A Symposium on Fasting

    Recently I published a request that those who had tried the fast as the result of my advocacy would write to advise me of the results. I stated that I desired to hear unfavorable results as well as favorable; that I wanted to get at the facts, and would tabulate the results exactly as they came. The questions asked were as follows:
    1. How many times have you fasted?
    2. How many days on each occasion?
    3. From what complaints did you suffer?
    4. Were these complaints ever diagnosed by regular physician? If so, give the names and addresses of these physicians.
    5. Do you consider that you were definitely benefited by the fasts? If so, in what way?
    6. For how long did the benefit continue?
    7. Do you consider that you were completely cured?
    8. Do you consider that you were definitely harmed? If so, in what way?
    9. Have you ever been examined by any regular physician since the cure? If so, give name and address.
    10. Are you willing that your name and address should be quoted for the benefit of others?
    The total number of fasts taken was 277, and the average number of days was 6. There were 90 of five days or over, 51 of ten days or over, and 6 of 30 days or over. Out of the 109 persons who wrote to me, 100 reported benefit, and 17 no benefit. Of these 17, about half give wrong breaking of the fast as the reason for the failure. In cases where the cure had not proved permanent, about half mentioned that the recurrence of the trouble was caused by wrong eating, and about half of the rest made this quite evident by what they said. Also it is to be noted that in the cases of the 17 who got no benefit, nearly all were fasts of only three or four days.
    Following is the complete list of diseases benefited--45 of the cases having been diagnosed by physicians: indigestion (usually associated with nervousness), 27; rheumatism, 5; colds, 8; tuberculosis, 4; constipation, 14; poor circulation, 3; headaches, 5; anaemia, 3; scrofula, 1; bronchial trouble, 5; syphilis, 1; liver trouble, 5; general debility, 5; chills and fever, 1; blood poisoning, 1; ulcerated leg, 1; neurasthenia, 6; locomotor ataxia, 1; sciatica, 1; asthma, 2; excess of uric acid, 1; epilepsy, 1; pleurisy, 1; impaction of bowels, 1; eczema, 2; catarrh, 6; appendicitis, 3; valvular disease of heart, 1; insomnia, 1; gas poisoning, 1; grippe, 1; cancer, 1.
    There follows a brief summary of some of the most interesting cases. A number of longer letters will be found in the Appendix.
    Mrs. Lulu Wallace Smith, 324 W. White Oak Ave., Monrovia, Cal. Age 28. Fasted 30 days for appendicitis and peritonitis, diagnosed by four physicians. "Yes, indeed, I have definitely been benefited by fasting. My stomach is not distressed after meals, I have regular evacuations of the intestines, which I had not had since I was seventeen. I feel perfectly healthy and look the same."
    William N--. Syphilis, with advanced ulcers in throat. Physicians declared the case hopeless. Complete disappearance of symptoms after four day's fast, but they gradually reappeared, and longer fast intended.
    Dora Jordan, Connersville, Md. Indigestion, extreme nervousness, neuralgia in its worst form. Fasted thirty days, did most of cooking for a family of five, was at no time tempted to eat. "I am no longer troubled with the old diseases, and weigh more than ever before. After my fast I felt as happy and care free as a little child."
    C.L. Clark, Greenville, Mich. Nervous, poor digestion. Fasted nine days. "I have been wonderfully benefited, and am a rabid convert. Alas, for the poor mortal who shows the faintest spark of interest in my fast--I hand him the whole works, lock, stock and barrel! I feel a new power and new incentive in life. Whenever I see a sick person, I feel like telling him that for all he knows to the contrary, good health has been and may be only eight or ten days away and waiting for years for him to claim it."
    T.S. Jacks, Muskegon, Mich. Twenty days, followed by shorter fasts, for stomach trouble, diagnosed by Dr. M-- as cancer. "He advised me to be operated on. Since my fast, three years ago, I have had no trouble with my stomach. I am entirely cured, and am enjoying fine health."
    Gordon G. Ives, 147 Forsythe Bldg., Fresno, Cal. "Have fasted a good many times since 1899, to cure catarrh of stomach, constipation, deafness of four months' standing, neuralgia, etc. Duration, from one to sixteen days. Never failed in accomplishing a cure. Benefit continued until I had over-eaten for a long time. Complaints were never diagnosed by regular physicians, as I got on to them in 1894. Use my name if it will help the truth."
