PART TWO
THEORY OF FASTING



CHAPTER II
UNITY OF, DISEASE AND CURE


FASTING AND STARVATION DEFINED:
DISTINCTION BETWEEN FUNCTIONAL AND ORGANIC DISEASE:
THE CAUSE OF IMPURE BLOOD:
THE NATURE OF DISEASE AND CURE


    DISEASE and cure are a unity. The former may not be suppressed lest the latter fail of attainment. In order that a clear conception of the substance of the text may be obtained, a short explanation of the meaning of the thought expressed in the first sentence and of the principles upon which the efficacy of the fast in the treatment of disease is based is essential. It is also necessary, for the purpose of defining the distinction that exists between fasting and starvation, to discuss later on the physiological changes developed in the progress of the latter phenomenon, since, in the popular mind, fasting is invariably confounded with starvation.

    Fasting is defined as follows:--the voluntary denial of food to a system which is diseased, and which, because of disease, neither demands nor desires nourishment until, rested, purified, and with hunger in evidence, it is again able to resume its metabolic processes. Then, and not till then, is food supplied; then, and not till then, does starvation begin.

    For the purposes of the text starvation is defined as the denial of food, by accident or design, to a system needing and demanding sustenance. Hunger, true desire for food, indicates the want and calamitous consequences ensue when its call is denied.

    Relieving physical unbalance by voluntarily withholding food is based upon the logical conclusion of the argument herein that, disregarding the variously designated symptoms by which disease is manifested in differing subjects, always there is present one predominating morbid phenomenon--an impure blood current. And the cause of impure blood is primarily faulty nutrition.

    An important distinction in condition here needs exposition. Organic disease, whether inherent, or the result of continued functional disturbance, or of physical shock, is that in which one or more of the organs of the body is deformed, undeveloped, or otherwise structurally disabled so as to interfere with its work, a state comparable to that of a machine with a defective cog.

    Functional disease is that in which the vital organs in general are in condition to do their work, but certain of them have become unable partially or wholly to function by reason of congestion and irritation, the result of food chemically changed into noxious substances through causes later to be related in detail. In this state fermentation and putrefaction occur in the intestinal canal and elsewhere, and toxins are produced that enter the blood, thus impairing its quality and deranging the vital processes. Extra labor is also entailed upon other organs, since they are not only stimulated in unwonted degree by the presence of substances harmful to their action, but are also compelled to perform, in so far as they may, the work of their disabled allies.

    Organic disease is a cause in itself of faulty nutrition, for, when it is present, the organs affected are always partially crippled in function. While this form of disease is usually beyond the hope of recovery, its harmful results may be reduced to a minimum by means of judicious application of the fast at properly regulated intervals; and a combination of abstinence from food with corrective dieting will lengthen the life of the sufferer to the degree to which a defective organism will permit vitality to operate.

    Functional disease and its ultimate consequence, functionally caused organic disease, are the results of nutrition impaired by incorrect methods in feeding, by improper selection of food, or by a supply beyond the power of the metabolic processes to handle. The latter include those operations by which on the one hand dead food is converted into living tissue, and on the other by which living matter is broken down into simpler products in a cell or organism. In any of the circumstances poisons are produced that injure the system, until finally the condition becomes general and disease is apparent. The subject cannot have been ignorant of disturbance for some time previous to actual disability, for minor aches and pains have given ample warning. Mild preventive steps, taken when symptoms first appear, will obviate by anticipative action later drastic measures, but natural resident power of contending against bodily abuse is limited only by individual characteristics, and these may permit of extended transgression of hygienic law. Usually a positive halt is not called until the physical machinery has been well nigh obstructed with food waste and its products

    It is possible that at first sight the principles here set forth may not be fully apprehended, hence, as important premises to the argument, they are again enumerated for reference by the student in connection with the body of the text.

    In disease, whatever abnormal conditions are present, whatever the nominal symptom, an impure blood stream is always discovered.

    Impure blood is caused primarily by impaired nutrition.

    Impaired nutrition results from

    (a) Taking into the body food wrongly selected in kind or in quantity, wrongly prepared, or wrongly masticated.

