PART FIVE
NATURAL THERAPY



CHAPTER XIV
CHILDREN IN THE FAST



VARIOUS ERRORS CONCERNING THE CARE OF INFANTS:
WHY FEED A FEVERISH CHILD?



    WHEN the human child is born into the world, it is equipped with but three developed faculties--hunger, thirst, and sleep. The infant, if capable of expressed desire, would signify its greatest need as sleep, but its rest is naturally punctuated with hunger periods, and at these times and at no others it should be fed. To awaken a quietly sleeping child for the purpose of administering food is most inadvisable, yet nurse and mother, burdened with professional tradition and advice, in over-zealous care rarely permit a two-hour interval to pass without forcing food upon the attention of the baby. The child will through habit take the breast or the bottle and suckle for a while, but its rest has been disturbed, and its small digestive apparatus is never free from labor as long as these misguided women can stimulate appetite. Disobedience to natural law brings its penalty, and disease shortly appears to right the wrong. Overfeeding a child is the greatest cause of infantile disease, and it could not occur if the first hunger instinct were permitted to guide the infant from birth. Actual need alone would then be satisfied, and the artificial sense of appetite that invariably develops when overfeeding is the rule would never appear.

    Another error in connection with the earliest living moments of the infant is that of haste in severing the umbilical cord, the physical bond between the child and its mother, before the cessation of its natural pulsations. Interchange of oxygen and of nutriment between mother and fetus has taken place through this avenue during the whole period of gestation, and by this means the baby frame has been built to the moment of birth. Its final use and its last pulsations insure tissue nourishment sufficient to carry the child until food for post-natal growth can be furnished from the breast of the mother. Haste in cutting the cord starts the infant badly, and hunger is asserted much earlier than should be the case. In addition, babies thus treated often exhibit anemic tendencies because of mother-blood denied at birth, while their metabolism is compelled to function much too soon, and the mother herself suffers uterine and placental congestion with possible delay in the expulsion of the latter organ. It may be noted that undue retention of the placenta in whole or in part is the cause of death of thousands of women at childbirth or shortly thereafter.

    When departure is made from the laws of nature, abnormal physical conditions are produced, and penalties are exacted. The normal food and the only food that is designed for infant use is mother's milk. At birth, delay in its appearance is often noted, and perhaps for two or three days its secretion is absent. Reference to the function performed by the umbilical cord before birth and at delivery offers explanation why in this event undue haste need not be made in attempting artificial feeding. If, as unfortunately is too often the case in modern life, the mother finds herself incapable of furnishing food for her child, a substitute must be obtained. The ideal method makes use of the wet-nurse, but, if this cannot be done, water-diluted full goat's milk, with sugar of milk or honey added, sufficient to supply as nearly as possible the constituents of mother's milk, is the nearest and best alternative. When the milk of the goat is unobtainable, top-milk from a healthy cow may be utilized. Prepared foods are doubtful in efficacy. There are many kinds on the market and the possibility exists that one or the other of these may agree with the particular infant. Orange juice and tomato juice are also additions that should enter the dietary of the child, supplying as they do vitamins and mineral salts, elements most essential to body maintenance and growth.

    Whatever physical handicaps the mother may endure, the child in her womb receives from her body the best in the way of nourishment that that body is able to give. This is well exemplified in an earlier chapter when illustration was made of pregnant women, ill and fasting, who yet brought healthy children into the world. And, too, the contention that all disease has its origin in impaired digestive power is more strongly upheld when disturbances occur in the young than when adult organism is affected. In the child, unaccustomed to continued abuse of the body and its functions, and with no harmful habits formed, the system resents to its limit any but natural treatment. And it is especially during this period of early infancy that measures for the prevention of later disease should be first in the thought of the natural guardians of the child. Future physical welfare absolutely depends upon the running start which can then be given, and every source of information that offers logical guidance in hygiene should be exhausted, and the knowledge gained should be applied. Herein lies the extreme value that is to be put upon the principles exploited in the text. As against forced feeding, we have the natural instinct of the child, which, when normal, indicates its food requirements even to the point of partial selection. If by accident disease occurs, as against suppression of the symptom, we have the assistance offered by the fast and its eliminative aids to purify the system and to eradicate the cause. And this gained knowledge has the further worth of coming, not by hearsay, but straight from nature itself, by which token it is to be the more cherished and conserved.

    The physical condition of a nursing mother is always reflected in the body of her child, and mental disturbances, temporary or permanent, show like effect. Through nervous derangement of functional power, induced by disease or by anxiety, grief, or anger, such changes are occasioned in the milk of the mother as to cause serious illness in the sucking child. It is therefore incumbent upon this parent so to regulate her physical body through a dietary regimen as to prevent error in milk quality, and so to conserve her mental forces as to prevent systemic poisoning through emotional tension, with their detrimental influences upon infant digestion.

    When infantile disease is manifested, a medically treated child is still more hampered in its physical processes. Drugs are poisons, and their introduction into the body of an infant suffering from food excess or from the results of erroneous diet on the part of the mother, works havoc with tender nerves and tissue. Drugs aim at the suppression of symptom and not at removal of cause, and many an adult organism is compelled to struggle through life handicapped by undeveloped, partially paralyzed mechanism, the result of dosage in infancy.

    The disease symptoms of childhood frequently assume epidemic form. Contagion and infection actively affect the individual only when his physical state is such as not to be able to repel the germ, either of the ever present variety or introduced from outside sources. The aim of the parent should be directed toward the preservation of health with its resistive qualities in the body of the growing child, and if, through carelessness or ignorance, or accident, this condition may fail of conservation, toward the prompt removal of the soil in which the germ thrives and dies. To use a germicide in these instances is suicidal, for germicides merely succeed in destroying the microbe, a process that adds decomposing material to an already fertile and expectant medium. And it is reasonable also to assume that a poison powerful enough to kill living organisms within the body is of strength sufficient to deal destruction to the cells composing it.

    Referring to a former statement concerning feeding the body while high temperature prevails, the question may be asked:--Why put food into the stomach of a feverish infant! A roaring fire is not ordinarily subdued by adding fuel to the flame. Fever is in actuality a salutary symptom indicating by its very existence an active internal struggle by natural forces to rid the system through rapid combustion of material that is most inimical to life. It is caused by absorption into the circulation of the products of excess food rotting in the alimentary canal, and, when additional material is forced into this mass, the results are a further rise in temperature and added distress. Should drugs be administered, they are either stimulants or narcotics, the former increasing the action of the heart and with it the temperature, the latter reducing nerve sensibility and power. In the body of the child the effects both of overfeeding and of drugs are long-lasting, and here, as in all disease, the method to be employed should be that which will tend to remove the ferment, the rotting material, the cause of the condition.

    Hence, as in the adult when illness appears, prompt withholding of food permits of active elimination of the cause of disturbance; an enema or several of them cleanses the bowels of toxic substances; fever is at once abated; diarrhea and colic vanish; and in two or three days at most the youngster is again whole and hearty, ready for normal functioning. For children respond to the fasting treatment in marvelous manner; their natural forces have not been depleted by years of excess in physical indulgence, and are present in pristine vigor. And with them no argument is needed as to the efficacy of the means employed, for their mental habit is not as yet sufficiently molded to prove combative.

    A fast until hunger makes its demand is mandatory in even the slightest digestive ailments of the smallest of babes; and a comparison of this method of treatment with that which requires the stomach to be dosed with drugs and the system to be permeated with the products of disease developed in the lower animals and introduced into human blood in the forms of virus and of serum needs no commentary excepting that of extreme condemnation for the latter procedure.

    When the enema is administered to children an amount of water should be used that is commensurate to the size of the immature bowel. If the internal bath be thoroughly but judiciously employed, the colon of the child will be flushed of poisonous content, fever will subside, and disease will vanish. The enema may be given even to the day-old babe with beneficial results, for it serves to cleanse the colon of its pre-natal secretion, always productive of harm if retained. The ease with which a fretful; colicky child may be relieved by the careful use of the internal bath is a matter which every mother should understand, and the employment of the enema at judicious intervals during infancy is of equal importance with its use in adult life.

    Whenever in a young child the smallest indication of disease appears, whether it be in the form of nasal discharge, of constipation, of diarrhea, or of internal pain, it should be considered as full warning of loss of balance between nutrition and elimination. Food should at once be withheld, the enema administered, and this form of treatment continued until equilibrium is restored. If the situation be handled thus, there will be no later development of acute disease; no adenoids, degenerated tonsils, nor other morbid organic structural defects will evolve. Care of this sort at this time precludes dependence upon the knife of the surgeon in infancy, in adolescence, and in adult existence. In other words, prevention through systemic purification is the greatest hygienic need at this age and at all ages, but it is the more essential in infancy, which is the physical and physiological formative period of human life.







CHAPTER XV
SEXUAL DISEASE AND THE FAST



MENSTRUAL DIFFICULTIES:
THE MENOPAUSE:
THE ORTHODOX AND THE NATURAL APPROACH
    TO GONORRHEA AND SYPHILIS:
MASTURBATION


    THE ULTIMATE of therapeutic fasting is accomplished by the restoration of all physiological function to normal, and, when success attends upon abstinence, normality is the rule, not only with respect to the processes of nutrition, but to those of the sex functions as well. In fact, the organs of sex respond perhaps more readily than do other vital parts to the restorative agencies invoked by reason of abstinence from food.

    In woman during a fast the menses may or may not appear. If they do, usually before the period there is disturbance nervous in character, and the flow, either scanty or profuse, may be viscid in consistency and perhaps offensive in odor. After feeding is resumed the monthly discharge may miss one or several periods. Its absence should occasion no anxiety, for in a sense the menstrual flow is at all times a waste product, and in a successfully conducted and completed fast systemic purification has been achieved and but little refuse, if any, remains to be eliminated. Accumulation must again take place ore the periods may be reestablished.

    With respect to the menstrual discharge the interesting facts are to be observed that it is of regular recurrence during the bearing period in the females of all mammals; that it is barely perceptible in some; and that in none is it so profuse in quantity as in woman. She is the only female in the animal kingdom who is compelled to undergo a monthly inconvenience of copious flow from the organs of sex. Yet this evidence of function, as natural as is breathing, because of perversion in habit has become aggravated in degree. Profuse discharge from the uterus is the penalty attached to the use of the organs of reproduction for purposes other than those that are legitimate--a perfect demonstration of the universal law of compensation.

    In treating disease of the reproductive system in woman, the fast tends both to cleanse and relax, both to relieve congestion and to restore tone. From one to three days without food will serve, in conjunction with accompanying eliminative aids, to correct excessive menstruation, and, when no structural organic defect is present, relief is apparent within twenty-four hours when the flow is attended with pain. In this connection attention is directed to the use of the hot douche, the hot bath, and the enema at the time of the monthly period. It is difficult to assign adequate reason to the strong objection generally made by medical practitioners to the cleansing douche at any time, and especially to its employment when the menstrual flow is on. Cleanliness of the organs of sex is always imperative, and cleanliness with freedom from danger of infection cannot be attained during menstruation unless the parts are bathed both externally and internally. Medical opinion to the contrary, the hygienic accessories mentioned are at all times helpful, and are doubly so when the menses appear.

    The menopause or change of life is dreaded by all women. There is never any certainty as to the time of its occurrence, nor any means of foretelling the character of its manifestations. As treatment by means of the fast demonstrates that the menses may be regulated and that assurance of their normal recurrence is possible when natural law is followed, so similarly purification of the system at the time of the menopause, or better, before its appearance, coupled with a correct dietary and judicious exercise, will permit any woman to pass through this experience without evil consequences.

    At the time of the change of life many surgical operations are performed upon those women whose previous existence has been such as to foster functional sexual trouble to the degree that structural organic defect in sex organs develops. Then appear fibroid conditions in uterus, affections of various sorts in ovaries and fallopian tubes, and always vaginal discharge abnormal in character. It is useless at this time to indulge in regret because of bodily abuse in the past; the harm has been done; yet, in most instances, these conditions of disease may be remedied, and prevention of surgical operation may be assured by employing the agencies exploited in these chapters. And, previous to the menopause, unless congenital organic disease exists, so-called female troubles may successfully be combated, in fact, need never be known, if the dictates of natural law are accepted and obeyed.

    Because of the prevalence of varied forms of sexual distress in woman, not only at the change of life, but throughout adult existence, the object of the fast and its natural eliminative accessories is again repeated and emphasized. At all times the end to be accomplished through abstinence from food is that of bodily purification, systemic cleansing. When correctly administered, a fast for therapeutic purposes causes allergic avenues to be cleared of obstruction, healthy tissue to be deposited in place of that which was diseased, and vital organs to be recuperated to the point of extreme ability to function. By virtue of these achievements the high office of reproduction in woman is not only healthfully stimulated, but is restored virtually to primal ease in gestation and in delivery of offspring. And, when the bearing period ends, the conditions of disease that are its usual accompaniments may, by the means described, be obviated, or, if present, may be relieved to the point of recovery and the enjoyment of future health.

    In discussing the problem of sexual disorder of any kind and its relief, but especially with reference to what is known as venereal disease, it is necessary to revert to the primary cause of illness of any sort, lowered nutrition resulting from impairment of the digestive processes. If the individual system be at high resistive level, if the products of elimination be normal in character and are promptly removed as they are produced, the bacillus of gonorrhea, for instance, transferred by contact to either sex, cannot find foothold for increase. It is only when the balance between nutrition and elimination is at fault, when physiological resistance is lowered through digestion defective in function, that infection may occur.

    In the past, orthodox treatment of venereal disease has been responsible for much subsequent annoyance and distress, and present prevailing methods of handling this sort of illness show but small improvement over those of the past. Deep injections of antiseptic drugs, aimed at the suppression of nature's curative effort as exhibited in copious secretion issuing from mucus membrane, are always productive of increased irritation, and usually leave as sequels of a gonorrheal infection, gleet, urethral stricture, and prostatitis, if not worse, all more or less permanent physical injuries. Much more logical, and immeasurably more easy of application, are those means by which natural curative processes are assisted and accelerated. Omit food, ply the enema and the bath, rest, and the irritating symptoms will not only subside within a few days, but will disappear, to leave behind them no supervening ills.

    And what is true of a symptom, which, like gonorrhea, is in a sense merely local in character, is equally true in the treatment of the dreaded blood taint, syphilis. Here again the criticism is offered that orthodox remedies administered for the suppression of syphilitic symptoms produce effects that are worse in comparison than those of the blood taint itself. Whether congenital or acquired, this symptom, if subjected to the purifying processes of the fast and its accompanying eliminative aids, before the organic lesions characteristic of its later stages develop, will yield to the treatment with success. There will naturally be more difficulty attendant upon its eradication from the system than is the case with gonorrhea! infection, for syphilis is the more deeply seated symptom and affects the blood itself, hence it partakes of the nature of structural defect in a vital organ. But, if it be taken in time, through fasting, systemic purification will surely occur, and eradication of the syphilitic taint be accomplished.