    Mrs. Maria L. Scott, Boring, Ariz. Reports case of husband, who fasted seven days for constipation and deafness; had been obliged to take enema daily for several months. Complete cure.
    Mrs. A. Wears, De Funiak Springs, Fla. "Age forty-two, subject to severe colds and sore throat all my life, chronic catarrh of head and throat, in bed two winters with bronchitis and asthma. Did not take complete fast. My catarrh is much improved. I feel perfectly well and enjoy life so much more than I did before the fast."
    Mrs. Mae Bramble, Alba, Pa., R. F. D. 70. One fast of thirty days, another of three days; nervous prostration the first time, appendicitis the second time. "The first complaint was diagnosed, the second was not; as I am a professional nurse, I understood the symptoms myself." Complete and permanent cure. "I have never had a return of the nervous trouble, and am well of the other complaint. It is five years since the first fast."
    M.E. Beard, Corning, Cal. Fasted nine days for scrofula. Had been diagnosed. Complete cure, permanent since 1908. Age forty-seven. "Five years ago I broke down. Physicians never could tell me what ailed me. I kept busy during my fast physically and mentally; worked over the cook stove and outdoors. Felt no weakness."
    Joseph L. Lewis, Hatfield, Ark. Fasted three days, and then four days. "During the last ten days have felt better than at any time during the last seven years."
    Monroe Bornn, Port of Spain, Trinidad. Fasted seven days on three occasions, for liver trouble. "I had been treated by three physicians. I consider that I was completely cured. I have been examined by regular physicians since the cure."
    E.B. Bayne, White Plains, N.Y. Sends record of fasts taken by two people, Mr. and Mrs. A. Mr. A. fasted for rheumatism, which had caused kidney and bladder trouble of years' standing, and iritis; fasted five days and the four days and was completely cured. Mrs. A. Neuralgia and catarrhal deafness. Completely cured. "Finds that exposure to draughts has no effect upon her whatever, heretofore she would catch cold upon the least exposure."
    Mrs. Charles H. Vosseller, Newark, N. J. "I don't agree with you or Bernarr Macfadden in not recommending fasting for tuberculosis. My case was diagnosed by Dr. B. G--, New Brunswick, N.J. I fasted nineteen days and was completely cured; I received no harm, and have been examined since by a physician. I weigh 114 lbs. now and before my fast weighted 100 lbs. I never felt better in my life than I do at present. Do not know that I have a pair of lungs."
    
    In connection with the above tabulation of results, it should be specified that it does not include any of the cases quoted elsewhere in the book; it includes some of the letters given in the Appendix, but not all. Thus it will appear that there are many more than 277 cases of fasting recorded in this volume. The reason that I did not summarize in the tabulation all the letters I have received is, that I wished to give only those which were sent to me in answer to my definite series of questions, so that I might be sure of getting the unfavorable as well as the favorable reports. Recently a well-known physician who edits a magazine of health came out in vehement opposition to the fasting cure, maintaining that we hear only of the cases which are successful, and do not hear of the disastrous failures. In reply to this, I wrote to him suggesting that he publish my series of questions in his magazine, thus giving his readers an opportunity to make me acquainted with the unsuccessful cases. This, however, the physician declined to do.


Death During The Fast

There was much newspaper discussion of my fasting papers--most of it being sarcastic. The most biting comment that I recall came from somewhere out West, and ran about as follows: "A Seattle man fasted forty days for stomach trouble. His stomach is troubling him no longer. He is dead." I set to work to find out about this case, and I give the facts on page 137. I also saw a report from the London Daily Telegraph to the effect that a man had died in South Africa as a result of trying my "cure." How many thousands of people tried it and lived, I do not know; but horrified relatives and enterprising newspaper writers would see that the publish was informed about any that died.
    As to the possibility or probability of death during a fast, I have one or two points to note:
    First, a good many sick people are dying all the time. It would be an argument for fasting if it saved any of them. It is no argument against fasting that it fails to save them all. No one would think of bringing it up against his surgeon or his family physician that he occasionally lost a patient.
