Definition of "costiveness" [cos•tive•ness]

• The state or quality of being costive; constipation. (noun)
• Inability to express oneself; stiffness. (noun)

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• "The author prefers to use the term costiveness for the general debased condition of the system from auto-intoxication depending upon proctitis and similar conditions of the intestinal tract."
• "When medicines become necessary to obviate that kind of costiveness which arises from imperfect intestinal contraction, physicians usually administer rhubarb, aloes, and similar laxatives, combined with tonics."
• "Old milk, and especially when boiled, is liable to induce this kind of costiveness in some grown persons; which is probably owing to their not possessing sufficient gastric acid to curdle and digest it; for as both these processes require gastric acid, it follows, that a greater quantity of it is necessary, than in the digestion of other aliments, which do not previously require being curdled."