    Masturbation, like all other forms of perverted natural function, is of more widely common practice in both sexes than is generally believed. Its beginnings usually occur through the curiosity of pubescence, and it is further stimulated by vicious influences, if these are at hand. But its development into habitual excessive form requires constitutional derangement that combines both physiological and psychological causes in its evolution. A discussion of the latter cannot here be made, but in close connection with the subject matter of the text lies the truth that children fed upon a non-stimulating diet, one free from flesh and embodying only such amounts of the higher forms of protein as are needful for normal growth and bodily maintenance progress to puberty in gradual development, showing fewer tendencies towards sexual abuse or perversion than do those whose dietary includes the flesh of animals and other stimulative kinds of food. Yet, if the habit be developed, again the fast offers relief in the removal of the general cause underlying all symptoms of disease, with the restoration of a condition of morbidity to one of health.





CHAPTER XVI
FOOD AND DISEASE



THE PURPOSE OF FOOD:
WHY WE OVEREAT:
OBJECTIONS TO THE "GERM THEORY":
MUCUS DISCHARGES


    THE PROCESSES by which dead food is transformed into living matter within the animal body are purely chemical in character, and, for the reason that these operations are accomplished involuntarily, they are in a sense mechanical. In essence the purpose that food serves in the organism is that of furnishing material for the rebuilding of cell structure when the latter has become exhausted by the destructive effect of work performed. The changes involved in the preparation of food for conversion into living tissue are sufficiently familiar to preclude description here. But the act of digestion involves an effort that is at once nervous and muscular, and in it energy is liberated, utilized, and dissipated, and, in so far as the expenditure of what may be called nervous force is compensated, a balance is maintained.

    If, however, the process of digestion is permitted to proceed to a point beyond actual reconstructive need, chemical action and reaction are thrown out of poise, and the result is disease. And, too, when the system is surfeited with sustenance, energy that should be utilized for other important metabolic purposes is necessarily employed in the attempted disposal of matter in excess of what is needed for replacement of used tissue. Some of this material is absorbed by the assimilative processes, and surplus thus accumulates in circulation and in the cells of muscular and organic tissue. The liver, laboring to its functional limit, segregates and casts out what it can, and its largely increased bilious product, together with undigested matter in the intestinal tract, if not promptly evacuated, ferments, germ soil is provided, and absorption of toxins proceeding from active decomposition and from evolved bacteria occurs rapidly and continuously. Small wonder that, in the circumstances, natural avenues for the passage of energic force are clogged, that imperfect functioning occurs, and that disease follows!

    Only that portion of digested food that is assimilated can be used for the repair of cell structure; the remainder is refuse that not only adds dead weight to the body, but that, in its disposal, vastly increases the labor of every vital organ. There succeeds a waste of energy that is shown in diminished digestive and assimilative power, with resultant lowered vitality. And any disturbance either of the function of digestion or of that of assimilation sends into the circulation blood-forming material that is elementally deficient, a condition that assures defective tissue nourishment.

    A review of the physiology of the passage of the blood through the body evidences that health is synonymous with perfect blood quality and circulation. Given a pure blood supply properly delivered, the products of converted food are carried to their varied destinations, and cell waste is gathered and promptly eliminated. The maintenance and well-being of the animal body is directly dependent upon the normal performance of the process outlined.

    An examination of human fecal discharges in the average instance reveals conditions that are conclusive. Undigested food is discovered, digested food products and old feces are present, and, dependent upon the dietetic regimen and the preliminary processes of digestion as carried out by the individual, the odor is more or less offensive. Normal refuse from properly masticated, correctly digested food, not animal in origin, is not disagreeable in odor. Again in the average case, when daily examination of bowel passages is continued for a time, assurance is gained that all ingested food is not digested; that the colon is not completely cleared of waste even by regular daily movements; and that fermenting matter defiles the interior to a degree scarcely to be accepted as a fact.

    A movement of the bowels each day is never a certain indication of a clean and healthy alimentary canal. Sufferers from digestive troubles often assume that, because the bowels are regular in action, the evacuations must be complete and sufficient. This assumption presumes physiological ignorance, for in these subjects usually the rectum alone, daily filled with a mass of waste forced downward by that which is retained in the colon, is relieved of its contents. If, after such an evacuation, a full enema is administered, indubitable evidence of extreme internal filth will be produced. Post mortem dissection of the colon in the average cadaver but adds weight to the substance of the statements here made, for fecal matter of more or less remote production is discovered lodged in the sacculations of the organ and upon its walls. In these circumstances during life, a movement of the bowels takes place through the center of a fouled tube.

    Food in its preparation has long been made subservient to the sense of taste; taste engenders appetite; and appetite in turn engenders excess. Attention is again called to the distinction to be made between appetite and hunger. Most human beings never know the sensation of true hunger, but feed their bodies at the habit-call of abnorma1 desire. And because of almost universal violation of the natural law of nutrition through overeating, the latter vice, apparent though it be, and distressing in its effects as it is, calls for correction as does no other in the long list of offenses against nature.

    From time to time many earnest seekers have advanced beliefs and theories tending to develop a panacea for disease, but thus far without success. It is conceivable that disease may be eradicated from the world, for nature deals but in cause and effect, and the tendency in all life is towards perfect bodily balance, without which health is not. One truth, however, may here be succinctly stated: disease in all of its forms may be prevented, and in many instances, once developed, it may be cured. And the first and paramount law of its prevention is discovered in the rule that governs the quantity as well as the quality of the food supply of the human body.

    In the life of man tradition, inheritance, and education combine to foster and preserve doctrines that are misleading. And in no manner is this so well illustrated as in the application of orthodox methods for the relief of bodily ills. To accept human testimony, even conscientious human testimony, as easily as men usually do is to be gullible. And this is true of the testimony of science as well as of that of the general observer. The worth of what we put into our minds or into our stomachs is of consequence to us all, and nothing can be more of a satire than the fact that, during an age when science and invention have done so much for the material world, our bodies included, the processes of the human mind, the nature of our ideas and beliefs, are so neglected that few of us ever think of our own capability of giving testimony that is true; and still fewer of us pay any attention to the daily intake of the testimony of others, which is sometimes consciously false, but which many times is more or less unconsciously inaccurate.

    One reason for this lowering of mental guard is that most men possess gregarious intellects. If what is advanced seems to concur with whatever the mass mind believes, the common way is to accept it. No effort is required. Or, perhaps, there is the desire to believe--that dangerous and almost universal quality of the intellect. Because of this, one often accepts a fallacy and rejects a truth. Because of this, one reaches out for fads--mental, medical, mysterious--which give hope that the blame for weaknesses may be passed to some agency other than our own. And because of the gregarious mind and of the desire to believe, the power of mere assertion acquires its potency.

    By what has been said, it must not be imagined that the incontestible learning and probity of able and reputable investigators is at all questioned. But we are privileged to doubt, and, if investigation warrants, to deny the doctrines which are generally regarded as authoritative, even though these doctrines are advanced by eminent scientists.

    In the popular mind disease inculcates fear, and, when certain symptoms are in evidence, it is fled from in terror. This attitude is to be supposed so long as present general conceptions and teachings prevail, but the day is at hand when human ailments will be regarded in their true light as the means by which nature works to restore health, as the only rational processes of cure. To emphasize--disease is not a foe to life, but is the plan of nature instituted to restore a system in unbalance to equilibrium or health. That the general conception of disease and its treatment through attack upon symptoms, are wrong, and that health lies within reach of all ailing bodies that are not suffering from structural organic defect, are truths which, it is hoped, the text will fully demonstrate.

    Despite prevalent belief, disease never strikes suddenly, but is the consequence of long-continued violation of natural law. It is the result of a gradual clogging of the avenues through which vitality functions, a long-drawn process of stifling the forces of life. "Every disease," says Dr. Edward Hooker Dewey, "is an inherited possibility, which every violation of the laws of life tends to develop. It is never simply an attack on a well person, but is rather a summing-up of the more or less life-long violations of health laws." Because of these transgressions, loss of digestive power occurs; lowered vitality succeeds; and disease symptoms become apparent along lines of least physical resistance.

    Symptoms of disease, the tangible evidences of its presence, vary with temperament, hereditary tendencies, surroundings, and the organic state, congenital or otherwise, of the individual. No two human beings ever express in disease identical morbid signs, even under like environment; and the reason underlying the development of symptoms differing in character in persons presumably of like constitution and with the same environment is to be sought most probably in the domain of the phenomena of heredity.

    Exercising the privilege of the investigator, the author not only questions the doctrine embodied in what is known as the "germ theory" of the causation of disease, but she denies its validity. And, using in her turn the power of assertion, she condemns the remedies advanced by therapists for the cure of so-called microbically caused illnesses as being radically erroneous, leading not to health and long life, but to further disease and ultimate death.

    The germ, we know, is omnipresent; it is the scavenger of animate existence; and life could not exist in its absence. In health, when physical balance is the rule, various kinds of micro-organisms live and propagate within the human body, but only to the degree necessary for the consumption of noxious products of systemic refuse, which otherwise would cause toxication. To this extent the germ is an ally of the eliminative organs, working to render harmless body waste during the time it is retained within the organism. Given for attention waste in excess of normal, germ life increases, the products of germ life add to the putrefying mass, and the task of consumption proving too great for even myriad bacilli to accomplish, physical balance is disturbed, and disease appears.

    Infection is one of the methods of nature for relieving the living organism of any non-usable organic matter that may find its way into the blood, and the category of what is non-usable includes all coagulable material from serum albumen to what are known as the white corpuscles. There is doubt that virtually amounts to certainty in the mind of the author concerning the accepted theory of the life and office of the much vaunted leucocyte or white corpuscle of the blood. This body, which by scientists is given the high position of being the primordial animal cell, is in reality here placed upon the defensive, and its proponents must give proof that it is either what they claim, a vigilant policeman, a phagocyte or germ-destroyer, a tissue-builder; or that it is a surpassingly harmful foreign body that paves the way for all disease.

    What we know about this inhabitant of the blood current is that in good health, when by microscopic examination we discover one thousand or thereabouts of red corpuscles in the blood, relatively we find only one or at most several white corpuscles; and, when disease appears, at first these leucocytes are unusually numerous, increasing in number with the gravity of the symptoms. If the case progresses to the point of death or its immanency, the increase of white corpuscles becomes so great as to form a complete reversal of the proportion between the red and the white which is the rule in health. And the fact is that the greater the number of these so-called phagocytes or germ-destroyers that a sick man carries in his circulation, the less probable is his chance of recovery.

    If white blood corpuscles were both phagocytes and tissue builders, why do they not succeed more often in their offices, and why should they be more numerous in disease than in health, Scientists claim motion and even independent life for this whitish body in the blood; may we not suppose that its motility is due to the forces of death--to the processes of chemical disintegration?

    If it be true that current teaching is open to doubt, and if, as we think it is, the criticism of the leukocyte presented is well founded, what must be the conclusion reached when we analyze the results of the past seventy-five years of study of the white blood corpuscle, It cannot be other than that nature, the greatest of all magicians, has been deceiving the elect of the scientific world by performing in their presence the feat of causing a particle of decaying organic matter to simulate life with marvelous accuracy. And, what does disease mean, if it is not that then the living organism is engaged in a life or death struggle, which has for its sole object the dislodgement, the expulsion, the annihilation of these white blood cells?

    And all that is here said is in perfect consonance with the thesis of the text. For, reverting to infection, to the theory of the germ-causation of disease, it is seen that, while the process of purification that is implied by disease is essentially necessary, it is dangerous as well. While it is true that the system must be relieved of its burden of obstructing and noxious material, it is also true that the introduction of infective bacilli into a body which is carrying a large amount of waste will have substantially the same effect that a spark would have upon a heap of dry shavings in a closet--the destruction of the shavings and very probably of the house. That is to say, the fire started in the body by infective organisms, benevolent in its purpose though it be, may prove destructive to tissue and to life itself. And this, not because the organisms are themselves necessarily harmful to vitality, but because the accumulation of decomposition to be removed is so great, and the tissues in which it is located are so devitalized because of interference with their nutrition, that these structures cannot offer sufficient resistance to the destroying mob, and they therefore become involved in the disintegrating process. In other words, the body becomes the victim of the agencies actually intended for its preservation.

    Before science became obsessed with the germ theory, nature conducted her own inoculating clinic, and the fight for life was then a more or less evenly balanced struggle. Since the introduction of artificial inoculation, vaccines and serums now aid in adding fuel to the flame, and in further overcoming natural resistance to disease.

    We have referred many times herein to the appearance during a fast of mucus in the discharges from the body. This phenomenon is in some cases continuous throughout abstinence, although individual characteristics and conditions modify the exudation in higher or lower degree. While all of the mucosa is invariably involved in this catarrhal demonstration, the walls of the intestinal canal receive the maximum deposit, not only because of the extent of mucus membrane included in their length, but because the intestines, the colon in particular, form the main eliminative outlet of the organism.

    Morgulis in his Fasting and Undernutrition comments on page 212 upon the very evident rapid diminution in the number of white corpuscles of the blood during the successive stages of a fast. On page 214 he says:--"The thing of particular significance with regard to the leueopenia (diminution of white corpuscles) of inanition is that while the blood is losing its white cells, the mucus membranes of the intestinal canal and the underlying tissues become infested with leucocytes. They occur either singly or in masses. According to Mingazzini, in the absence of food, leukocytes not merely accumulate in the intestinal wall but actually penetrate the mucous membrane and aggregate in the lumen where they ultimately disintegrate." And he concludes that the phenomenon of this "emigration" of leucoeytes is to be viewed in the light of an increased permeability of the cell membrane to bacteria under the influence of inanition.

    It is to be noted that all of the observations made by Morgulis and by those investigators whom he quotes as authorities upon inanition subjected to their experiments only animals in the normal state of function--animals and human beings in health. It is manifest that, while these observations possess interest and value in respect of the physiological and chemical changes that occur in inanition forced upon an organism that is presumably fully carrying out the transformations characteristic of normal life, their worth is doubtful when one attempts to apply the conclusions reached to the results obtained when the fast is employed as a therapeutic measure, when abstinence from food is undertaken in the presence of disease.

    However, upon one point agreement may be conceded: the elimination of mucus, of pathogen, of so-called white corpuscles of the blood, is a characteristic result of abstinence from food either in health or in disease. We have stated that in disease the effort of nature is to relieve the living organism of all non-usable organic matter that finds its way into the blood, and we have here a most vivid illustration of the method which she pursues--a method in action in health to preserve the resistive qualities of the organism; in action in disease to restore the organism to the resistive condition it possesses in health.

    And the result: at the completion of a scientifically conducted fast, mucus ceases to be deposited upon the walls of the intestines and other membranous surfaces, while white corpuscles have virtually disappeared from the blood stream.

    Morgulis still further assists our argument by stating on page 193: "A subject still very imperfectly known, but one which merits a most careful investigation, is the increase in resistance to infection revealed by organisms which are recovering from inanition. Roger and Josué report such an increased tolerance towards bacilli cold in rabbits which had undergone a preliminary fast of five to seven days. The inoculation with the bacterial culture took place three to eleven days after the fast was broken. In each case the control rabbits succumbed to the infection, while all the rabbits which had previously fasted survived the inoculation. These experiments, however, need verification." This verification we shall proceed to give.