    Second, people might die very frequently, without that being an argument against the cure. It might simply be a consequence of the desperately ill class of people who were trying it. A doctor who had a new method of healing, and was permitted to use it only upon those whom all other doctors had given up, would be considered successful if he effected even an occasional cure. I would wager that of the people who read my article and set out to fast, practically all had been suffering for many years, and had give the "regular" physicians unlimited opportunity to work on them.
    Third, it may be set down as absolutely certain that no one ever died of starvation while fasting. The essential feature of the fast is that after the first two or three days all hunger ceases; and that any one could die of lack of food without feeling a desire for food, is absurd upon the face of it. Nature simply does not work that way. It reminds me of a young lady who once told me that she would not go to sleep with a mouse in the room, because she imagined the mouse might nibble off her ear without waking her!
    As to the possibility that you might starve, during those first days while you are hungry--the answer is simply that you don't. It is perfectly true that men have died of starvation in three or four days; but the starvation existed in their minds--it was fright that killed them. That they did not truly starve is proven by my letters from several hundreds of people who have fasted over that time, and who are alive to tell of it.
    There are conditions in the human body which lead to death inevitably; and some of these conditions are beyond the power of the fast to remedy. When a person so afflicted sets out to fast, and dies in spite of the fast, the papers of course declare that he died because of the fast. Dr. L. B. Hazzard of Seattle has published a very useful little book, "Fasting for the Cure of Disease," in which she tells of two cases of "death from fasting," where the autopsy revealed conditions with which the fast had no connection, and which made death certain. Chances of that sort one has to take in life. You may have a blood vessel in such a state that when you run after a street car the increased pressure will cause it to burst; but you do not on that account declare that no man ought to exert himself violently.
    As an example of the part that mental disturbances may plan in the fast, I will cite the case of a woman friend who started out to fast for a complication of chronic ailments. She was rather stout, and did not mind it at all--was going cheerfully about her daily tasks; but her husband heard about it, and came home to tell her what a fool she was making of herself; and in a few hours she was in a state of complete collapse. No doubt if there had been a physician in the neighborhood, there would have been another tale of a "victim of a shallow and unscrupulous sensationalist." Fortunately, however, business called the husband away again, and the next day the woman was all right, and completed an eight- day fast with the best results. Bear this in mind, so that it you wake up some morning and find your temperature sub-normal and your pulse at forty, and your arms too weak to life you, and if your friends get round you and tell you that you look like a mummy out of a sarcophagus of the seventeenth dynasty, and that I am a Socialist and an undesirable citizen—you may be able to smile at them good naturedly and tell them that you will never again eat until you are hungry.
    I have thought over the cases of failure of the fast, where I have been able to inquire into all the circumstances, and I think I can make the statement that I do not know a case which might not be attributed either to the influence of nervous excitement, or to unwise breaking of the fast. In the last batch of letters was one with a printed account of the disastrous results of a three weeks' fast taken by a woman. It is an example of about all the blunders that I can think of. She describes herself as occupying "a responsible office position," which taxed her strength to the utmost; and she tried to do this work all the time she was fasting. She would get up and go to work when she was "scarcely able to drag one foot after another." On about the nineteenth day her mother arrived, and then I quote: "She almost dropped at sight of me, for I had not given a hint as to my condition; but despite my protests, she sent for the doctor at once. My! Didn't he scold, and tell me what was what! Mother's heart was so torn with sorrow and pity that she hadn't the heart to reproach me for my three weeks' orgy of fasting. She thought I had paid dearly for my folly." I don't think it necessary to say anything more, except that I feel sorry for the victim, and that I am glad to know this happened two years ago, so that I am not to blame for the results.
    By way of contrast with this case I will quote the following letter, which will show the reader the kind of experience that makes fasting enthusiasts: "My wife and I have each nearly reached our seventy-second year. I was born a physical wreck. A dozen years ago we began taking short fasts, from three to eleven days' duration, for all our ills of the flesh. But each of us had chronic troubles of forty years' standing, which seemed growing no better. And finally, two years ago last July, my wife said she was going to take a 'conquest fast' if it killed her, for she was tired of living with her present ills. I thought it a good time to try a little conquest fasting on my own hook. I had no fear of the result. I knew that nature would tell me when I had fasted long enough. So we began an absolute fast from all food except distilled water and fresh air. We lived in fresh air night and day. We took copious enemas daily, and I took a cabinet sweat, followed by a cold plunge every other day. I knew that I must have many years of filth accumulation in my bowels. And the amount of putridity that came from my bowels the first twenty-five days of the fast was amazing.