    (b) Taking into the body food that may have been correctly selected, prepared, and eaten, but that in quantity is greater than is needed for the repair and growth of tissue.

    (c) Nerve force inhibited at its source, at some point in transmission, or by reflexive stimulus, irritation, at its termini.

    (d) Mental perturbation, such as worry, fear, jealousy, anger, and the like.

    Any of these causes being operative, food ingested fails of complete digestion, ferments and putrefies, generating circulating poison that creates and continues disease until the producing cause can be eliminated.

    Inherent or congenital organic disease and functionally caused organic disease in its later stages embody defects in form, size, or cell structure of any one of the vital organs. Except in rare instances through surgical intervention, such structural deficiencies are beyond the hope of repair, but a carefully selected dietary combined with judicious application of the fast and its accessories will afford relief and prolong existence.

    In disease that is purely functional in cause the vital organs are normally developed and are physically perfect in structure, but are obstructed in action by food-excess and its toxic products. Functionally caused disease is a condition that always admits of full recovery, and cure is a certainty when natural law is permitted its course.

    Any symptom of disease is evidence of poison circulating in the blood. The conventional method of treatment invariably aims at the suppression of the symptom rather than at the removal of its cause. On the other hand, the natural manner of handling the situation recognizes disease as health perverted, and far from attempting to suppress its symptoms it aims at still further uncovering the condition by assisting the action of the very evident eliminative process in operation. And oftentimes this assistance of the eliminative function results in an aggravation of symptoms, in an apparent increase in the severity of disease. This is a purely logical and salutary consequence of natural curative phenomena. Disease in itself being but a process of the elimination of toxins from the system, nature, given free rein, thus expresses herself in determined effort towards the restoration of health, the normal state of physical existence

    Hunger and disease cannot exist simultaneously in the animal body. This is a truth that cannot be too strongly emphasized. When hunger is absent because of disease, food is required neither for cell rebuilding nor for strength, and all animate creation, save man, obeys the primal law of abstinence when the physical scale no longer balances. Knowing that disease arises from a single source, natural therapeutics knows as well but a single means of relief--rest for organs overworked, and prompt removal by natural aids of substances deleterious to health.

    To revert to the symptoms of disease--the function of digestion is generally regarded as an extensive and complicated process, and it is so closely related to the functions of other parts of the body that it is difficult to describe the bounds, if any, beyond which digestion has no influence. The digestive apparatus is commonly spoken of as including the alimentary canal and those important glands that contribute secretions to the successive processes involved; but, as absorption and assimilation, on the one hand, and formation and withdrawal of waste products, on the other, are so nearly related to preliminary digestion, it is impossible to form a clear conception of disease of the digestive organs, for instance, without observing the state of other and contributory parts of the body. While it makes for simplicity of description to exclude those organs not commonly grouped with the digestive apparatus, this does not result in a correct understanding, and therefore, if an explanation is to be found, not only for a disturbed physiological state, but also, in instances, for structural changes in the digestive organs, the field must be widened, and study be directed to the nervous system, including its physical manifestations, to the fluids of the body, to the rebuilding and breaking-down of tissue, and to the eliminative functions as well. Unconsciously a great part of the importance of this general view is perhaps recognized when it is assumed that good digestion depends upon restful sleep, fresh air, sunlight, physical exercise, and activity of the bowels, kidneys, and skin. But, disregarding these essential matters, it is difficult to apprehend the nature of digestive disturbances, or to prescribe for their relief. It may truly be said of an individual that, in a sense, his digestive ailment arises in the brain, in the lungs, in the heart, or in the kidneys, but the distinctions and differences stated must be clearly kept in mind lest the idea of the unity of disease and cure be clouded. It must be fully understood that the study of disease of the stomach is not limited to that organ, that the symptom expressed is merely that of disturbances that may be widely distributed throughout the body. Medicine has sought to give disease names that are specifically classified, names based upon the locality of expression of the symptom; but this, it is seen, is only a relatively justifiable conception. There are no symptoms referable solely to the kidneys, to the heart, to the blood; the man is sick from a single cause; his illness appears here or there, but his body is sick as a whole.

