A Brief History of Rectal Feeding

No one ever thought the CIA's torture program for terror suspects was a pleasant evening at Medieval Times or a mild tickling from Bradley Cooper. We always knew it was pretty grim. Granted, terms like "waterboarding" and "behavioral control" don't immediately make you cringe or reach for the nearest slop bucket to expel your breakfast. These are psychological terrors more than anything else, tools to break a person's spirit so they'll divulge sensitive details of their dastardly plans to strike at the heart of America. But the horrific details we learned from the Senate Select Committee report sound less like interrogation techniques and more like cut scenes from The Human Centipede.

One of the CIA techniques we learned about yesterday was rectal feeding. The idea of cramming food and liquid up someone's ass against his will is so crude and idiotic that it comes off as a sort of frat-boy prank gone wrong. I don't think it's much of a stretch to look at America's last adventure in the Middle East as some kind of sado-masochistic sex romp—a Revenge of the Nerds sequel in which Ogre became president of the Greek Council and forced all the students he didn't like to stick pine needles in their pee holes. We thought Abu Ghraib was bad, but that was just act one of the snuff film we called a war.

Rectal feeding wasn't always a device for "extracting information." A June 1913 article in the British Medical Journal explained the practical benefits of consuming nutrients through the anus. It claims that rectal feeding was popular in the Middle Ages, and that experiments were done on dogs in 1872—the dogs were given injections of 500 calories of "chopped meat and pancreas." There's even an anecdote about keeping a woman alive for 70 days on rectal feeding alone in the 17th century. As a recent article on our sister site Motherboard points out, rectal feeding was very useful in the days before IVs for patients who had, for whatever reason, lost their ability to eat solid foods. The British Medical Journal goes into a bit more detail on what was deemed a successful experiment in rectal feeding:

"Seven young women suffering from gastric ulcer were fed entirely on nutrient enemata for six or seven days. They were kept in bed and weighed before and after. All did well clinically. The enemata were given six-hourly, and consisted of two eggs or 200 c.cm. of milk and eggs, dextrose, normal saline, and in one case cod-liver oil. The whole was pancreatized for 20 minutes. Every day the bowel as washed out, and the contents analyzed."

This didn't quite catch on as a miracle diet or a replacement for the tedious process of chewing, but it did help keep President James Garfield alive for 80 days after he was shot by Charles J. Guiteau in 1881. According to medical historian Dr. Ira Rutkow, President Garfield's physicians believed that one of the bullets that struck their patient had pierced his intestines. As such, they deemed it unwise to feed him solid foods. Instead, they fed him a steady diet of beef bouillon, egg yolks, milk, whiskey, and drops of opium through his rectal cavity. Garfield died anyway, but he wouldn't have lasted nearly as long without all the egg yolks, liquor, and drugs they pumped up his ass.

As intravenous administration of nutrients became widely used by medical professionals, rectal feeding and devices like the Murphy Drip fell out of favor. Besides South Park's ongoing fascination with putting food up your butthole, the whole practice had been pretty much consigned to the garbage dump of creepy medical treatments, where it could share space with such oddities as bloodletting and drilling holes in your skull. Leave it to Americans to get nostalgic and resurrect something irrelevant for nefarious purposes. In the last couple years, we've brought back fear of Russian aggression, racial tension, whooping cough, police brutality, voter suppression, and Hillary Clinton. What's next, cars without seat belts? Lead-based paint? Polka music? God help us all.

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