    While the author was in practice in New Zealand, the world-wide epidemic of influenza of 1918 occurred. Despite its reputation for model legislation, New Zealand is not to be lauded as a mass observer of the laws of hygiene, either from the general sanitary viewpoint or from a dietetic standard. In fact, in these two respects the Dominion is remarkably lax. In consequence the influenza took mortal toll of the inhabitants of the islands, perhaps in greater proportion than occurred in any other part of the then infected world.

    In corroboration of the truth contained in the substance of the paragraph just quoted from Fasting and Undernutrition, not one of the patients who underwent or was undergoing a fast under direction of the author, irrespective of a condition of either partial or complete recovery from disease of whatever symptomatic form, was attacked by influenza. And none among the members of the families of her clientele, past and present at the time, all of whom in their fear of infection were impelled to apply at least the less drastic elements of treatment as embodied in a light dietary, daily enemata, and cleansing baths, and all of whom were daily in contact with infected subjects, fell victim to the epidemic catarrh.




CHAPTER XVII
DIET



PERVERSION OF TASTE AND SMELL:
THOROUGH MASTICATION:
SHOULD FLESH BE EATEN?


    DIET at any time is largely a matter of special need, but it would seem that, after a course of fasting, the successful issue of which in functional derangement embraces restoration to physiological normal, certain fixed rules might be laid down to apply to all cases. But not so. Peculiar limitations are encountered in each individual, for which individual dietetic errors coupled with physiological idiosyncrasies transmitted from generations of ancestors are responsible. Hence empirical methods must be employed in the selection of foods requisite for the case in hand.

    The sense of smell, reaching out beyond the body ere food material passes the lips, assists in its selection, and this sense and taste, when normal in function and not vitiated by cultivation and habit, form a perfect picket line of protection against the introduction of unwholesome substances into the system. Normally constituted bodies prefer those odors that are classed as pleasant, yet continued contact with emanations that are distinctly disagreeable, first brings tolerance and finally pleasure in their presence. Perhaps this departure from natural law and normal instinct can be illustrated in convincing form by contemplating the sensual delight of the epicure in cheeses of doubtful age but of indubitable rottenness.

    Taste also plays an important part in the choice of food material in health, and it is popularly believed that, when an article of sustenance is not repugnant to this sense, it is healthful and wholesome, and that harm cannot result from its ingestion. One of the objects that nature has in placing the nerves of taste in the mouth is that of a protective measure to prevent noxious substances from entering the stomach; but because of persistent cultivation this sense has been perverted and most men and women are more or less abnormal in taste perception. To perversion in this respect is due much of carelessness in mastication. Improperly accomplished mastication prepares a fertile soil in which the seeds of disease are promptly sown and as promptly flourish. With normal taste development the medical profession would be at a loss to administer the average drug were the patient to masticate or insalivate its substance. Recognizing this, the physician in introducing his alleged remedy into the system obviates the difficulty by the use of capsules or by injecting the drug directly into the veins.

    The fallacy of attempting practical application of a theory of food selection based upon the senses of taste and smell alone is easily demonstrable. The question resolves itself into one concerning the needs of the body, but, however, after a fast, taste and smell are restored to normal acuity and, so long as they are not abused and remain in this state, they may be used as partial indicators. At this time all wholesome food gives delight and is desired with a hunger created in a clean and healthy system that craves for nourishment and that fully enjoys its ingestion. Simple foods, properly prepared and correctly proportioned as to the relative amounts of fats, carbohydrates, and protein, with the necessary mineral salts, are what the dietitian and the subject should endeavor to supply. The fast is ended, the system is cleansed, and the digestive organs are in full vigor, waiting to form pure blood and pure tissue from pure food.

    No detail further than that already disclosed is needed to show that mankind habitually overeats, and that, as a result, nutritive material is absorbed into the general circulation in quantity beyond the requirements of the body, loading the system with an unnecessary and harmful burden and hampering with poisonous waste the operation of its machinery. But, just as the liver stands guard, in so far as it may, over matter absorbed, and just as it separates good from bad, so at the very inception of the digestive process, the mouth, with its armor of teeth and its salivary apparatus, determines in large degree the amount of food needed in nutrition.

    The mouth holds the nerves of taste, taste is enjoyed in the mouth, and taste has its great purpose in deciding just when food has been ground between the teeth sufficiently to prepare it for subsequent processes. Taste virtually disappears when food has been properly insalivated, and too thorough mastication cannot occur, for the benefits derived are immeasurable, even apart from the comminution of solids. The mouth easily accomplishes this work when the habit of mastication has been acquired, but, if it perform it carelessly, the other organs of digestion cannot act in normal function, and perfect digestion cannot occur, since one of its processes has been omitted. And again, the only portion of the operation of digestion that can be voluntarily controlled is that which is done in the mouth, hence the subject of the mastication of food is an all important one. Its value in the economy of the human body is excellently treated by the late Horace Fletcher in his A-B-C of Our Own Nutrition.

    Fletcher says:

    "When food is filtered into the body after having become liquefied and made alkaline or at least neutral by saliva, the appetite is given a chance to measure the needs of the body and to discriminate against excess. As soon as the point of complete saturation of any one deficiency is reached, appetite is cut off as short as possible, with no indication of stomach fullness. It will welcome a little of protein, and then turn to sugar or fat in some of their numerous forms. Thirst for water will assert itself for a moment, sometimes asking but a drop and again for a full glass; and afterwards, when near the point of complete saturation, appetite will hesitate for a moment, as if searching around for some rare substance and may find its final satisfaction in a single spoonful of sweet, or of a sip of something in sight.

    "The appetite, satisfied by the infiltering process, is a sweetly appeased appetite, calm, rested, contented, normal. There is no danger from the flooding of intemperance for there is not even toleration of excess, either of more food or of more drink, and this contented appetite will remain in the condition of contentment until another need has really been earned by evaporation or destructive catabolism.

    Fletcher uses in his description the term, appetite, in the sense that the word, hunger, is employed in the text. In the conditions that he so well expresses lies the solution of the problem of overeating. Mastication, carried to the degree that taste is neutralized, absolutely precludes eating save for the needs of metabolism. The supply is made equal to the demand, neither more nor less; and intemperance in food or in drink is effectively prevented. The moral attached to the excerpt quoted makes of thorough mastication a lesson to be taught in childhood, knowledge that should be transmitted from parent to offspring with more than the usual concern.

    A scientific discussion of the question of diet is manifestly out of place in this text. Authorities differ widely and none has dealt with feeding from the viewpoint met after a fast, with a system, so to speak, rejuvenated. But it is no undue iteration again to point out that diet is largely a matter of special need, and that no fixed rules may be promulgated to apply in every instance. But certain general principles require discussion, of which the first and most important deals with the use or non-use of meat. Flesh in any form need never enter the dietary of normal man. Arguments for and against a meat diet have long been exchanged, and advocates of the strongest will combat the non-flesh regimen for years to come. The syllogism in refutation contains among others the following premises. First, dead animal tissue holds within it the products of metabolism. The process of change is suddenly arrested when the animal is killed, and the juices of its body contain uneliminated toxic products that no process of cooking can destroy. For that matter, even though they were completely annihilated, flesh is still changed vegetable tissue with the waste of the process of change and that of the living organism retained in its structure, a condition that Iogically suggests the consumption of the plant rather than of its creation. Armsby has shown that when we feed grain and other food to cattle and to sheep and then kill them for meat we recover only a very small percentage of the food values we fed them. Hence had we eaten the cattle and sheep food ourselves, instead of feeding it to the animals, we should get approximately thirty times the food value that is obtained by eating the beef and mutton supplied. In addition, decomposition of animal flesh begins at the moment of death, and by the time it is consumed as food, decay has progressed sometimes to the point of putrefaction.

    Otto Carqué in his Errors of Bio-Chemistry says:

    "There is also a marked physiological difference between plant and animal food. Animals are distinguished from vegetables by incessant decay in every tissue, a decay which is proportional to animal activity. This incessant decay necessitates incessant repair, so that the animal body has been likened to a temple on which two opposite forces are at work in every part, the one tearing down, the other repairing the breach as fast as it is made. In plants no such incessant decay has ever been discovered. If it exists at all, it must be very trifling in comparison. Protoplasm, it is true, is taken from the older parts of the plant, and these parts die; but the protoplasm does not seem to decompose, but is used again for tissue building. Thus the eternal activity of animals is of two kinds, tissue-destroying and tissue-building, while that of plants is principally of one kind, tissue-building. Flesh foods will, therefore, impart less vitality to our system than plant foods, because the former always contain a quantity of substances which have undergone the various stages of catabolism and have lost their vital force. We feel drowsy and indolent after a heavy meal of meat, while an apple, an orange, a bunch of grapes, instantly refreshes us. The theories that flesh makes flesh, that blood is converted into blood, that calf's or sheep's brain increases our mental capacity, that meat is predigested plant food, cannot stand in the light of physiological chemistry."

    Experiments carried out most thoroughly by Irving Fisher, Professor of Political Economy at Yale University, show beyond any chance of refutation that the physical endurance of the human body is increased to the utmost by a non-flesh diet. In the course of these experiments meat-eating athletes competed in test exercises with non-meat eaters, both sedentary and active in occupation. The results were so largely in favor of the non-flesh dietary that the most ardent advocates of the opposite side can find no loophole through which to escape from the facts.

    No adequate explanation is as yet available of the evident superiority of a vegetarian dietary over one of flesh as regards endurance, save, perhaps, in the theory that a diet composed in greater part of proteid produces uric acid and other crystalline substances, which in turn cause muscular fatigue in exercise. The facts are patent in the instances related, as well as in experiments made by the author along similar lines during the past twenty years. The results obtained have invariably demonstrated that a non-flesh dietary builds a consistently strong and enduring physical structure, while the reverse is true in great part when meat figures largely in the list of foods ingested. In the past truths such as this have been obscured because the idea contained in the term, "vegetarian," suggested what was popularly regarded as fanaticism carried beyond all bounds. This is but another exemplification of the small effect that doctrines advanced with polemical warmth coupled with enthusiasm have upon the scientific world, and for this reason the matter needs to be approached deliberately and dispassionately, and with the seriousness befitting a subject that is of more practical import than is any other in the whole range of hygienic research. When this shall have been accomplished, the theory embodied in the results of the tests mentioned will be fully borne out and conclusively established as a living truth.

    With the individual himself rests the selection of a healthful and properly distributed food supply. In order to maintain a normal body in perfect equilibrium, the amount and the selection of food require careful consideration. Quantity depends upon physical characteristics and the kind of labor at which the subject is employed. A working man destroys more tissue in shorter time than does the banker or the clerk; yet, usually, the latter eat no fewer meals nor less at a sitting than does their burly brother. What is needed for the one is far more than sufficient for the others. Should the brain worker devote spare time to outdoor recreation or to manual labor a mean might be established; but, in general, equilibrium is seldom reached, and the supply of food is far in excess of requirement. The laboring man, too, is at fault in this respect, for, unless his be an exceptional case, the basis of his diet is starch, which, in addition to the unbalance produced, carries its nutritive principle in a bulky vehicle, demanding extra labor from the digestive tract in order to separate waste from nutriment and to eliminate the former.

    To reduce the supply of food to the basis of demand, the plan that suggests the omission of the midday meal is perhaps the easiest to follow, and, once the habit is acquired, this repast is scarcely missed. Hunger should determine the hours for the ingestion of food each day. Regularity of habit as to the times for serving meals is an outgrowth of economic convenience, and, more often than not, the participant is imposing a burden upon a system in no need, therefore with no desire of sustenance. In health, dependent upon occupation, hunger makes demand not more than twice daily, if previous desire has been satisfied. Hunger, like the reproductive instinct, is stimulated by the changing chemistry of the body and can be satisfied only by achieving its primary purpose, the taking of food for constructive metabolism.

    The late war taught us many things connected with dietetic habit. The Danes, for instance, kept healthy upon a most restricted diet. Their death rate was exceptionally low in spite of many privations. They lived on a ration that consisted very largely of vegetables and whole wheat or grain breads. And they ate very little milk and meat.

    The Germans proved that it is possible to live on a diet that contains a great deal of fiber. So far as their adults were concerned, health was improved by the very low diet--at least it was not impaired. The lean German was healthier than was the pot-bellied German of pre-war days. These experiences prove that man can stand a serious cut in his food over long periods of time without permanent damage. :But the text carries out this thought in its entirety, and all that is offered from sources apart merely serves in corroboration of the truths presented.

    In much that has been written concerning the matter of diet there are so many sweeping statements, so many conflicting processes of proof, impossible rules, and foolish conclusions, that no wonder is felt that the whole subject is usually ignored as too intricate. There are many who try to enforce personal ideas upon others in this connection; very persistent people these, to whom the term, "crank," may well be applied, and a "crank," who has picked up some scientific jargon and who thinks himself cured of his ailments, works more harm than good in the world. This class may be extended to include those who really have been benefited by a diet that happens to suit personal requirement, and it comprises also the one-food people who are in continual search of what not to devour, with the idea of reducing the universe to whole wheat and pecans. These people at each encounter with their fellow-men discover in the latter disease symptoms identical with their own, and insist that the remedy to which they have had recourse shall be applied. It is absurd for any who are not familiar with the chemistry of foods to endeavor to talk learnedly of their action in human physiological economy, and it may be taken as an axiom that, within the individual capability, which can be known only by individual experiment, a diet limited to not more than three proportioned items at each meal is more conducive to health than is one where unlimited choice or a single dish is the rule. A list that is limited strictly to few things trains the stomach to adapt itself accordingly, and trouble ensues when change is attempted. It is also to be remarked that when the organism has been accustomed to the digestion of animal protein, change to vegetable compounds may discover organic resistance this because of habit, for actually no essential difference exists between these two muscle building combinations excepting in origin.

    After all, the amount of food and the kind of food are of secondary importance to the organic ability or inability of the individual to function. It must continually be borne in mind that in the condition of the digestive organs lies the crux of the situation. Hence the aim of both physician and patient should constantly be directed at the restoration of the system to health, after which its maintenance in this condition requires proper attention to selection and to quantity of food.



NOTE

Tomato Soup.

    Strain one quart can of tomatoes through a coarse kitchen sieve, assisting the process by using the back of a heavy spoon. This serves to separate seeds and skin from juice and pulp. Add to the latter a dessert-spoon of butter or corn oil, and heat but do not boil. If desired, a small quantity of honey may be used. F`or breaking a fast this broth is excellent food, and one coffee-cup taken four times at regular intervals should suffice for the first day succeeding abstinence. The quantity taken may be increased on the second day to one pint eaten morning and evening with other food material gradually added as previously described.

    If ripe tomatoes from the garden are used instead of the canned variety, simmer the fruit until tender, but at no point in cooking allow to boil, since high temperature tends to destroy the vitamins with which this fruit is so richly furnished. After cooking, strain and gauge proportions as with the canned fruit.




