Camped above treeline in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, the torrents of air were not unexpected and only a minor disturbance compared to the bestial gnawing going on behind my belly button. Ancient Egyptian doctors left descriptions of the suffering of Pharaohs scratched on papyrus even before Hippocrates, the old Greek, gave it a name few people can spell correctly. An equal opportunity affliction, diarrhea has laid low kings and common men, women, and children for at least as long as historians have recorded such fascinating trivia. It wiped out, almost, more soldiers in America's Civil War than guns and swords. In the developing world today, acute diarrhea strikes more than one billion humans every year, and leaves more than five million dead, usually the very young.
Diarrhea remains one of the two most common medical complaints of humanity.
Serious debilitation, even death, can occur from the resulting dehydration and from the spread of the bacteria to other parts of the body. Toxins released by the colonies cause cramps, nausea, vomiting, and massive gushes of fluid from the patient's lower intestinal tract. Non-invasive diarrhea carries a high risk for dehydration. I'll never know what caused the Agony In The Winds. Escherichia coli , bacteria of which there are hundreds of strains, most of them living normal lives in the human gut, has a few rogue types that can cause invasive or non-invasive diarrhea.