THE USE OF THE BRAN, AS AN HELP IN THE
CONSTIPATION, WAS ALREADY KNOWN BY THE ROMANS OF THE FIRST CENTURY AC.
Renato Cocchi, neurologist and medical
psychologist.
Key words: constipation, atonic, spastic,
bran, emollient, integral bread, Petronius,Satyricon.
During the famous supper of Trimalchio,
described in the Satyricon, of Petronius, in the first century after Christ,
Abinnas, a tomb builder, speaks of a supper to which he had just participated.
In the report of it, he tells textually:
...et panem autopyrum de suo sibi, quem ego malo quam candidum; <nam> et
vires facit, et cum mea re causa facio, non ploro [66,3].
By translating it: "... and homemade
integral bread, which I prefer to the white one, because it strengthens, and
when I do my needs, I do not have any tears.".
In these lines there are already two
interesting points: 1. Abinnas was usually constipated; 2. Among the people,
the bran of the wheat was already known as an emollient, which is to say: It
helped the defecation.
In the De re medica of Celsius, a medical
encyclopaedia of the same period, this information does not appear. Then we have
to think of an acquisition of the popular culture, not still received by the
official medicine, but well known because already reported even by Petronius, a
very sophisticated intellectual.
What constipation type had Abinnas, an
atonic or a spastic one?
About a constipation of an atonic type
(progression difficulty of the faecal matter, for reduced strength of the
intestinal contractions, from which the expulsion of big loot) there is the
fact that the bran strengthens ("facit vires").
Constipation of a spastic type shows to
breaking into pieces and crumpling up of the faecal matter, for excess of
intestinal muscles' contractions with upsetting of the normal progression of
the transit driving to "goatlike faeces." So, there can be instead coming
out of tears during the evacuative effort.
Which would do thinks about a
parasympathetic hypertone and/or an excess of peripheral acetylcholine, the
neurotransmitter of the parasympathetic system.
As for me, I think this second hypothesis as
the more probable, which corresponds even to a deficit of brain acetylcholine,
with consequent troubles of the memory, as admitted by Abinnas himself:
"... nam tam bonae memoriae sum, ut frequenter nomen meum
obliviscar." [66,2]
Translation": ... in fact I have a so
good memory, that often I forget even my name."
The point is that the bran of wheat that
"strengthens" the body, and perhaps it does not work only as an
emollient fibre.