CHAPTER VIII

REST AND RECUPERATION



MUSCULAR REST:
BEST FOR THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS:
THE HIBERNATING ANIMALS:
THE HUNGER STRKE OF MCSWINEY AND OTHERS


    MUSCULAR tissue is continually undergoing change in structure. The cells that form it are constantly dying, are cast off, and fresh material for their rebuilding is being supplied. The waste resulting, if retained, is systemically harmful; and, in order to permit of its elimination and replacement with wholesome cell pabulum, muscular rest must occur. Not only does this apply to muscles in super-active use, but to those of all of the bodily fabric. Rapid exercise of any part of the human machine can be continued but for a short time, for, because of vigorous muscular action, voluntary or involuntary, cells are rapidly broken down, their poisonous waste is thrown into the blood, and is carried to the remotest portions of the organism. Every organ of the body is thus deleteriously affected, and resulting symptoms of self-toxication appear that may end disastrously. The only means of recuperation lies in muscular rest.

    The heart, although making contractions at the rate of seventy-two beats a minute, is able to continue its work throughout the life of the individual, since each contraction of this muscle is followed by a slight interval of rest, during which its cells recuperate. Stimulate the heart beat beyond its normal rate, and a point is soon reached at which poisonous products from broken-down cells are not carried away with sufficient rapidity, while regeneration is defectively performed, since the intervals of rest are inadequate. Similar conditions are met when the muscles used in respiration, those of the chest, the diaphragm, and the abdomen, are overworked.

    The muscles that move involuntarily, those that are not subject to the human will, never know absolute rest, for they continue their labors whether the body be asleep or awake. On the other hand, those muscles, the action of which depends upon brain direction, cannot work continuously, lest fatigue with fatal exhaustion follow. Seemingly, automatic labor, labor not directed by volition, does not wear. It is only conscious work that requires for recuperation and muscle rebuilding non-use or physical rest. This is permitted in that loss of consciousness regularly recurrent in animal life, which is called sleep.

    Physical growth and muscular development in man are never completely rounded out, and this may be attributed to a double cause. Theoretically, every muscle of the body should be exercised impartially and should be nourished with the exact amount of cell pabulum that is needful for the replacement of its broken-down substance. These conditions are virtually never fulfilled. That they may be is a possibility to be contemplated with surety, since they are logical conclusions based on natural law. To bring them to consummation, reciprocal active relation must exist between intake and outgo, rebuilding and waste, labor and rest, consciousness and sleep.

    The processes of nutrition are involuntary in character so long as material suitable for their accomplishment is furnished for their use, but they may be directed in part by the individual to the extent of the preparation and of the selection in kind and quantity of food required. When the function of digestion becomes impaired, disease results. And functional disease is analogous to muscular fatigue; hence, since nature includes in her law of recuperation both systemic purification and organic rest, it is reasonable to assume what the text promulgates: organic rest through abeyance of the processes of digestion and assimilation, with consequent systemic cleansing and renewal of normal functional activity.

    The manner in which the digestive organs and those allied to them may be given needed rest is to the mass mind perhaps not at once apparent. The mere thought of abstention from food carries with it repudiation of the long-taught doctrine that frequent feeding both in health and in illness is needful for the maintenance of vitality and strength. Yet just this omission of food is meant when rest for overworked organs is suggested. The phenomena of fasting for the cure of disease include facts that prove that the human body does not depend for strength or for vitality solely upon food ingested; the latter is in the main utilized for the repair of the fabric of the body; by means of food the material framework is kept in condition to permit of the liberation of energy in its variety of manifestation. The body, then, is but a vehicle for the expression of the life principle. But the life principle itself is an entity, operating through its vehicle only so long as its lines of transmission are unobstructed by the causes of disease.

    Diminution in weight, often excessive, always occurs in illness, even though food is ingested. (Exceptions with obese or dropsical symptoms noted.) In itself this shows that nature is proceeding with her process of purification, despite the obstacles in her path, and that she is protecting the body by inhibiting the function of assimilation. This she will continue to do until the avenues for the passage of vital force are partially or wholly cleared, or until organic defect beyond repair is uncovered. In the former event, health will eventually be restored; in the latter, the death of the body is presaged.

    Also, when disease is present, under the more prevalent methods, feeding is continuous in accordance with the doctrine that nourishment is at all times necessary to "keep up strength." If the stomach rebel, other organs are assailed with the idea of conveying through them the nutriment considered necessary, and this in spite of very evident protests on the part of bodily function. The question naturally suggests itself: why, if food is constantly supplied, does the body lose in weight! This query was covered in a previous chapter, but its answer is found in the fact that in disease intake of food is not properly digested, is consequently incapable of complete and healthful assimilation, and, far from acting as constructive material for tissue regeneration, proves an added systemic burden and a source of toxication. Another cause of loss of weight, slighter in degree, is discovered in that brain and nerve tissue, as instruments for the expression of thought, motion, and sensation, are protected from deterioration in substance by that provision of nature which permits them to utilize nourishment stored in the interstices of tissue. This they consume in illness and in health, and, when in disease normal balance is disturbed, when body tissue is not rebuilt as is the case in health, nerve substance is still supported from the same source of supply.

    With slight differences the physiology of digestion in all mammals is markedly similar. In disease the lower mammalia abstain from food until hunger returns, when health is rapidly recovered. To this they are impelled by instinct, by animal sagacity, a faculty implanted by nature in the whole of animate creation. The fasts which animals instinctively undergo in disease are phenomena which cannot help but be constantly observed, but which are not in general intelligently perceived. A common expression in reference to illness in the horse embodies the phrase, "off his feed," and this negation on the part of the animal confirms the existence an instinctive sense that impels it to fast when its physical well-being is overturned. And this natural spontaneous impulse is not confined to mammals, for birds, reptiles, in fact the whole animal kingdom, abstain from food when ailing. A python in captivity has been known to fast for thirteen months, with great loss in weight, it is true, but with eventual recuperation and recovery. And cats and canines often prolong abstention to skeleton condition, after which strength and vitality progressively increase until normal is again attained. Instances such as these may be multiplied indefinitely.

    While not occasioned by the invasion of disease, it is interesting to note in this connection that condition of lethargy undergone by certain animals during the winter months, known as hibernation, a condition in which the functions of the body are in great measure suspended. How a warm-blooded animal used to the most stirring activities during eight or nine months of the year can retire to a den, and from an ordinary sleep, which it is at first, pass into a condition of torpor in which all the organs that have to do with digestion, assimilation, and waste, excepting the lungs, suspend their functions and remain quiescent for a period of several months, is more or less a sealed book to science.

    In man and the non-hibernating animals the action of the body functions are continuous awake or asleep, but in the bear, the marmot, the prairie dog, during the hibernating period, the functions of digestion, assimilation, and elimination are suspended until the animal awakens in the spring.

    A bear, if sufficiently fat, begins to fast some weeks before he retires to winter quarters; but, if there has been lack of food, or, if the animal is old, with poor teeth, it will eat to the very day of entering its den, and this last meal will be found in the stomach when the revival from winter sleep takes place.

    The average bear at the beginning of hibernation is covered with a layer of fat that varies from two to six inches in thickness, and, if the animal is killed at this time and the fat removed from the carcass, the latter is found plump and full-fleshed. But, killed after some months in the den, a heavier layer of fat is discovered, with a diminution in lean flesh, which by this time has become lax and flabby in texture. The carcass, then stripped of its fat, will be noticeably smaller than that of a bear of similar size killed in the fall or in the early winter.

    There is then evidently a continual process of change from nitrogenous to carbonaceous tissue proceeding while the winter sleep of the hibernating animal endures; and, in this transmutation of muscle into fat, lies perhaps the secret of the torpor in which the bear is wrapped. For, when a bear first goes into his den, his sleep is natural, and he is easily aroused. But, left undisturbed, sleep develops into stupor; respiration and circulation are the only evidences of life, and they are both retarded in action. Carbon resulting from the change of protein into fat within the system, is retained in the blood, because all of the organs of elimination, excepting the lungs, are without function; and respiration is so slow that there is continuously an excess of carbonic acid gas in the blood stream, and a consequent condition of toxication, of torpor.

    At times during hibernation the female bear will bring her young into the world, and then milk is elaborated in amount sufficient to maintain the cubs. The birth of young and the physiological chemistry of continued milk production in the fasting, torpor-ridden bear have particular interest here, analogous as these phenomena are to the related cases in the text of pregnant women proceeding to confinement, but fasting for weeks the while.

    A hibernating bear never soils his den with urine or ordure, for no waste is formed, consequently none is voided. But, after the period of winter sleep is over, the animal feeds ravenously upon young clover and grass, and extreme purging results, with succeeding rapid reduction of the fatty tissue formed as described while coma lasted.

    A certain degree of cold is necessary before a bear can hibernate, but, in so far as may be ascertained, body temperature remains at standard during the experience. That is, the animal is warm to the touch, although it is in a state of constant shivering. Analogy is again evident between this condition and what is termed herein "fasters' chilliness."

    Omitting from consideration mental conditions, such as fear and worry, which of necessity react upon the physical body, and setting aside severe and more or less continuous physical suffering, the average human being cannot die from lack of food for several months. This statement of fact is verified constantly in the employment of fasting as a therapeutic measure, and it has recently been brought to public attention and conclusively substantiated in instances to which reference is now made.

    It would appear that the medical profession in whole or in greater part has been egregiously in ignorance of the resources of the human body when for any cause it is denied nourishment. The various encyclopedias, notably Britannica, until revisions were made in 1921, carried articles on inanition and fasting, which asserted over medical signature that from ten to fourteen days marked the extreme limit to which the human body would endure in the absence of food. In other words, starvation and death would occur were nourishment denied for approximately the period of time named. While doubt may have existed in the minds of the more advanced among the medical fraternity, revision of these articles was definitely occasioned only by the comparatively recent "hunger strike" of Terence McSwiney, former Lord Mayor of Cork, Ireland, and of several of his political colleagues.

    The charge upon which Lord Mayor McSwiney was convicted, and for which he was sentenced to two years in Brixton prison, England, was that of sedition against British government. He began to serve his sentence in August, 1920, and upon his incarceration, in protest against what he considered an unjust trial and conviction, he refused to eat. In spite of constant persuasion and attempts at forced feeding, McSwiney's fasting continued until October 25th, 1920, a period of seventy-four days, when his death occurred. McSwiney was quite cognizant of the details of the method of fasting for the cure of disease, and in so far as was possible in prison surroundings, he made use of the hygienic accessories that are described herein. His familiarity with the writings of the author of this text accounted for the knowledge that permitted him to continue his fast without succumbing for two and one-half months. McSwiney might, and, in the opinion of the writer, would have lived longer had it not been that, in the latter days of his life, he became too weak to prevent efforts on the part of the jail physician to force food upon him, and, when he lapsed into unconsciousness because of strength overstrained and nerves tensed beyond limit through resistance, strychnine was injected into his veins as a heart stimulant, and he died.

    Of McSwiney's political colleagues, also imprisoned and also on "hunger strike," one died after sixty-eight days of fasting, while the others all endured until McSwiney's death and after. It is reported that one of these men continued his fast for the extremely lengthy period of ninety days. And it is to be noted that, with the exception of that seditionist who succumbed at the end of sixty-eight days, all of the others, who fasted much longer than McSwiney himself, resumed feeding and rapidly recuperated to a condition of body ultimately superior to that which was theirs before they undertook their "hunger strike."

    Earlier in the text cases were cited that underwent abstinence from food for periods ranging from eleven to seventy-five days. And it is to be remembered that these cases resorted to the method because they were ill, and that some of them were in an extreme state of emaciation to begin with. Yet, although no food was ingested, life was supported, functional processes were restored, and recovery resulted.

    In one instance, a patient of the writer during a period of 140 days fasted absolutely 118 days. This case was bedridden, and had been so for years; the body was emaciated, and chronic functional disease and confinement to bed had caused progressive wasting of the muscles. Yet, as a consequence of the bodily purification resulting from abstinence from food, not only was great relief experienced, but recovery, save in minor degree, the aftermath of muscular non-use, occurred.

    If, then, the body can exist without food for an extended time, and, if in illness the stomach instinctively objects, as it does, to ingestion, it is reasonable to infer that food not desired is not at this time necessary for bodily maintenance; and, once accepted as true, this inference is abundantly justified. The results of a practical and scientific application of the method of systemic purification defined herein are such as to lead to the conclusion that, in the absence of serious structural defects in vital organs, abstinence from food, accompanied by its natural health-restoring and health-preserving accessories, is the unfailing remedy for relief from functional ills.




CHAPTER XIX
MENTAL AND PHYSICAL ACTION
AND REACTION



MIND INFLUENCES FUNCTION AND FUNCTION INFLUENCES MIND:
A CASE OF INSANITY:
SICK GENIUSES:
THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND:
THE EXAMPLE OF JESUS


    MUSCULAR action in the body may be brought about in two ways--through the brain itself, or through internal or external physical causes. In both instances the nerve centers perform their functions, either in the inception of the thought or in the transfer of inward or outward cause. The act of moving the hand, for example, may originate in the brain, or it may occur because the member is in proximity to fire. In the former contingency the act begins with the thought in the brain, and nervous influence operates directly upon the muscles. In the second condition the sensory nerves inform the brain that the flesh is burning, and the brain sets in motion the muscles necessary to move the hand. In both cases the motive power emanates from the brain, and the phenomenon as observed may happen in connection with any specific portion of the body. Not only are these phenomena true of the muscles controlled by the will, but they may also be observed in similar phase in organs beyond the power of volition in function, as the heart, the lungs, and the stomach. Swallowing an emetic causes vomiting, an effect occasioned by muscular contraction of the stomach for the purpose of ejecting a substance irritating to the nerves of that organ. The mere sight or thought of a disgusting object may have the same consequence, and imagination is frequently able to produce results like those that are caused by the administration of a powerful drug or by a combination of physical conditions.

    Every organic act, normal or abnormal, is due solely to a current sent from one of the great nerve centers, and the latter may be called into operation either directly by feeling or thought, or indirectly by reflex action. The mind and the emotions exercise large influence upon physical function, but the field over which that influence extends is comparatively little known. It is, in some respects, almost unbounded, for every bodily function may be hastened, retarded, or even totally suspended by the subjective effect of thought. Pleasurable emotions are physically wholesome; painful ones, the reverse; but, when too intense and sudden, either can terminate life.

    The fibers of the pneumogastric nerve are distributed principally in and about the lungs and the stomach; hence its name. Whatever may be the motor functions that this nerve supplies, it has great power over the process of digestion, for, when its fibers are severed below those branches that extend to the trachea, digestion is virtually arrested. Nervous influence is essential to the proper action of the stomach, and, in the region of this organ, the nerves are so interlaced one with another that, even though the direct road be destroyed, by-paths will still remain for the passage of nerve energy. If the latter force were not needed in digestion, no reason would exist for the suspension of function by its withdrawal. This is well illustrated when it is observed that the invariable effect of worry, anxiety, fright, anger, and the like, is to arrest for a time all digestive action. Cause is obvious when the close connection that exists between the brain and the pneumogastric nerve is considered. Also, if nervous force is diverted in directions other than those pursued in the digestion of food, or if it is impeded by impingement of nerve substance at emergence from the spinal column, similar results ensue as when the pneumogastric nerve is severed.

    Does the physical condition of the body in reflex affect the minds. Observation shows that it has such influence upon brain function that perfect reflection of physical condition is continuously displayed in the working of the intellect. A healthy and balanced mind can emanate only from a healthy body. The reverse is equally true.