    "After fasting twenty-eight days I began to be hungry, and broke my fast with a little grape juice, followed the next day with tomatoes, and later with vegetable soup. My wife began to be hungry after fasting thirty-one days, and broke her fast in a similar manner to myself.
    "It is now two years since we took the conquest fast, and my wife has no return of her former troubles. And I am enjoying all the mental and physical pleasures which come from clean bowels. We think we have learned how to live that we will never need another fast. Soon after the fast I was examined by Dr. S--, the leading surgeon of Los Angeles and southern California, who pronounced me as being the most wonderful person he ever met regarding softness of arteries, and suppleness of body, for my age."
    

Fasting and the Mind

    The reader will observe that I discuss this fasting question from a materialistic view-point. I am telling what it does to the body; but besides this, of course, fasting is a religious exercise. I heard the other day from a man who was taking a forty-day fast, as a means of increasing his "spiritual power." I am not saying that for you to smile at--he has excellent authority for the procedure. The point with me is that I find life so full of interest just now that I don't have much time to think about my "soul." I get so much pleasure out of a handful of raisins, or a cold bath, or a game of tennis, that I fear it is interfering with my spiritual development. I have, however, a very dear friend who goes in for the things of the soul, and she tells me that when you are fasting, the higher faculties are in a sensitive condition, and that you can do many interesting things with your subliminal self. For instance, she had always considered herself a glutton; and so, during an eight-day fast, just before going to sleep and just after awakening, she would lie in a sort of trance and impress upon her mind the idea of restraint in eating. The result, she declared, has been that she has never since then had an impulse to over-eat.
    There are many such curious things, about which you may read in the books of the yogis and the theosophists--who were fasting in previous incarnations when you and I were swinging about in the tree-tops by our tails. But I ought to report upon one fasting experiment which results disastrously for me. Earlier in this book I told how I had been able to write the greater part of a play while fasting. Shortly afterwards I plunged into the writing of a new novel, and as usual I got so much interested in it that I wasn't hungry. I said that I would fast, and save the eating time, and the digesting time as well. So I would sit and work for sixteen hours at a stretch without moving. After two or three days of this I would be hungry, and would eat something; but being too much excited to digest it, I would say, "Hang eating, anyhow!"--and go on for another period of work. I kept that up for some six weeks, and I turned out an appalling lot of manuscript; but I found that I had taken off twenty-five pounds of flesh, and had got to such a point that I could not digest a little warm milk. I cite this in order that the reader may understand just why I take a gross and material view of fasting. My advice is to lie round in the sun and read story-books and take care of your body, and leave the soul-exercises and the nervous efforts until the fast is over. But all the same, I know that there will be great poetry written some day, when our poets have got on to the fasting trick--and when our poets care enough about their work to be willing to feed it with their own flesh.
    The great thing about the fast is that it sets you a new standard of health. You have been accustomed to worrying along somehow; but now you discover your own possibilities, and thereafter you are not content until you have found some way to keep that virginal state of stomach which one possesses for a month or two after a successful fast. It must mean, of course, many changes in your life, if you really wish to keep it. It means the giving up of tobacco and alcohol, and a too sedentary life, and steam-heated rooms; above all else, it means giving up self-indulgent eating.
    A couple of years ago my wife and myself made the acquaintance of a young lady patient in a sanatorium, who was in a much run-down condition, anaemic and nervous. We persuaded her to take a fast of five or six days, and afterwards take the milk diet, as the result of which she went back to her home in Virginia with what she described as "smiles and dimples and curves and bright eyes." She was so enthusiastic about the cure that she proceeded to apply it to all her family and her friends; and some time afterwards she wrote my wife a most diverting account of her adventures. After some persuasion I secured her permission to quote her letter, having duly omitted all the names. It makes clear the thorny path which the fasting enthusiast has to travel in this world.
