Home Health Book Browsing

I wish that we could get scans of some of these chapters. Not only because of convenience (these can be hard to find) but also for discretion.

I know my parents had a yellow Spock baby and child care book when I was young, might try to dredge it up and see if there is anything enema related.

Many of these books, periodicals, and newspaper clippings are available in Google Books and on the Wayback Machine. Old ads can be found as well as newspaper columns dealing with our favorite subject matter.

These sites are free and pretty easy to navigate. A search by word, quotation, or title is pretty simple. It's amazing that many of the old texts have been digitized and accessible online.

In looking at several such books over the years, I remember being struck by the similarity of the articles on enemas. For example, all recommended the use of soft rubber rectal or colon tubes, between #26 and #32 Fr, instead of "the usual hard rubber rectal tip".

Also many included a line drawing of a teen (?) girl, lying on her left in bed side receiving the enema. The drawing looked like a cut and paste job.

It's as if the same book was republished with minor changes and a different title.

The home visiting nurse I have written about who turned me on to enemas used a tube like described in the old medical books. If you're blocked higher up, you have to get a tube up there or the solution will pool in the sigmoid and won't get at the problem, she said.

Rectal tubes can be scary. My dear husband was anxious the first time I hung an enema bag with his name on it beside the bed. LOL! I was anxious, too, being a young bride. But I told him that once the tube is inserted the first few inches, he wouldn't feel the rest of it going in. Nurse's wisdom: Lube the entire tube and let the solution flow in to help clear the way as it's being inserted.

Some of my more recent finds come from Google Books. One can search old newspaper pages for enema related information. Ads are also found under syringe, fountain syringe, douche, and hot water bottle.

Some of the more interesting are news columns by physicians where enemas are advocated, discouraged, and/or described by letters from readers. These go back as far as the earlier 1900's. The ads are great reminders from the past.

If anyone needs confirmation relative to the common practice from the "Golden Age", take a gander. I'm still kickin' after more than 60 years of regular enema enjoyment.

In the days before the internet, these home health books and the like were the primary source of information for most of us. I remember reading the pages on enemas in our home book until I could remember much of it by memory. Then it was the school library, which didn't have much different than what we had at home, and then the public library which had nursing manuals which had more details. But these were all geared towards curing some ailment you had. Nobody was supposed to enjoy them so why did I? As it turns out, there were quite a few of us who gave ourselves enemas because we wanted one rather than we needed one but it was years later when I found that out.

Anyone wanting a great read on enemas and general health I would highly recommend this book I purchased years ago on Amazon it’s titled : Love Thine Enemas & Heal Thyself by Dr. Jerry Glenn Knox BA ,DC , published by Lifeknox Publishing a great informative read of everything from colonics to enjoying your enema sessions to good health advice without being preached about and from a person who gives colonics as his profession. Enjoyed this book very much and refer to it now and then just for some renewed information. Enjoy guys well worth a purchase . Best Jockey Boy

There was a time years ago when I belonged to a book club and bought the Joy of Sex and More Joy books. At the time I was trying to get my husband interested in enemas for fun and I was hoping they had a section on enemas in those books. They had a lot of other things but very little on enemas. If I remember, there was maybe a small paragraph about them. It was clear the authors did not see them as pleasurable or important. For what it was worth, I left a bookmark on the page anyway hoping he would see what I was reading and take a hint. It didn't work.

Smiling at Cheryl77177 about the book club! I must have belonged to the same one and was also disappointed that none of the books I ordered about sexuality including the two she mentioned dealt with enemas in any depth. And like the some of the other posters I've done the antique store book section over the years to see what might be in some of the old medical books. Some had some rather interesting ideas for equipment with one I remember showing numerous enema positioning devices and injection equipment which was intriguing. Wish I had purchased it, but my wife at that time wasn't all that much into understanding my curiosities and would have given me months of grief if I had. What I did find as an early teen was that hospital supply catalogs of the 1950s always had all kinds of enema/douche/exam equipment in them. My mother had a nurse friend that often had numerous copies laying around her house when we visited her. I spent as much time as I could exploring them trying to not be too obvious. I found out much later in life from this friend's daughter that her mother was quite a klismo with a very large assortment of equipment. I so much wish I'd had the nerve to ask her a few questions as I got older. As I think back about the pictures in the hospital supply catalogs I realize that some of the current enema and douche nozzles we see posted are reincarnations of old designs with multiple bumps. Some were longer colon tubes with bulges and of course the infamous inflatable balloon types for xrays in various configurations with single and even multiple balloons. I so much wish I had "borrowed" a couple of those old catalogs. She had so many around that most likely none would have been missed.