    It is surprising to discover that the disturbances of the functions of the human body should not long since have been traced to their single source. Long ago should pain and other distressing symptoms of illness have been recognized as benevolent warnings, sharp reminders of a condition, not perhaps yet fully developed, but as warnings that in themselves should compel the repose that is necessary, and that should forbid admission into the body of substances that are injurious.

    The doctrine of unity in the cause and cure of disease as set forth in the text of this work has been carefully and earnestly investigated by the author through a period of more than thirty years. Thousands of cases have been treated upon this basis, and each instance has but confirmed the conviction that the principle involved is absolutely sound. It has stood all tests. When death during a fast has occurred, the autopsy invariably revealed organic deficiency, inherent or acquired through years of continuous functional abuse. But in all cases of disease purely functional in cause, proper application of the method led to complete recovery.

    So far as may be accomplished in a work of this size, the fast as a therapeutic agency, with its effects both upon the body and mind, is fully discussed. What is asked of the reader is that he lay aside prejudice and approach the subject without bias, keeping before the eyes of his mind the words of the apostle:--"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good."




CHAPTER III
STARVATION


STARVING FROM OVERFEEDING:
THERE IS NO HUNGER WHEN DISEASE IS MANIFEST


    THE CHIEF purpose of food is that of supplying the tissue of the body with the elements necessary for its growth and maintenance. In the event that, through faulty digestion, through organic defect, or through deficiency in the functions of absorption and assimilation, tissue waste is not replaced as broken down, starvation ensues. In any of the designated conditions, the more food supplied, the less resistance to disease succeeds since energy then must be directed to the elimination of food and food products that cannot be utilized because of physical inability in the ultimate processes, and finally exhaustion and death occur.

    Dr. E. H. Dewey said, "The body may be well fed but still be starving to death." This statement may be made more striking and perhaps more lucid by saying that in reality it is the overfed body that is continuously in a starving condition, and this by a process that is much more distressing in effect than is that by which death is caused when food is indefinitely denied. And starving of this sort, starving from overfeeding, is well nigh the universal manner in which the individual existence of man is terminated, for every symptom of disease, every disease epidemic, owes its development to food wrongly combined, and ingested always in excess, and usually far in excess, of body requirement, with malnutrition as its consequence.

    Each cell that enters the structure of the human organism may be regarded as an entity, as an individual life center, with power to select and to appropriate for its maintenance suitable constructive material from the blood current, and with power to eliminate its own waste. This being true, the life of the body as a whole is reflected in miniature in each of its cells, the infinitesimal particles that go to form its structure. In health, when equilibrium is sustained between nutrition and elimination, every cell capably performs its function, receives its needful quota of pabulum, and discharges its waste. In disease the condition changes. Material then absorbed is the product of ill-digested or non-digested food, elimination is also at fault, and the cell finds its source of maintenance, the blood stream, vitiated. For a time the small body is supported by its inherent vitality and by its stored food reserve, but, if proper nourishment is denied, if the condition of toxemia persists, it atrophies and eventually dies. The death of cells sufficient in number to cause a vital organ to fail in function causes the death of the body. And thus, in a sense, it may be said that all animal dissolution, exclusive of that caused by accident, is brought about through starvation

    The usual concept of starvation is that the body perishes for some reason or other because it is not supplied with food for its maintenance and growth. But elements and conditions other than those caused by deprivation of food enter into starving to death, for the latter cannot occur in ordinary circumstances, as the text demonstrates, within a few days or weeks, or even months, when the resources of the body have been in any degree conserved.

    In a scientifically conducted fast death from starvation cannot take place when organic disease is absent. In every animate body a reserve supply of nourishment is held in the interstices of tissue. Brain and nerves are at all times directly supported by this stored food, and, when wounds, sores, or fractures of bone call for repair, a healthy surplus furnishes the demand. Not until this reserve is exhausted or prevented from being appropriated by nerve structure can death intervene.