    I will try in a very limited space of time to tell you what keeps me a slave here at home. I got Mr. X—down from--to put papa and mamma on the fasting cure--papa had a bad case of grippe--mamma had indigestion. My oldest married brother is in dreadful health, and his wife and baby are not well. I wore myself nearly out trying to get them well, and at the same time trying to pick up some threads of long neglected social duties. People were beginning to call me "stuck-up" (horrid vulgar term), so unless I wanted to make enemies of the wives and daughters of papa's and brother's business friends, I had to go to a few parties and pay some long-neglected calls. I did it all, and then decided to have Mr. X—come to help me. I got papa and mamma and M--and her baby (!) on a fast--and then woe is me--I had to get them off again! They had various and alarming symptoms due to their ignorance of the methods, and the wild interest of the town medicine-men. The family doctor gave me a "straight talk" and asked me if I was going to kill my father and mother. Papa would not give up his cigarettes, and a "toddy" now and then. M--'s baby lost four pounds while his mother was fasting. All the doctors' wives came to call, and beset me with questions--and I had the d-- of a time. But I stood by my guns. When the overaged, self-indulgent family all got to vomiting at once, my hands were full, and I nearly had nervous prostration before I got order out of the bedlam I had stirred up.
    Well, they got over the fast and on to the milk, Then I had to tend to the milk myself or they refused to drink it. Finally mamma got to feeling so well that she sat up, and planned big course dinners and invited people to eat them. She began to order new clothes for the kids, new furnishings for the house, and started in to live her disorderly, ungodly "Southern hospitality" life all over again. Our senator died and mamma got into politics in the new election; and Cousin J-- got drunk, and I had to go with him to the Keeley Institute, etc., etc. Surely there is a heaven for saints like me. I did not fly the roost as I was tempted to do, but I answered midnight calls of the spoiled, nauseated ones, and fixed hot-water bags, quelled riots among the meat-eating servants and hungry children--and swore I'd win! I did. Well, I got things going in fine order at last, with papa cured of his grippe and an old case of kidney trouble. Mamma is now comfortably eating boiled ham and stuffed peppers, and fruit cake and cherry pie, and green olives and what not at the same meal. She is well, though. But of course she will get sick again. Papa, the only sane member of our family, is still holding on to the milk, taking four quarts of buttermilk a day, and he is flourishing, thank heaven! M-- is still bilious, having broken her fast with hardboiled eggs and pork chops. And I am still living in spite of having been to Keeley, and incidentally having danced all night (with a low-neck, short-sleeved gown on!) at the Club ball, sat through several dinners and bridge parties into the "wee sma' hours," and had two men propose to me with the prelude, "You are the nicest, most refined, and most lovable girl in the world if you are a crank." Wasn't that a nice beginning for a proposal of marriage? I accept them both on condition that I be allowed to remain a crank.
    Well, the next chapter began with an old lover who had married another woman. He came to see me and said he had a tape-worm! Ye gods—such romance! His wife had stomach and intestinal trouble. I turned Mr. X-- over to them, and them over to Mr. X--. The lady got along, but the poor man with a wild beast inside him got so sick after an eight-day fast that he wanted to have me mobbed, sent for two trained nurses and four doctors--this is no exaggeration--the doctors looked at me, and looks were as plain as words--"You little devil! You did it for pure meanness." For three days my poor friend had the doctors giving him hypodermics, and he never stopped vomiting until we were all nearly dead. Then he quieted down, got well, ate a beef-steak with a few dozen oysters and mushrooms, and took me riding in his new automobile. The grim humor in the whole thing is that if I had not gotten my roses and dimples and curves and bright eyes back by fasting, this man would never have taken me riding in his new automobile. Take a tip from me--all the good nursing and friendly efforts in behalf of the health of my friends did not endear me to them one half as much as the plumb, rosy smile I wore with my new silk gown. The first day our sick friend went out in his car--alas for the ways of human nature--masculine human nature, I mean--I told him so. And he agreed with me and ended by saying, "Darn an ugly woman--I'll forgive a pretty one anything."
