Purgative Therapy

Purgative therapy is the historical practice of deliberately inducing bowel evacuation with a strong laxative substance, prescribed within the pre-modern humoral tradition to expel excess or corrupted humors believed to be causing a patient's illness. Substances used as purgatives across Western medical history included senna, castor oil, jalap root and calomel, a compound of mercury that was among the most commonly prescribed purgatives from the eighteenth into the nineteenth century despite its toxicity. Purgation was frequently prescribed together with bloodletting as part of the aggressive treatment approach later called heroic medicine, and its use declined through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as humoral theory gave way to germ theory and evidence-based pharmacology.