For those that are interested, I posted a picture of the mother giving an enema from the Better Homes and Gardens Baby Book, 1956 edition. The picture is in the Old Enema Ads folder.

In my Grandparent's house( Both sets of grandparents) there are extensive collections of books.

On my Mom's side they are in plastic Totes in the basement of the family house in Toronto. I have not gone through them and I don't even know the quantity or quality of what may be there.

Since I am in line to be at least a co-owner of that house some day and I have no desire to move to Toronto, though there are things about the city I like, I will likely have to go through them at some future time. In one sense I'm interested in what may be there, but in another I DO feel like it will be overwhelming.

On Dad's side, His parents liked to read but they didn't like to pay! So while there are a lot of home-health books there most were purchased at book fairs, and discount racks at discount department stores etc. Any place where they were cheap. As a result the quality is low, and there is a lot of redundancy It all seems focused on young children. Nothing on older children or on taking care of yourself if you are the mom.

I recall many homes , including ours , had some ' book ' as to home health and home nursing . When visiting my friend's homes , both boys and girls , I would always ' browse ' their ' home healthcare library ' and discovered that many of the books of this genre did indeed have ' illustrated - how to ' instructions for giving an enema in a home setting . Also the subjects were ' real people ' , often as not two women or a girl and her mom , and not the rubber / plastic ' manikins ' one now sees in nursing videos on the subject . These books even had a suggested ' conversation opening / progress report dialog ' for the enema administrator as to informing the recipient of their pending enema and ' how to ' put them at ease from initial notification through post-enema verbal assessment and ' charting ' . Instructional / illustrated books on the subject are not to found today . Ah ………… the ' good old days '

Amazingly in the 1950s and 60s there is plenty of advice in almost all the women's magazines of the era on how to give enemas to children of various ages.

There is almost nothing about caring for yourself when you are the mom!

What? Moms are not allowed to ever be sick?

That sure seems to be the message.

But if we are never supposed to be sick, why not tell us how to keep healthy.

I too could not wait for the newest edition of the Sears or Montgomery Ward Catalogs to look at the enema gear. In the bookcase my mom had two books of interest to me. The first was the Taber's Medical dictionary, which I would closely examine the cross section of the female pelvis until I almost wore the page out! She also had a copy of "The Royal Road to Health". Which was the users manual for a JBL Cascade. I never saw or found a JBL in our house so my best guess was that it had belonged to her mother who died of Ovarian Cancer in the 1940's. I found the book in the 1960's. I was fascinated at the thought of sitting on 6+ quarts of water and your own body weight pushing in inside your rectum. It was not until I was in my 30's that I bought one from Klystra that I actually had the pleasure of using one. Many people say you can take more volume with a JBL. I agree. My limit has always been about 3 quarts, but I could take almost 4 from the JBL.

It's too bad one can't find a JBL to purchase now.

I remember looking through many nursing manuals. Many of them at my local library. And they did have an influence on how I administrator enemas.

My parents had a Marriage Manual - I wore out a few pages in that book.

We also had a thick encyclopedia about home care and health on our bookshelf. Unfortunately I can't remember the title.

But, a detailed chapter about enemas...

small enemas to high enemas.

When I was able to read, I often read about enemas because I wanted to know if mom really did it that way. Various drawings showed many details.

Unfortunately the book was lost due to a move...

When I was in high school there was a well worn book in the library called The Teenage Body Book. I would sneak into the stacks and look through it, there were drawings of boys penis going through puberty, cut and uncut, and girls breast developing from small buds. I would look through it, get a raging boner aand go the boys room to jerk off

We had a medical encyclopedia and a "baby book". The baby book had photos of how to take an infant's rectal temperature, in face up of face down position, and one of a mom about to use the bulb on a swaddled baby. The encyclopedia had various drawings and diagrams. such as Edward Jenner vaccinating a young patient. All of those were exciting. On the other hand, there were also some rather gruesome images in there that I regretted looking at!

My mother had an old copy of Dr. Spock’s book in the bookcase. When I first saw an uncircumcised penis in the seventh grade, I took out the book to look up “circumcision.” I would say the book presented a relatively neutral position on the topic, I distinctly recall the phrase “circumcision makes a boy feel regular.” The 99+% circumcision rate in my school certainly added weight to the statement. I know my friend was shy about showing his intact penis.

My Mom had several Home Nursing books including Dr. Spock's "Baby and Child Care" and one by Home and Garden Magazine.

There were a few medical books that I remember seeing when I was a kid. One in particular as I recall was a Merck Manual. Every time a family member was ill, my Mom would bring it out for advice. I think I did look through it a few times to see if it contained any "good parts".