    In health the constructive and destructive changes that take place in the human body progress without noticeable diminution or increase in excellence of brain function so long as balance between assimilation and elimination is the rule. In conditions of debility from whatever cause, but especially when the intake of food is in excess of demand, and waste is accumulated in quantity too great for disposal by the eliminative organs, absorption of poisons generated in fermenting refuse retained in the intestinal tract is continuous, and the subject becomes a victim of autointoxication, is drunk with the products of his own decomposition. This condition, long continued, is no less baneful in effect than is that of alcoholic saturation, and in some instances it takes the form of insanity, while in all diminished brain power is in evidence.

    The digestion of a meal with the subsequent forcing of food waste through the bowels consumes nerve energy in amount greater than is ordinarily conceived. Some investigators go so far as to say that the process involved requires nervous expenditure in excess of that demanded in the exercise of the voluntarily controlled muscles. In any event overfeeding never fails to result in weakened vitality. In the normal subject, sufficient food, perfectly digested and assimilated, produces a body with brain power equal to clear thought, an organism with a maximum of both physical and mental energy. Food in amount more than the individual requires entails excessive labor upon the organs of digestion, drain upon nerve power, and consequent of vitality.

    Barring destructive changes in brain or nerve tissue from injury, the cause of mental disease is one and the same with that of physical unbalance. Physical signs invariably preceding mental danger signals should be heeded and remedied when first displayed. One of the simplest of these warnings is the drowsiness that overcomes the overfed. Here the nerves evince fatigue, and incidentally fatigue, both muscular and mental, is one of the safety valves of the human machine. If at this time stimulating effort is resorted to, results are always detrimental, for, as in exercise, to stifle a feeling of fatigue in order to be able to continue muscular exertion is like forcibly closing the safety gauge so that the boiler may be overheated. In other words, taking a stimulant when tired in order to whip up flagging physical or mental vigor subsequently leaves both body and mind in condition more exhausted than when the sensation of fatigue first signaled its warning. Likewise food, which in itself is stimulating in effect, taken when either physical or mental weariness is felt, carries its own quota of detrimental consequences.

    We cannot escape the conclusion that mind influences function just as function influences mind. It is also virtually axiomatic that continued functional derangement finally ends in organic disease, and organic disease gives rise to characteristic mental states that vary from the fearful anxiety of the sufferer from neuralgia of the heart to the hopeful attitude of the dying consumptive.

    It is an established feet that drugs, however powerful, do not affect the structure of brain tissue; and it is equally well known that in most instances of insanity there is no apparent deterioration in quality or structure of nerve substance. In these phenomena lies strong collateral proof that the sources of mental disease are to be sought elsewhere than in the brain. Injuries and ailments that involve structural change in brain matter will necessarily interfere with brain function, and in softening of the brain and in certain forms of paralysis there are organic alterations that may be noted on dissection. But in hysteria, epilepsy, or any of the manias, no changes in structure of either brain or nerve substance can be discovered, notwithstanding the presence of extreme mental alienation.

    To illustrate the effect of abnormal physical condition upon mind function, the following case is cited. The patient, a man thirty years of age, presented a history of continuous digestive trouble accompanied by melancholia. Examination pointed to the conviction that the morbid mental symptom was the result of functional inactivity of the digestive tract, complicated with decided indications of organic disease. A tentative dietary of fruits and vegetable broths afforded the relief usual when organic labor is thus lightened. But skill in observing and determining the sequelae of dietetic changes caused delay in prognosis, for it is always needful to distinguish between mitigation of the distress of disease that is temporary in character, and that which evinces progress towards recovery. Hence, though symptoms in some respects were favorable, no predication was made as to the ultimate outcome. At the end of three weeks of the regimen imposed, the major signals all pointed to organic disability of extreme gravity, and at his request for definite opinion for or against recovery, the patient was informed that there seemed no possible hope of restoration to health. He then ceased his office visits, and a month later was discovered dead by suicide, an act committed, as the condition of the body showed, within a few days after discontinuing treatment. The previous conduct of the man, his brooding depression, and the contents of a number of scribbled letters found among his effects, now definitely fixed the case as one of insanity, whatever the state of his body might prove to be. The latter was in condition such that an autopsy could be performed, and it revealed the following: the kidneys were normal; the lungs and the heart were congested, but functionally equal to their tasks; the liver was hardened, and there was but a rudimentary gall sac, which contained no bilious fluid and gave no indication that the liver had been functioning, no characteristic stain being present, the color of the sac being a chalky white; the stomach was dilated and filled with food, and glandular activity in the organ must have been inoperative for some time previous to death; the small intestines showed bleached portions that had undoubtedly been without function for an indefinite period; the transverse section of the colon was much dilated, contained a large amount of hardened feces and had fallen shaping the whole organ into a letter "M", with the vertex of the dropped portion resting upon the pelvis; it, as well as the ascending and descending parts, were adherent at their angles for several inches; the bladder was apparently normal; the pancreas was a soft degenerated mass; the spleen was hardened; the mesentery exhibited old lesions, while no trace of the omentum was found; but the brain was structurally perfect.

    The instance cited shows a body exceedingly deformed internally in which, despite its faulty structure, the processes of growth and maintenance progressed for thirty years. The cause of the organic defects discovered is to be attributed to digestive activity partially inhibited in early life through disease, the effects of which were very probably augmented by the use of drugs. In this case progressive inability to function produced morbid mental disturbance. It may be asked why a similar result was not observed in each of the instances related elsewhere in the text, or for that matter in any diseased human body; and reply is made that physical unbalance in any degree invariably affects mind-function, and this usually in adverse manner. But here again we enter the domain of the idiosyncrasy of individuality, of the limitations and requirements of a subject segregated from other individuals by his own constitutional peculiarities and tendencies, be these mental or physical. For instance, it is well known that there are certain temperaments that develop delirium in fever, even when the latter is mild in type, while there are others who may experience rise in body heat of as much as four or five degrees above register without sign of loss in mental equilibrium. But the close observer notes that the latter in the circumstances will exhibit certain other vagaries of the mind that are not apparent when function is normal in character.

    Yet we must not neglect to mark and to ponder the other side of the question, for, as has been said, as mind influences function, so function influences mind. As an example, it is admitted that arterial strain, an undue pressure upon the walls of the arteries commonly known as high blood pressure, tends to produce a fatty degeneration of their inner coat, and thus gives rise to arterial tumors and to cerebral hemorrhage, which sometimes causes paralysis, apoplexy, and softening of the brain. Now it is certain that such tension may result from continued anxiety, and that it is the cause of many cases of angina pectoris or neuralgia of the heart, effecting those cardiac changes to which some of the forms of angina are due.

    It is also well established that mental disturbance gives rise to dyspepsia, and observation and experiment show that anger and other emotions arrest the secretion of gastric juice, and that probably the peristaltic action of both stomach and intestines is likewise affected. In this connection the extreme constipation of melancholia is to be noted. Simple jaundice is often the result of sudden emotion, and it is sometimes followed by acute yellow atrophy, a wasting of the liver with yellow pigmentation. In the latter form of jaundice there is always disorganization of the cells of the liver.

    A man who works with his brain after a sleepless night or when he is in the clutches of some discomforting indisposition at times does not see how he can possibly accomplish his day's stint. He attempts it, however, and is often surprised to find that he works more rapidly and with more acuity than when in normal state. This occurs because, feeling the necessity, he brings his will into play and concentrates with greater determination than usual upon what is before him. So our attention is often called to the fact, and it is a fact, that a very large percentage of the world's best work has been done by men who were not in health most of the time that they were about it. But does this offer an argument in favor of the possession of a defective unhealthy body? These very men, though we hail them as geniuses, were and are universally under the control of an impressible and capricious nervous temperament, always a handicap upon thorough and efficient accomplishment. And it is interesting to speculate upon the kind and the amount of labor with which the genius in ill health might have enriched the world had he been the possessor of a physically normal body. Would this work have been of a quality surpassing that which was produced by forced concentration; or would the physical ease of health have removed the spur of accomplishment?

    We cannot, if we would not eventually fall short of our desired achievements, afford to discriminate in favor of either mind or body. The development of each is equally essential to the greatest and best results from the other. Hence, given a body free from any organic trouble, the successful enjoyment and prolongation of life is as much dependent upon intellectual development as upon physical, and vice versa.

    It is thus apparent that the work that the brain can perform is in highest degree proportional to and dependent upon the physical condition of its body. To repeat, a functionally perfect brain is the product only of a physically perfect body. And it is to be emphasized that the brain is not a producer of energy, nor of vitality, nor of the mental processes. It acts but as a medium of reception and transmission, and it in itself no more thinks than do the words that express a thought. Mind, as received from the creative source, is perfect; its expression is affected by the functional ability or inability of its human instrument.

    The mysterious forces, energy and vitality, which are seen manifested in the life of the body, exist outside of and independent of the human vehicle. A healthy organism is one that is in position to liberate these principles in the form of power, mental and physical, as it is needed in the activities.

    Human beings possess what are known as the conscious and subconscious minds. The conscious mind controls those acts which are subject to the will and those thoughts which are produced by brain effort in conscious moments. The subconscious mind covers that which occurs without conscious perception. The conscious mind could not possibly send messages to the numerous glands that fit the body for action, nor attend to all the delicate adjustments that enter into the process. The conscious mind in most of us does not even know of the existence of the organs and secretions involved. But there is a something in mentality that is without conscious perception, and that takes advantage of all of the past, gauging means to an end with perfect nicety.

    All processes of healing are subconscious. Even pain and the distressing symptoms of sickness are to be regarded as benevolent warnings that sharply remind us of our condition, and that compel the repose which we require, or that deter us from admitting into the system substances which are injurious. They not only point to the existence of a mind that is subconscious, but they indicate how great a part that mind plays in the curing of every form of disease. Anything that weakens or depresses the subconscious mind exposes us to disease by making us less able to resist its encroachments. And, on the other hand, we possess such allies and resources within ourselves that the chief function of the physician should be to awaken in his patients the will to live, and to employ every element of resistance which the system itself affords.

    If humanity since its creation had constantly been caring for its individual bodies, no condition of disease could make its appearance suddenly. There could be no physical collapse, for cancers, tumors, Bright's disease, diabetes, etc., all require time to develop, and in a body that is both mentally and physically conscious, their beginnings cannot help but be observed, understood, and remedied. For he who is in the habit of caring properly for his body, who understands and obeys natural physical law, cannot for one day neglect his course of action, because, subconsciously if not consciously, he is subjected to irritation and discomfort. To illustrate, he who is used to pure air cannot endure a vitiated atmosphere, and he who bathes his body daily, in case of omission, finds his skin figuratively talking to him because of its neglect.

    A diseased body is the product of a process development that began with its birth, for every symptom in its finality is cumulative. The colds and fevers of infancy and adolescence, the causes of which are imperfectly eliminated, leave their residue to accumulate until the eventual crisis occurs. And, as in the physical so in the mental realm, disease of the mind, and in it we include crime as well as insanity, are symptoms of unbalance, often produced because of physical reaction. Crime begins in small acts, develops like a cancer, and in reality it is to be regarded as a cancer of the conscious mind, and hence should be treated as is disease. Instead, society punishes the discovered victim. Insanity is but another form of unbalance that in many instances arises from functional physical disturbance, yet it, too, is handled as is crime, its sufferers being subjected to police authority in ways that are reminders of the dark ages.

    And since brain troubles in great part arise from functional physical derangement, their alleviation and cure is to be sought in systemic bodily purification. The text fully covers the manner in which the latter process may best be accomplished, in fact the only way in which it can be done. And, could the fast and its hygienic accessories be introduced and scientifically administered in all asylums, insane as well as criminal, of the land, numbers of their inmates would be restored both in mind and in body. And further, in those in whom mental incapacity is due to organic structural defects that hamper normal function, the form and degree of the latter would at once be revealed, and the knowledge thus gained would determine to what extent treatment should be carried. And it is probable that among even these severely afflicted sufferers there might be many who could be brought to mental responsibility. Apart from its therapeutic worth, a trial of the method in public institutions offers two other points of merit, viz., it would ameliorate much of the suffering now undergone by stimulated unruly patients who need restraint, and it would lower by many thousands of dollars the expense of caring for these wards of the state. But, if not for the sake of those who pay taxes, at least for the salvation of those detained in asylums for the insane and criminal, the method is entitled to a thorough investigation and trial at the hands of government.

    To many minds the thought that human life is in any way connected with or dependent upon ordinary natural agencies carries with it denial of faith in the divine. Reasoning thus, these intellects segregate in toto spirituality from materiality, refusing to recognize their manifest interdependence. A calm retrospect of the history of the Christ causes one to know that Jesus, apart from his spiritual endowment, was a man in the flesh and of the flesh; that he was subject to the laws of the body, to its necessities and to its temptations. It is written, "Jesus was led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered."

    The application of this fragment of sacred history to the subject matter of the text may not be obvious, but brief explanation will serve to show that the related incident is distinctly pertinent. Fasting the body for the sake of health was understood and followed by the older civilizations; and fasting for the attainment of that higher mentality which borders upon spirituality is still employed by the members of that system of philosophy known as Yoga, in which meditation upon the supreme spirit is inculcated as the way to final beatitude. That the Christ acquainted with and was learned in these practices is fully substantiated by the evident purpose and scientific completion of a period of forty days and nights of abstinence from food. Jesus never overturned natural law; he worked with it always, and his statement concerning prayer and fasting in disease is easy of analysis. "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." And fasting, physical in application, conduces to the highest degree of mental clarity. The body, purified of its dross, approaches more nearly the spiritual vehicle it is intended to be. Successfully conducted to the point of the return of hunger, the body and its brain are enhanced in substance and in function. In this condition difficulties are solved, decisions are made, and conclusions are reached with marvelous clearness and despatch.

    The Gospel relates that Jesus was led up into the wilderness for the purpose of being tempted--a test through which mere man passes daily, and ofttimes daily fails to meet. But Jesus, before temptation assailed, fasted for the approximate time needful for physiological purification of the adult body, and the fast concluded, we are specifically told, with its physiologically correct symptom, the return of hunger. We do not err, we think, in attributing to the Christ in the flesh the experiences of the flesh. Why else should he have been subjected to temptation? And physically there must have been need for regeneration, for the incident occurred just before the beginning of his active ministry, when all of his power of endurance was to be called forth, and mental acuity more than normal was to be commanded at every future moment of his physical life. And in addition the divine plan embodied further proof of its all-embracing wisdom in that it held up to the world divinity clothed in a material body, endowed with physical attributes, and subjected to the test of physical desire--a test that could perfectly be withstood only by a mind functioning in a body physiologically pure.

    The Christ invariably worked through the material, the physical, to the mental and spiritual. And perfect spirituality in man requires its vehicle, the material body, to be physically excellent. Purity of body, purity of mind, purity of heart--these alone may commune with the divine.




