R J LLex, interesting topic.
I don't think it would be possible to find, identify, get on side, where enemas are used regularly now as they were in many homes back in the Golden Age.
IF a few thousand could be identified it would be easy to find lots of non-enema homes as a control group.
However, if a few thousand enema homes could be identified I'd love to know over a one year, two year, five year, ten year period if there was any evidence enema-giving moms (I imagine it would mostly be moms giving the enemas today as it was back in the Golden Age) had happier, healthier families?
Short term, the one year point, I'd be looking at such things as getting colds, headaches, and in longer term studies, while still following colds and such I'd want to look at various forms of cancer.
I'd also like the study to cover mental health. Depression certainly. Also a condition I'll call Grumpy, Rude, Bad Attitude, Unhappy. GRBAU has swept the younger population of our country like the plague. I know what my mother's cure would have been (along with a spanking for advanced cases) and I know it cured me and others. I'm not sure if it was the water purge that did it in a medical way. It might have simply been that getting an enema was a wake-up call, a time out, that gave me time to consider mom's warning that if one enema didn't cure me a second and third might and if those failed a spanking would for sure!
I wonder, if the results showed enemas to be all my mother thought them to be, what the reaction of people, moms today, would be?