    

Diet after the Fast

    Many people write me, begging me to outline for them the ideal diet. I used to do that sort of thing, but I have stopped having come to realize that we are still at the beginning of our diet-experiments. I have done a good deal of experimenting myself, and have made some interesting discoveries. I have lived for a week on fruit only, and again on wheat only; I have lived for three weeks on nothing but milk, and again on nothing but beef-steak. I have lived for a year on raw food, and for over three years I professed the religion of vegetarianism. For the last two months, I have lived on beef-steak, shredded wheat, raisins and fresh fruit; but by the time this book appears I may be trying sour milk and dates--somebody told me about that the other day, and it sounds good to me. Some of my correspondents object to my willingness to try new diets; they write me that they find it bewildering, and think it indicative of an unstable mind. They do not realize that I am exacting in my demands--I want a diet which will permit me to overwork with impunity. I haven't found it yet, but I am on the way; and meantime I make my experiments with a light heart, for I always know that if anything goes wrong, I can take a fast and start afresh.
    The general rules are mostly of a negative sort. There are many kinds of foods, some of them most generally favored, of which one may say that they should never be used, and that those who use them can never be as well as they would be without them. Such foods are all that contain alcohol or vinegar; all that contain cane sugar; all that contain white flour in any one of its thousand alluring forms of bread, crackers, pie, cake, and puddings; and all foods that have been fried--by which I mean cooked with grease, whether that grease be lard, or butter, or eggs or milk. It is my conviction that one should bar these things at the outset, and admit of no exceptions. I do not mean to say that healthy men and women cannot eat such things and be well; but I say that they cannot be as well as the would be without them; and that every particle of such food they eat renders them more liable to all sorts of infection, and sows in their systems the seeds of the particular chronic disease that is to lay them low sooner or later.
    There are a number of other things, which I do not rate as quite so bad, but which we bar in our family--simply because they are not so good. For instance, I am inclined to regard beans as being too difficult of digestion and too liable to fermentation to be eaten by any one who can get anything better. And I personally do not eat peanuts, because I have found that I do not digest them; and I do not use milk (except in the exclusive milk diet), because it is constipating, and I have a tendency in that direction. Almost everyone will discover idiosyncrasies of that sort in his own system. One person cannot digest cheese, another cannot digest bananas, another cannot stand the taste of olive oil. You may read a glowing account of some diet system by which some other person has worked miracles, and you may try it, and persist in it for a long time, and finally come to realize that it was the worst diet you could possibly have been following. I have always counted orange juice as the ideal food with which to break a fast; yet a friend whom I was advising broke his fast with the juice of half an orange, and had a violent cramp. He had been so confiding in my greater knowledge that he had ommitted to tell me that any sort of acid fruit had always made him ill.
    Such things as this are of course not natural; but a perfectly normal and well person is, under the artificial conditions of our bringing up, a very great rarity; and so we all have to regard ourselves as more or less diseased, and work towards the ideal of soundness. We must do this with intelligence--there is no short cut, no way to save one's self the trouble of thinking.
    I used to think there was. I would discover this or that wonderful new diet-wrinkle, and I would go round preaching it to all my friends, and making a general nuisance of myself. And some one would try it, and it would not work; and often, to my own humiliation, I would discover that it was not working in my own case half so well as I had thought it was.
    By way of setting an ideal, let me give you the example of a young lady who for six or seven months has been living in our home, and giving us a chance to observe her dietetic habits. This young lady three years ago was an anaemic school teacher, threatened with consumption, and a victim of continual colds and headaches; miserable and beaten, with an exopthalmic goitre which was slowly choking her to death. She fasted eight days, and achieved a perfect cure. She is today bright, alert and athletic; and she lives on about twelve hundred calories of food a day--one half what I eat, and less than a third of the old-school dietetic standards. Occasionally she will eat nut butter or sweet potato, or some whole wheat crackers with butter, or a dish of ice cream; but at least ninety per cent of her food has consisted of fresh fruit. Meal after meal, day after day, I have seen her eat one or two bananas and two or three peaches, or say, a slice of watermelon or canteloupe; at some meals she will eat only the peaches, and then again she will eat nothing. A dollar a week would pay for all her food; and on this diet she laughs and talks, reads and thinks, walks and swims with my wife and myself--a kind of external dietetic conscience, which we would find it hard to get along without. And tell me, Dr. Woods Hutchinson, or other scoffer at the "food-faddists," don't you think that a case like this gives us some right to ask for patient investigation of our claims? Or will you stand by your pill boxes and your carving-knives and the rest of your paraphernalia, and compel us to cure all your patients in spite of you.