CHAPTER XX
DEATH IN THE FAST



A THEORY OF DEATH:
ELEVEN CASES OF DEATH IN THE FAST:
SUMMARY OF POST MORTEM FINDINGS


    NO FULLY satisfactory definition in explanation of what is called death in the physical body has ever been given. In conformity with the theory of life, upon which the belief of the author is based, a definition of physical death is offered that, following the tenets of that belief, covers completely for her the phenomenon of the dissolution of the animal body. The theory referred to considers energy, vitality, or life force, as an entity that emanates from a source without the animal organism, and that animates the latter when, with the body as a laboratory, the chemical transformations necessary to life are effected. This means that the expression of energy as exhibited in sentient living organisms is achieved with those organisms functioning merely as means of transmission, as vehicles. While the explanation may be a bit labored, its purport should be clear, and the definition of physical death here offered is this:--when, for one reason or another, the mysterious force which permeates every sentient living body, giving to it motion, sensation, and thought, is prevented entrance to or passage through the organism, what is called death occurs. This definition is not strikingly original, nor is it completely satisfying, but, after all, the sciences have not as yet been able to analyze life nor the sources of life; and the phenomenon of its cessation, or what is called death, is just as much a mystery.

    A digression may here be pardoned. Just what is to be after death, apart from what faith may predicate, we do not know. And men should fear only what they know. They should not, like children, be afraid to go to bed in the dark, afraid of things that they imagine. In all that we really know there is nothing about death to frighten us. We know that our bodies go back to the earth. We know that birth and death come alike to all of us. We can remember nothing that occurred before we were born, yet this thought is not fearsome. We know that this universe, in which the earth is but a grain of sand, is managed with marvelous wisdom and justice. We know in consequence that we have no reason to fear injustice, or terror, or torture.

    Death in the physical body is to be regarded as having taken place when there is complete stoppage of the functions of the brain and of the organs of respiration and circulation, with sequent cessation of the processes dependent upon these functions. To amplify, death occurs whenever, through disease or shock, the brain, the storage battery of physical and mental life, becomes unable to perform its task of transmitting energy--life force to its points of action or expression, the vital organs of the body. Vital organs cease functioning when there is obstruction or demolition of some portion of the main lines of transmission followed by life force in its passage from the brain. That this may happen by reason of long continued denial of food to the organism is undoubtedly true, but death from the exhaustion of inanition caused by absence of food is most rare in occurrence. On the other hand, in bodies that are continuously supplied with sustenance, exhaustion from lack of nourishment because of disorder of the nutritive functions proves a most usual agent of dissolution. And this is true since this sort of exhaustion, while having its source in the functional disability of the organs of nutrition, eventually succeeds in inhibiting the cells of the brain from acquiring and hence assimilating those substances necessary for their conservation.

    In average conditions death results from disease that is functional in character, not organic. In the experience of the author, death during a fast never has occurred when merely functional disorder was present, nor did it ever result for the sole reason that food was withheld. In every instance listed in this chapter, in every instance of death that has happened during the long years of practice upon which this text is based, the cause of dissolution was conclusively shown by post mortem examination to have been the inevitable consequence of obstruction through structural defect of some portion of the avenues through which life force is expressed. And it is questionable whether, in a conscious being not afflicted with morbid impairment of tissue, or not so situated that food could not be supplied when hunger made its demand, death has resulted from starvation, or, in other words, from the exhaustion of brain sustenance. No evidence that is conclusive shows that this has ever happened.

    In disease that is functional in origin and character the fast may be carried to its logical end without a particle of anxiety, for the law of hunger marks the limit beyond which abstinence may not continue lest starvation ensue. Hence, death from starvation is impossible during a fast when functional disease is in question. In the presence of structural organic deficiency the result is not assured. When, however, impairment of tissue is slight in degree, recovery is possible; but, when the fault is such that structural restoration of the organ or organs affected is beyond the power of natural law, no hope of cure exists, although, because functional labor is lessened through abstinence, and distress is with certainty relieved, life may be prolonged. It is always to be remembered that in all disease, whatever its form, the fast is nature's sole curative agency, and is then as much a function as is feeding in health.

    The autopsies held upon the bodies of the subjects of whom the causes of death are here described disclosed in every instance disease that was organic in character. In most of these cases arrested development of one or more of the functioning parts of the body was discovered, and in all of them malformation of the intestines was displayed that must be attributed to long continued irritation with inflammation. These cases are those of persons who had resorted to orthodox methods for the relief of their suffering until orthodoxy proved without avail, and who only then bethought themselves of natural law.

    In view of the defects exhibited, it is certain that malnutrition occurring in the developing period of life, coupled perhaps with the baneful effects of drugs administered in the attempt to remedy disease, was responsible for fatal issue. Nature had endowed each of these subjects at birth with presumably normal vitality; each of them had suffered early in life from severe forms of functional disorder; and each, with one exception, had virtually exhausted the list of medicines designated as remedies for the symptoms displayed.

    While it is not at all a just concept to attempt to place entire responsibility for the conditions shown upon drug dosage, it is to be recognized that, broadly speaking, there is no drug that is in effect not a poison. It is also to be recognized that, while harm ensues when drugs are used for the suppression of disease in mature years, the consequences of administering medical remedies in infancy and in adolescence are much more detrimental.

    The instances of death now to be cited occurred while a fast was in progress, or while the patient was undergoing a period of dieting. Each casts light upon the ease of diagnosis consequent upon abstinence from food as a therapeutic measure; while the autopsies also disclose the deleterious effects upon the human body of dietetic errors and of drug treatment. In every case the cause of death is conclusively shown to have been due to the presence of structural organic defeat that was beyond repair. Two of the deaths described happened when the subjects were on a dietary, but the conditions discovered in these showed no decided differences in causation from those displayed when dissolution took place while a fast was in progress. In all of the related cases death was certain, fasting or feeding. The list is selected from a total of twenty-two fatalities occurring in a practice confined to therapeutic fasting and its accessories that covers a period of over thirty years. The number of cases handled is about thirty thousand, and each of these fasted at some time while under guidance for intervals varying from one day to seventy-five.

    Case 1. A married woman, thirty-eight years of age, who had devoted twenty years in vain attempt to regain lost health under medical guidance. She finally discovered that alternating periods of dieting and abstinence from food, usually short in duration, were the sole means by which she could obtain relief. At consultation a perilous condition indicating the presence of organic disease was evident, and a more carefully selected dietary, with the employment of the usual natural hygienic accompaniments of treatment, was prescribed and faithfully carried out for six months. At the end of this time the patient, in full enjoyment of the relief that invariably appears in disease when organic labor is lessened by diet judiciously lowered, or by abstinence from food, insisted upon undergoing an absolute fast.

    After three weeks, during which liquid food only was ingested, the total abstinence stage was entered, and the condition of the case visibly improved. On the twentieth day of fasting the patient decided for herself that her stomach could tolerate food. Experience demonstrates that persons who suffer from chronic disease after a time develop, as a consequence of repeated disappointment in search of health, a mental tendency that is wilful, not to say stubborn. And in serious cases, such as the one under discussion, it is a question whether the better policy lies in acquiescense or in resistance to their expressed desires. In this instance no opposition was offered when the will to fast was expressed, nor was any attempted when the demand was now made for food. Because of structural organic deficiency, later fully discovered and then most evident in symptom, the digestive organs could not perform the tasks entailed, and ingestion of food resulted in nausea with vomiting, while hiccoughs in severe form, a sign most apprehensive in character, that in the circumstances indicated intestinal obstruction, occurred and continued intermittently until death intervened.

    When a case exhibits in aggravated form the symptoms noted, and when, moreover, its history is one of prolonged suffering, it is a virtual certainty that extreme organic impairment exists that can in no wise be overcome. But, in order that no question might arise concerning the remedial agencies employed and in order to allay the distress of the family, the condition of the case was brought to the attention of several medical practitioners. They suggested a number of things, but none of their suggestions proved of avail, for unanimously they insisted upon feeding the woman, whose stomach was rejecting all forms of food, retaining even water with difficulty. The condition described continued for more than two weeks, with pulse and temperature at average normal, but with no visible improvement Again at the insistence of the family another consultation of medical doctors was called, its personnel consisting this time of three prominent specialists in intestinal disease. They concurred in the opinion that the patient was suffering from cancer of the stomach and pronounced the case as one without hope of recovery. In the latter respect they were right, for death came at the end of the fortieth day of abstinence from food.

    The autopsy made known a condition which the symptoms had predicated. The stomach occupied a position in the abdominal cavity such that its pyloric opening was turned and held forward and downward six or seven inches from its normal position; the rounded portion of the lower center of the organ lay opposite the navel, and its shape was distorted and enlarged to a length of nearly two feet, and to a capacity of six fluid quarts. The small intestines were adherent at a number of points to the peritoneum, and the stomach also had to be released by the knife from the abdominal walls before it could be fully examined. The gall sac was excessively enlarged, while the liver was in a state of degeneration.

    The medical history of this case notes typhoid fever with peritonitis about twelve years before death. This in all probability determines the time of causation of the visceral adhesions and of the distortion in stomach and intestines, for, when the typhoid symptoms occurred, the organs of the body of the patient were fully matured, and the inflammation incident to the symptoms, with constant feeding even while fever was at its height, gave no opportunity for the healing processes of nature to act. This combination of error eventually led to the formation of the lesions described, to which the fatal outcome is directly traceable.

    It is perhaps unnecessary to emphasize the truth that, in the physical distress suffered by this woman, medicine was unable to grant her relief. In fact, the time when she was most free from suffering was covered by the last several weeks of fasting before death occurred.

    During the forty days of abstinence large quantities of blackish offensive fluid was discharged with each enema, and there was progressive relief from distress with lessened pain. However, no decrease in the amount of refuse evacuated was noted until the power of function of the eliminative organs diminished with lowering vitality.

    Case 2 is that of a married woman, thirty-nine years of age, who for all of the adult period of life had suffered greatly from impaired digestion, variously diagnosed by many different physicians. For two years prior to death the patient had subsisted upon a diet of liquid food, the stomach refusing solids. This woman since girlhood had the distinction of consistently refusing medical remedies, but, nevertheless, her condition steadily grew worse, and, while no hope was offered that recovery could be had, her request that she be permitted to undergo a fast was granted. No food, excepting the slight amount of nourishment contained in the juice of oranges and lemons in small quantities was given for fifty-seven days, when she died. In fact, at no time from the beginning of the fast, which really was undertaken because the stomach repeatedly rejected the liquids ingested, could food have been introduced into the organ. This was absolutely determined by the results of the autopsy, which are now given.

    In the duodenum, just below the pyloric opening of the stomach, there must at one time have been an ulcer or some acute inflammation. Nature in her efforts at repair had deposited tissue cells at this point to the degree that the lumen of the intestine had been almost occluded. As time went by this growth enlarged and involved the bile ducts, so that when death occurred the passage through the duodenum was entirely blocked. In composition the accumulation of tissue showed none of the characteristic cell formation of cancer, but was a mass of muscle and membrane, healthy in their components, but abnormal in deposition. The right kidney was in a state of complete degeneration, but the other organs of the body and the intestines, with the exception of the duodenal portion, were normal in size, position, and condition.

    In view of the remarkable circumstances involving the physiology of this woman, a fuller description of her dietetic habit proves interesting. As stated, for two years previous to death only liquids were tolerated. Food substances obtained by boiling vegetables and by diluting fruit juices were the forms in which sustenance was furnished. In fact, so intolerant of solids was the stomach that the broths and juices were strained through cloths in order that no formed particles entered into them. Whenever the straining was defective, vomiting of sediment occurred, hence the utmost care was needed so that distress might not be caused.

    This case, then, subsisted for two years upon only that sustenance which her body was able to appropriate through stomach absorption. Mineral salts and the vitamins may conceivably be conveyed in part to the centers of nutrition in this manner, but it could only have been in minute amounts that proteins, carbohydrates, and the starches were delivered, and then in forms not fully digested. While, until a year or so before her death, there might have been a small passage through and past the accumulation in the duodenum, thus permitting of some intestinal digestion, it is certain that months of existence had elapsed with no food ingested other than that described as strained to a watery consistency; and it is virtually certain that for this same period no intestinal digestion took place, for, when vomiting occurred, no bilious fluid ever appeared, and in the whole history of the case no formed feces were ever evacuated, the enemas in discharge being invariably fluid and never more than slightly discolored.

    Case 3. A young married woman of twenty-four who, since maturity, had suffered from severe intestinal troubles and from acute bilious attacks. Four years before her death she had been medically treated for alleged appendicitis, and at this time an operation was advised to which she refused to submit. In this connection it is interesting to note that the autopsy on this body disclosed an appendix in normal condition with no signs of previous disease.

    Eight months before death the patient had undergone a fast of twenty-eight days and had convalesced into the most satisfactory physical condition she had known since childhood. During this fast she cared for her young baby and continued to do so until acute hepatic hyperemia or congestion of the liver, with symptoms that denoted disease organic in nature, occurred. A fast was at once entered and continued for sixty days when the patient died. It was discovered then that the woman had been pregnant, and to this condition may be attributed some of the complications that arose. From the beginning of the fast copious foul discharges, black in color, were evacuated, and there was a slight daily rise in temperature, which, however, was invariably reduced to normal after the administration of the internal bath.

    Post mortem examination discovered the liver in an advanced condition of degeneration; the stomach exhibited an extreme hour-glass contraction, and its pyloric opening would not permit the insertion of a probe the size of a lead pencil, while the walls of its lumen were cirrhosed or hardened; the small intestines and the colon throughout their lengths displayed a series of cartilaginous contractions. These structural defects were undoubtedly developed after arrival at maturity, since the unaffected portions of the organs were normal in size and in condition. The fetus was removed from the uterus at the autopsy, and was found to be in excellent state, exhibiting the normal development of an unborn child at four months.

    Case 4. This was a married woman of thirty-five years, and the case is similar in many respects to the one preceding. The patient fasted fifty-nine days from the beginning of illness until death. The entire adult life of this woman had been made wretched by digestive impairment, bilious attacks, and menstrual difficulties. Drugs, including patent medicines, had done their worst until about two years before death, when, in hopeless apathy, the patient consented to undergo a fast, and completed one of thirty days with such success that she experienced full relief from menstrual pain thereafter, and there was but little digestive distress unless there had been carelessness in diet.

    The compelling cause that led to the second fast lay in the organic condition, later discovered, that had progressed to the point that the digestive function became inoperative. Morbid degeneration of the liver must have existed for some time previous to the beginning of abstinence, for from the first day of the fast black bilious discharge in quantity discolored the fluid of the enemas. The condition gradually became so aggravated that the thought of food tended to produce nausea, while its odor and even the perfume of flowers could not be borne. Organic defect had without doubt been present when the first fast took place, for its symptoms were noted at that time, but the organs affected, recuperated to a degree by their enforced rest and assisted by general systemic purification, were enabled to continue partial functioning for some months longer.

    In the second fast pulse and temperature rose above normal register several points each day, but fell to average standard after the internal bath, which in this case was administered twice daily.

    As in the previous case pregnancy of some months complicated conditions. On the fifty-first day of abstinence it was discovered that contractions of the uterus were occurring, and in a short while, with some manual assistance, a dead, misshapen fetus was delivered with little or no distress or pain. General relief was immediate, and it was so pronounced as to inspire the family with hope of ultimate recovery; but the improvement was succeeded by a decline in vitality that ended in the death of the patient.

