce of mild soap solution, such as Ivory or castile soap, mixed in 2 quarts of water." The author admonished that "The patient receiving the cleansing enema will usually take the first 1,000 ml of fluid easily. However, the second 1000 ml will begin to stretch the rectal wall, and the patient feels the rectal pressure and receives the message to defecate. Therefore he will need to exert considerable effort to keep the anal sphincter (circular muscle at the end of the rectum) tightly closed in order to hold the enema fluid."

After WWII, my mother, being the overachiever that she was, decided she would return to school and become a nurse. She could never explain why but never the less, she did. She later taught college in her original field, which was Language Arts. Consequently, there were several nursing manuals in our study. I read the sections on enemas until I nearly wore out the pages. It's been a rule with me that I would never use a solution that wasn't medically recommended (Appeared in her manuals). However, in one of her manuals there did appear a solution using turpentine. I agree with Susie that it should never be used.