    During the latter days of this fast hiccoughs in severe form were present, and there was some vomiting of blackish bile. It was useless to attempt feeding at any stage of the fast, for, from the first, the stomach refused even water, and the only manner in which the fluids of the body were renewed was through absorption from the baths, both external and internal.

    Post mortem findings follow. The liver was so degenerated that but little functioning could have occurred for many days; the gall sac was at least four times its normal in size and contained foul, black, bilious fluid; the kidneys were hypertrophied or enlarged, and pocketed with pus; the pancreas was so hardened in texture as to resist the knife; the spleen was degenerated to the degree that the organ was held together merely by its surrounding membrane; the small intestines were normal in size, condition, and position, as was the colon, excepting that the transverse portion of the latter organ had suffered malposition and in portions was no larger in diameter than the adult thumb; the right ovary contained a cyst filled with fluid, while the right fallopian tube was bent twice upon itself; the left ovary was in an atrophic or wasted state and was no larger than a lima bean in size; the heart and the lungs were normal.

    Case 5 is that of a young man of twenty-five who had been syphilitically infected five years before death, and who had had his symptoms treated by medical practitioners and by advertising quacks. At the time of consultation syphilitic sores still remained, and other evidences of the blood taint were present. There was a loss of mental control that necessitated constant attendance of a nurse. About six months before death a fast of twenty-eight days was undertaken and successfully finished. At its completion the syphilitic sores had entirely disappeared, and relief in general was such that the patient was enabled to dispense with his attendant and to care for himself. But several months later signs of serious organic breakdown, including loss of mental control, again were apparent. One of the symptoms noted was that of copious discharge of watery mucus from the nasal passages and throat, together with constant, profuse exudation of sweat about the face and head. The latter symptom was present in such degree that the hair of the patient dripped moisture continuously and his pillow needed change every hour. Considerable solid feces and catarrhal mucus appeared in the enemas, and for a month before death speech was impossible and no function could be performed without assistance. No food was given during the last nineteen days of life.

    Post mortem findings showed a brain, the right hemisphere of which was much degenerated and pus laden; the left hemisphere was structurally normal; the right jugular vein was occluded with a whitish deposit, not analyzed; the heart was normal; the right lung was in a state of embolism, and was virtually a mass of clotted blood, useless for its purposes; the left lung was normal; the liver was partially degenerated. In this case no abnormality existed throughout the length of the alimentary canal, and the kidneys, pancreas, and spleen were in condition that presumed ability to function.

    Case 6, that of a man forty-six years of age, presents a history of constant disease with intermittent acute crises. As the result of an accident in childhood, by which the subject was injured internally, both youth and early manhood were punctuated with a succession of severe illnesses, which were treated in orthodox: without permanent relief. About fifteen years before death the patient abandoned medicine and turned to natural therapeutics, with the result that the first lengthy relief from physical distress was obtained. Three years before he died, acute disease again appeared, and, because of uncongenial but unavoidable environment, medical treatment was resorted to for a short time, again without benefit. Reverted to in finality, the fast and its accompaniments succeeded in relieving conditions to the extent that the patient was enabled to resume his wonted work. Although he suffered at intervals from this time on, there was no return of acute distress until the month preceding death, when, after somewhat strenuous exercise followed by a heavy meal, severe intestinal pains developed. For thirty days no food was given, the stomach rejecting even water, and at the end of the period named, virtually in constant pain the while, the patient died.

    Post mortem examination showed an organic condition that was most abnormal. The lungs were adherent to the walls of the pleural cavity and to the diaphragm; the heart was slightly enl arged but functionally capable; the stomach was dilated and prolapsed; the gall sac was divided into three distinct pouches, two of which were filled with a total of one hundred and twenty-six stones, ranging in size from that of a pea to one four inches in circumference; the small intestines were collapsed and midway in their lower portion were intussuscepted so that two yards of their length were telescoped into but five inches, and here the diameter of lumen was only one-quarter of an inch; all of the small intestines were below normal in size; the transverse colon lay in front of the descending part of the bowel, an abnormality which largely increased the labor of disposing of body waste; the ascending and descending portions of the colon were lacking in development and were cirrhosed or hardened in structure; the sigmoid bend and the rectum were of diameter not to exceed that of an adult thumb, and were in an advanced state of cirrhosis; the liver, the pancreas, and the spleen all exhibited partial atrophy; brain and nerve centers showed no signs of deterioration.

    As has been stated, surgical intervention is at times essential in order to correct accidental or congenital structural defect in tissue, and here was a case in which such intervention might have been successfully invoked at the time of the accident noted in its history. Neglected then, life was nevertheless prolonged despite the handicap of the abnormalities described, but at cost constant suffering.

    Case 7, that of a man fifty-six years of age, presents a history of continuous disease in youth, but includes at least twenty years of adult life devoted to corrective dieting, judicious fasting, and to constant hygienic care of the body. At the time that the case was brought to the attention and placed under the direction of the writer, the patient was aware that his condition was such that recourse must be had to every agency promising relief or he must succumb. After examination, the symptoms showing marked organic irregularities, it was agreed that but one hope of prolonging life remained, and that this lay in an absolute fast. By it would be determined either the ability of the organism to continue functioning, or assurance that the human machine had reached the point where life could be no longer maintained.

    The fast began, and there was no marked disturbance until the twenty-first day, while relief was such that the patient and all about him hoped and believed that the improvement noted was permanent in character; but on this day and thereafter unfavorable symptoms progressively developed, and on the thirty-second day of the fast, the case lapsed into coma, which continued until an abscess which had formed in the nasal cavity was with difficulty discharged. Great ease in all respects resulted, and the patient became conscious, assisting with interest in the efforts being made to promote his recovery. Death, however, occurred on the thirty-eighth day of fasting.

    At all times during this fast large amounts of mucus were discharged in the enemas, and at intervals pain, sometimes excruciating in kind, was felt in the bladder. In the latter stages pus in abundance appeared in the urine, and during the last few days of life the bladder ceased functioning, its contents being removed by catheterization. In this case muscular strength was shown in remarkable degree, during the fast and until the day of death. The patient was able at all times during conciousness to move himself in bed, to rise at intervals, and to assist himself in ways that seemed marvelous when his condition is considered.

    The following are the results of the autopsy. The brain, weighing forty-eight and one-half ounces, was perfect in structure. Here again is corroborative evidence of the truth advanced by Dr. E. H. Dewey, and developed by all who have scientifically investigated and practically applied the fast as a therapeutic measure, viz., that nerve tissue is never depleted during abstinence, since its supply of sustenance is gained directly from body reserve, not from material freshly assimilated and appropriated by cells other than those of nerve substance. The lungs of this man were in excellent condition; the heart, organically considered, was perfect, but was filled with a gelatinous mass of serum affected by post mortem change; from the cardiac opening of the stomach to within two inches of the pylorus there was not a particle of healthy membrane, and the appearance of the walls of this organ was that of smooth, wet chamois skin; the duodenum was below normal in size, the upper portion of the jejunum being, however, somewhat dilated; about midway in the tube of the small intestine a downward intussusception had taken place, in length about two and one-half inches; this was of long-standing, since the walls of the bowel had become hardened and thickened, and thus the opening through the gut had been considerably reduced; the only section of the colon that was in normal state was the cecum, and thence to the rectum the organ was infantile in size; in fact, there was not an inch of this part of the intestinal tract into which the tip of the index finger could have been introduced; the sigmoid flexure was less developed than any other portion of the gut; in reality it was not a flexure or bend, being merely a straight vertical canal continuing the descending colon to the rectum and anus; the liver was much congested, its left lobe, however, being partly cirrhosed; the gall bladder was distended with bilious fluid; the pancreas was much undersize, and the spleen was that of an infant; the kidneys were in a state of degeneration and were pocketed with pus, which discharged through the ureters into an inflamed bladder, which was itself undersize and capable of containing within its thickened walls barely three ounces of urine.

    In connection with this undeveloped and functionally inadequate digestive tract, it is interesting to record that the sex organs of this man were those of a boy of twelve or thirteen. He was underweight and boyish in appearance as well. The condition met was of course the result of disease in early life with consequent arrest of organic development.

    Case 9, a civil engineer, twenty-seven years of age, had suffered since childhood with intermittent acute digestive disease, which was treated as is usual in orthodox practice. Malnutrition finally became so pronounced that the subject decided that medicine could no longer suggest anything to alleviate his condition, and he entered a fast of his own volition, coming for consultation some days after its beginning. Examination at this time showed the uselessness of attempting to cope with the organic symptoms that were most plainly apparent, and it was deemed best to inform the patient that recovery was out of the question. To allay as much as was possible the fears of his family, food was given, but the stomach persistently rejected it, and the fast was perforce continued. The patient died at the end of twenty-one days of abstinence.

    Post mortem examination revealed an organism with heart, lungs, and digestive organs so extremely arrested in development that, had it not been for the adult body in which they had been functioning, they would have been considered as the organs of a child four years of age.

    Case 10, a man of thirty-four, whose physical history had been one of constant illness after his twentieth year, is next presented. The patient had been treated medically for indigestion, constipation, and for various fevers. All his life he had been a heavy meat eater and an inveterate user of strong tea. In later years fermentation, difficulty in breathing, and abdominal pain invariably succeeded the ingestion of a meal. For the relief of these symptoms medical correctives and tonics were taken, but the condition gradually grew worse. The patient finally decided to try a fast, but, because of interference by his family, a liquid diet was substituted and continued for thirty-five days when death occurred. In this case pulse and temperature before the dietetic regimen began had been constantly below normal, and during the period given they showed but little change, the pulse standing at fifty-four or thereabouts, with temperature as low at times as ninety-three.

    The autopsy disclosed the lungs completely filled with an exudation of serous fluid, a condition that was the immediate cause of death. The surface of the body for several weeks had been discolored in spots, these blotches, or cyanosed areas, indicating an obstructed circulation. This symptom is sometimes present in cases of cirrhosis of the liver, and the latter organ was found in an advanced stage of atrophic hardening. The stomach held but eight fluid ounces, and it could hold no more, for its outside muscular coat was in a permanent state of contraction, while its mucus membrane was very much thickened, making the walls of the organ at least one inch in depth or thickness. As a result of the contraction of the outside coating of the stomach, it had become elongated into a tube, and its normal capacity was much diminished. The duodenum and the upper three feet of the small intestine were dilated so that their lumen was three inches in diameter, a structural change which suggests the thought that nature had attempted to remedy in this portion of the alimentary canal the deficiency in size and function existing in the stomach. It is said that cirrhosis of the stomach is a symptom very rarely observed in disease, but in this case and in the one that follows, this organic change was present in forms that could scarcely have been more perfect examples of their kind. Continuing the post mortem findings, below the dilated section of the small intestines the remainder of the tract including the entire colon was apparently normal in size and in functional ability. The gall bladder was small, while the kidneys, the pancreas, and the spleen all exhibited signs of tissue hardening.

    Case 11, an unmarried woman of thirty-three, had never passed a year during infancy and girlhood free from acute illness, and had been a sufferer through all of her later life from nervous exhaustion that at frequent intervals was accompanied with morbid craving for food, a desire which was satisfied without reason whenever it occurred. About five years before death the medical adviser of the patient ordered that she take some sustenance every two hours during her waking moments, with a full meal just before retiring. In addition to her other suffering, for many years at the menstrual period, the young woman was compelled to lose four or five days from her duties. She had sought the world over for relief, and about two years before consultation had turned to natural agencies for health restoration undergoing then a fast of ten days. At the time the case was presented for examination there could be no doubt but that some aggravated form of organic disease existed, and no encouragement was offered in prognosis, but it was agreed that the treatment given should be aimed at the relief that a light diet, coupled with the essential eliminative accessories, would be certain to afford. This course was pursued for a period of eighty days, when death occurred. The case when first seen showed a cyanosed condition of the skin; the cheeks were blue and veined, as was the nose, and the entire surface of the body exhibited deplorable deficiency in venous circulation. This state improved to some extent after entering upon the dietary regimen.

    Examination of the body after death revealed a liver and stomach cirrhosed, the stomach walls showing no evidence of recent function, being approximately three-quarters of an inch in thickness. The small intestines, infantile in size, were of the consistency of cartilage in sections, and adhesions were present at various points. The colon was no larger than an adult thumb throughout its length, and it also exhibited adhesions. The only organs of the body that were in anything like a condition of functional capability were the lungs and the heart. The kidneys, the spleen, and the pancreas, as in the previous case, were incipiently hardened.

    In several of the cases quoted it has been mentioned that the patient after the beginning of a fast, experienced a renewal of vitality for which no solid physiological foundation existed. Nature, struggling to restore organic function, invariably makes the effort commensurate with the gravity of the existent defect. By the removal of the labor of digestion at least one-half of the total organic work of the body is lifted, and relief that simulates recuperation is manifested despite structural deficiency in the machine. In the presence of serious organic disease this seemingly favorable symptom is of short duration, and, as it passes, very evident decline begins and progresses until nerve centers and brain no longer receive adequate support and the body dies. In Cases 3 and 4 the relief experienced after the first fast was sufficient in each case, with organs still partially able to function, to enable the system to maintain itself until accumulation again became too great to permit of continuance. Defects in organism, too serious to have been corrected in the earlier treatment or in the interim, now reached the stage either of degeneration or of atrophy, until finally liberation of the life principle became no longer possible.

    When a case is first presented for examination the presence of serious organic defect cannot always be determined, but no doubt is permitted shortly after entrance into a fast, for within a week or ten days symptoms are displayed that fix conditions. The third week positively decides the outcome. In the two cases last described signs of organic disease were such as not to be mistaken from the very first. Soon or late the result in these and like instances must be death, and all that can be done towards possible recovery must in the circumstances prove of no avail. Because of the hopeless outlook the cases described were placed upon restricted diet; a diet that put no undue strain upon failing function, but that, nevertheless, did not ameliorate the distress of disease as would an absolute fast. Family anxiety and outside criticism prevented the employment of the latter agency. In the circumstances life was prolonged for several weeks, but it is virtually certain that, if food had been entirely excluded, relief would have been greater and days would have been added to existence.

    Disease that is functional in character is self-limited. The amount of poison manufactured within the body is determined by the intake of food or of drugs, and eradication of disease is fixed in limit of time by the ability of vital organs to resist and east out toxic products. The possibility always exists that these organs may prove unequal to their work, and this possibility becomes a certainty, with death as the outcome, in two situations--one, when the organs themselves are structurally defective, and the other, when, though fully capable of normal function, their powers are stimulated by food or by drugs, or by both, to the point of exhaustion. But one of these conditions, that of irreparable organic defect, presents itself when disease is treated by means of the fast. Both are encountered in the therapeutics of medicine.

    In the majority of instances in medically treated cases the passing of life occurs under the influence of opiates that deaden pain and paralyze consciousness. Virtually from the beginning of a fast pain ceases, consciousness is usually maintained with exceptional mental clarity, and death, if it occurs, is like falling into gentle sleep.

    The results displayed in the post mortem findings cited, and the comparisons made in the statement that follows, are tangible assets in the claim that, in the absence of defects in the organs of the body, abstinence from food, together with the needful health-giving and health preserving accompaniments elsewhere described in the text, is the unfailing remedy for the correction of functional ills. Both physician and patient from the outset of treatment possess the assurance of recovery; and confidenee that rests on infallible natural law is in itself of the greatest assistance in accomplishing results.

    Comparative statement of post mortem findings is death by starvation (medical), and post mortem findings in death during the fast as noted in the text.


EMACIATION

Death by starvation:

    Marked.

Death by fasting:

    In cases where cirrhosed state of liver or stomach existed, emaciation was similar to that in chronic ailments, but in the other instances it was not at all marked.


SKIN

Death by starvation:

    Shrivelled and wrinkled; emits a fetid odor; sometimes dark brown, varnishy coating; tightly adherent to parts beneath; rough, scurvy surface.

Death by fasting:

    Smooth and pliable in all cases; free from odor; no coating; not adherent. Except in eases of cirrhosis of liver or stomach, perfectly white. In the latter cyanosed condition as noted


SUB-CUTANEOUS FAT

Death by starvation:

    Absent.

Death by fasting:

    In all eases sub-cutaneous fat was present. This was especially so where disintegration of the liver is noted.


POST MORTEM RIGIDITY

Death by starvation:

    Pronounced.

Death by fasting:

    Very slight.


PUTREFACTION

Death by starvation:

    Sets in at once and progresses very rapidly.

Death by fasting:

    Very slow in progress. No preservatives were used on any body before holding the autopsy. In one instance post mortem was held one month after death, and putrefaction was hardly noticeable. Slowness of decay is attributable to the constant employment of both external and internal baths during treatment. Fasting is a process of elimination in immediate result, and the products that tend to swift decomposition are removed from the body as rapidly as formed.


HEART

Death by starvation:

    Usually contracted, containing only a small amount of blood. Sometimes distinct atrophy.

Death by fasting:

    Normal in all cases.


LUNGS

Death by starvation:

    Normal but smaller.

Death by fasting:

    Normal except as noted.

    
BLOOD

Death by starvation:

    Lessened in amount, but thin and fluid from anemia.

Death by fasting:

    Abundance of blood. No apparent anemia.


BLADDER

Death by starvation:

    Invariably empty. Sometimes much atrophied.

Death by fasting:

    In all cases contained some water. Pus as noted. No atrophy except in Case 7.


STOMACH

Death by starvation:

    Small, contracted; walls thin; mucosa corrugated and pale.

Death by fasting:

    Several cases showed extreme dilation; two were in state of cirrhosis; none showed contractions except Case 3 (hour-glass), and Cases 10 and 11 (cirrhosis). Other variations as noted.


INTESTINES

Death by starvation:

    Show uniform contraction as to lumen and length; walls usually thin and transparent to light; their atrophy in this connection is characteristic. Sometimes empty; sometimes containing dark mucus; sometimes distended with gas.

Death by fasting:

    The condition of the intestines is specifically noted in all cases. There were no general characteristics, but in no instance were the walls unduly thin.


KIDNEYS

Death by starvation:

    Do not seem to suffer.

Death by fasting:

    Suffered as noted.


SPLEEN

Death by starvation:

    Not noteworthy.

Death by fasting:

    Normal in majority of eases. Disintegration noted in Case 4, atrophy in Cases 6 and 7.


PANCREAS

Death by starvation:

    Always atrophied, sometimes to practical disappearance.

Death by fasting:

    Atrophy noted in Cases 6 and 7; hypertrophy with cirrhosis in Case 4; incipient cirrhosis in Cases 10 and 11. Others normal.


OMENTUM

Death by starvation:

    Transparent and destitute of fat.

Death by fasting:

    In all cases some fat; in Case 4 excessive fat. Transparent in no case.


LIVER

Death by starvation:

    Unaltered except in size, which is lessened.

Death by fasting:

    Noted in all cased There were no general characteristics; the organ varied in size and structure with the individual.


GALL BLADDER

Death by starvation:

    Usually full; contents staining adjacent tissues.

Death by fasting:

    Case 8 was the only instance in which there was staining of adjacent tissues. Others were as noted or normal.


    One fact of significance shown in the post mortem findings and in the comparison noted above is that, no matter how general were the defects in other organs, nor how emaciated the body, unless they themselves were organically imperfect, the heart, the lungs, and the brain were normal in size and in functioning ability. It may be added that, although not always specifically stated, the brain in each instance in the cases cited was thoroughly dissected.

    Through the facts related the immediate cause of death in every case described may easily be traced to its origin. And furthermore these facts virtually prove that organic deficiency, if not produced by drug dosage, is the direct result of digestive impairment. The scientific worth of this observation is much enhanced for the reason that in these autopsies the entire organism in each case was exhibited unaffected by recent drug paralysis. Observation also shows that the subjects in whom glands were hardened or atrophied were invariably of an emaciated or wiry physique, while those in whom a softening of the organs had occurred were inclined to obesity. It is also interesting to note that, where mental control was lacking at any stage of the fast, the colon upon dissection showed displacement and distortion, so much so that its evacuation was rendered most difficult even with the aid of enemata.

    From the scientific viewpoint the observations included in the present chapter are of greatest import. By them the theory of Fasting for the Cure of Disease is fully substantiated, and proof of its efficacy as a therapeutic measure is rendered incontrovertible.

SUMMARY OF DEATHS IN THE FAST

No.	Sex	Length of Fast Days	Age	Height	Weight at Begin ning of Fast	Weight at Death	Pulse at begi- ning of fast	Pulse at mid fast	Pulse before death	Temp at begin- ning of ast	Temp at mid fast	Temp before death
1	F	40	38	5'5"	124	86	82	72	86	99	98	97
2	F	57	39	5'2"	110	68	74	72	68	96	98	94
3	F	60	24	5'7"	132	75	90	104	112	97	99	96
4	F	59	35	5'8"	144	90	78	84	108	100	100	96
5	M	19	24	5'7"	110	87	80	68	60	96	97	94
6	M	30	46	5'11"	145	112	88	92	96	98	99	97
7	M	38	56	5'5"	115	70	60	68	50	94	96	94
8	M	49	22	5'6"	128	100	90	86	102	97	98	97
9	M	21	27	5'10"	125	88	56	54	48	94	96	94
10	M	35 (Diet)	34	5'9"	146	120	54	52	50	94	94	94
11	F	80 (Diet)	33	5'2"	78	65	56	60	62	94	96	94

    





CHAPTER XXI
NATURAL THERAPY AND THE FAST


OSTEOPATHY AND CHIROPRACTIC:
THE TENDENCY OF OSTEOPATHY TO REVERT TO MEDICINE:
THE BROAD BASIS OF NATURAL THERAPY


    AS ELSEWHERE expressed the fast in itself is primarily an eliminative agency, a process of purification, and therefore it must be regarded, not as the actual restorative, curative power, but as a means to this end. Ability to recover from disease, cure itself, resides within the individual organism, the fast, together with its accessories, permitting, and at times even compelling, gathered body impurity to be eliminated through the various natural, normal channels of evacuation. It prepares and furnishes a restored and renovated foundation upon which a new and healthy physical structure may be re-erected.

    The accessories utilized in fasting have been in greater part explained and elaborated. But one important auxiliary agency that is daily brought into play during the regimen imposed is that of body manipulation, including adjustment and correction of bony lesions, be the latter located in the spinal column or elsewhere. In this connection two distinct schools of healing have arisen within comparatively recent time, those of Osteopathy and of Chiropractic.

    Osteopathy, the theory of which was first propounded by Dr. A. T. Still in 1874, is defined as "that science or system of healing which treats disease of the human body by manual therapeutics for the stimulation of the remedial forces within the body itself, for the correction of misplaced tissue, and for the removal of obstructions or interferences with the fluids of the body, all without the internal administration of drugs or medicine." It may perhaps serve to make this definition more lucid if Dr. Still's own interpretation of his discovery is added. It is this:-- "Osteopathy deals with the body as an intricate machine, which, if kept in proper adjustment, nourished and cared for, will run smoothly into ripe old age. When every part of the machine is adjusted and in perfect harmony, health will hold dominion over the human organism by laws as natural and immutable as are the laws of gravitation. Every living organism has within it the power to manufacture and prepare all chemicals, materials, and forces needed to build and rebuild itself, together with all of the machinery and apparatus required to do the work in the most perfect manner, producing the only substances that can be utilized in the economy of the individual. No material other than food and water taken in satisfaction of the demands of the appetite can be introduced without detriment."

    The name, Osteopathy, derived as it is from two Greek words, osteon, a bone, and pathos, suffering, is not such a misnomer as at first might appear. The osteopathic theory, it is seen, is based on the belief that disease is caused by some part of the human mechanism being out of proper adjustment, as in the ease of misplaced bone, cartilage or ligament, adhesions or contractions of muscle, any one of which results in unnatural pressure on, or obstruction to, nerve, blood, or lymph. Osteopathy, then, through the agency or use of the bones, especially the long ones which are employed as levers, seeks to adjust the misplaced parts. It pays attention to all portions of the organism, but it devotes much of its work to the spinal column, which, owing to its complex structure, is liable to several forms of sub-dislocation, depending upon the region in which they may occur. The most common of these is that of rotation followed by forward or backward displacement of a single vertebra. Compensation always succeeds these changes so that the disturbance is communicated to the vertebrae above or below, thus forming a group. These lesions and others are detected by the touch and are verified by tenderness of the surrounding parts.

    Chiropractic is defined as "a system of therapeutic treatment for disease through the adjustment of the articulations of the human body, particularly those of the spine, with the object of relieving pressure or tension upon nerve filaments." As in osteopathy, the operations necessary are performed with the hands, no drugs being administered.

    There is no doubt that mobility of the spinal column is of first importance, for in health there is motion between adjacent vertebrae. Lack of movement may be caused by muscular tension, by stretching of ligaments, or by a union of the parts because of bony deposit. Following any of these conditions, both osteopathy and chiropractic hold, are functional or organic disturbances, acute becoming chronic. Nerves are pinched or impinged, and, as circulation of blood to an organ depends upon its nerve control, organic mechanism is interfered with, and disease results.

    That these two schools are closely related in theory is evident. But each falls short of its greatest possibilities when offered as a sole agency for the relief of human ills. Osteopathy has begun to recognize this fundamental fallacy in principle, but in doing so, it has to a degree departed from the vision of its founder, a departure which, in the opinion of the author, is vital error. At the time this is written osteopathy is leaning backward towards that profession which Dr. Still repudiated a half century ago, and only its leading members can save it from amalgamation with the dominant cult, a union which will surely prove its annihilation. Already in the osteopathic curriculum there have been introduced materia medica, pharmacology, and minor surgery, with side journeys into bacteriology. The official magazines of the profession now carry articles on subjects which, if not strictly medical in tone, are in essence applications of medical theory, as witness in a recent number of one of their journals a dissertation upon colonic therapy with the recommendation that strong cultures of certain bacteria be introduced into the bowel to combat other so-called pathological bacteria. And why should osteopathy concern itself, as it does in the same columns, with the use of insulin in the treatment of diabetes?

    On the other hand it is refreshing to discover in editorial comment the following: "Some say, if the science of osteopathy is developed and practiced, what is the difference whether we do it alone or unite with the medics and do it with them? It is this: as an independent profession, untrammeled by a hodge-podge of useless empirical chemical therapy, faulty lines of reasoning, and age-old prejudices, with a recognized excuse for our existence--clinical results scientifically proven--we can bring to suffering humanity generally the truths of osteopathy in a way better to advance the world's well-being. We have a responsibility. Let us not shirk it. Let us live up to it."

    With the exception of sanctioning those surgical operations which it is necessary at times to perform upon the human body, osteopathy, a system of natural therapeutics, has no need to revert to the system of error out of which it grew and from which it long since separated itself. Its fundamental principles deny all save natural methods for prevention, relief, and cure of disease, and by its excursions into medical therapy, it belies, not only the tenets of its right to exist as a profession distinct from other healing cults, but it depreciates and disparages the wisdom of its founder.

    The criticism offered concerning retrogression in principle on the part of osteopathy does not apply to chiropractic as a profession. Both of these schools may be arraigned before the bar of natural therapy in that each is seen to reason from effect to cause when it claims that spinal lesions primarily lower nutrition. Barring forcible displacement of vertebrae, accidentally brought about, there is but one source from which may arise a condition of lowered nutrition in any of the tissues of the body, and this is faulty digestion. Perfect digestion in large degree insures perfect assimilation, and perfect assimilation must conserve muscular tone. Muscles that are built when a state of malnutrition exists are not adequate for the work of supporting bony structure with the delicate adjustment that combines strength with the necessary measure off flexibility.

    Manotherapy at all times is limited in its field of practice when used alone, but, in connection with the method outlined in the text, its efficiency is greatly extended, and, used in conjunction with the fast and its immediate accessories, an almost perfect combination for the prevention and cure of disease is presented.

    To illustrate further, in the presence of a full stomach manotherapy becomes a method of mere force and stimulation, which in the circumstances is usually detrimental to health It can then be classed only as passive physical culture in which a subject permits the operator to exercise his muscles instead of doing the work himself. But, doing a fast, all muscles of the body are in a state of relaxation, a natural consequence of the process of rest and elimination in progress. They respond in this condition to every impetus, and blood circulation at the same time is directly amenable to the stimulation offered.

    And in pregnancy and confinement, the trained hands of the osteopath, hands that possess what is known as "lesion sense," perform with accuracy, expedition, and intelligence those acts that are so essential in facilitating delivery, and, if beforehand, the general dietetic regimen outlined herein for pregnant women be observed, labor is eased, and the work of the manotherapist is rendered less difficult. In correcting uterine displacement, fasting removes congestion, relaxes muscles, while manual adjustment assists in completing cure. Body manipulation, properly administered, is at all times an aid to elimination, but especially is this so during fasting; and, when a patient is weak and despondent, circulation, thus stimulated, buoys. Congested glands that so often suppurate, and that may develop into growths, benign or malignant, may through judicious combination of fasting and manipulation be caused to disappear. And this applies to all morbid enlargements, the procedures mentioned compelling natural augmentation of blood in the parts, thus inducing an increased power of absorption. And it must not be forgotten that in virtually all forms of paralysis, manual release of the atlas, the uppermost of the cervical vertebrae, a movement known to all efficient operators in manotherapy, often is the first step towards restoration of sensation in the paralyzed area. And here the purifying processes impelled by a fast complete recovery.

    The chief cause which deters general acceptance of natural therapy is the diversity of the methods presented and the completeness of none of them when depended upon alone. To say that any one method is a cure-all is arrant nonsense. In order to secure the greatest good both for the physician and humanity a broader vision is needed, and natural therapy must be extended to embrace that which is good in all of the systems of healing; and that which is good is that which, while conserving and stimulating vitality, will not interfere with natural function. The osteopathic physician, the chiropractic doctor, and even the fasting specialist, fails if the theory upon which his art is based is alone depended upon for each and every case presented for advice and guidance. Casting aside sectarian prejudices and differences, let the good that is in all be combined in one common school of therapeutics, a school that then will demonstrate that which makes nature itself distinctive and powerful, catholic in theory, which is science, and catholic in art, which is science applied.