    When disease is manifest, there is no hunger--there cannot be, for the body then indicates through physical distress first, that it desires functional rest, and next, that it is in process of relieving itself of the cause of its distress. And, until its purposes are accomplished, vitality is more weakly expressed, since the paths for the transfer of energy are largely obstructed. But the vehicle of vitality, the organism itself, is conserved for a time by means of its sinking-fund of nourishment. If by continued feeding--and any feeding in disease is pernicious--the avenues for the expression of life force are further obstructed, strength finally may be no longer manifested, and death will occur. On the other hand, when nature is permitted full scope, the cause of disease is eliminated, and true hunger appears. Then, with food supplied, rebuilding and growth are resumed in a system purified and functionally equal to its appointed tasks.

    The law of hunger, the primal rule of being in animal existence, is reserved for discussion later in the text. It is the safeguard of bodily resource, and its claims may never be ignored.

    Disease may be induced through the action of mental states upon physical function, and in accidental conditions that compel abstinence from food, such as shipwreck, mine disasters, and the like, digestive function is paralyzed by mental apprehension. If death should occur in these circumstances, within a comparatively short time, it must be attributed, not to lack of nourishment, but to the effect of fear, of general emotional exhaustion, upon physical forces.

    It is an error to associate the terms, fasting and starvation. Fasting conduces to systemic purlfication; starvation is actual systemic poisoning. One may and often does starve on three full daily meals. And it may be added that it requires great skill to fast an individual properly, but that any tyro can starve a man to death.




CHAPTER IV
WHEN AND WHY TO FAST


THE TIME TO FAST IS WHEN ONE IS ILL:
THE BODY GETS SICK AS A WHOLE:
GENERAL HINTS ABOUT FASTING


    FASTING is indicated only when illness impends or is in actual evidence. No need exists in health for the employment of measures for the alleviation of pain and distress for these signs are non-evident when physical balance is the rule. Remedial means are necessary only in illness, impending or actual, and then alone should the fast and its accessories be applied.

    In disease nature is in process of purifying the body--is casting out its waste, thus cleansing the system in preparation for active, healthy rebuilding. The fast as an eliminative measure is comparable to no other agency known, but before entering upon a period of abstinence from food, the subject, whether under guidance or conducting his own case, should fully comprehend the details of the truth that physical lack of balance is due to a single cause. The symptoms that then are present, or that may arise thereafter during the fast or upon a dietary regimen, need occasion no alarm, for their source is understood and their meaning is rightly conceived as therapeutic in character. Omission of food permits the eliminative organs to act unhampered by intake, and in this omission and in the employment the essential hygienic accessories is discovered the sole means of assistance that will assure permanent relief. Alleviation of symptomatic distress may, however, be accomplished locally through simple measures--dry heat, hot fomentations, cold applications, sunlight, fresh air, body manipulation, vertebral adjustment, and the baths and the enema.

    Illness never occurs at the convenient moment. Its warnings may develop in any season of the year, and they should promptly be heeded regardless of personal inconvenience or of climatic situation. To wait until disease develops locally is always disastrous, and in the therapeutics of nature diagnosis is unnecessary, for natural measures for relief in any and all illness are identical in essence, varying only in minor details. During a fast, because of the absence of food stimulation, of the heat-producing chemical reactions normal to health, the body is easily chilled, hence it is at times suggested that the fast wait for the warm weather of summer. But, again, the time to fast is when ill, and one should never be deterred from undergoing treatment because the season is not propitious. Artificial means of maintaining indoor temperature are always available, and the needful hygienic requirements may be utilized with equal facility and success whether outer air be warm or cold.

    It is to be noted that the winter season is nature's time of rest and recuperation. Then trees and plants are dormant, many animals hibernate, and all nature prepares for the growing period, the resurrection of the spring. Man, because of artificial environment and custom, and with the thought that the body heat is derived solely from fuel consumed, from food ingested, eats more heavily in winter and approaches spring with a system overloaded with waste. Spring fever and spring tonic are reciprocating terms, and epidemic disease is more prevalent then than at any other season.

    The symptoms by which disease is exhibited may be specifically named and classified--it may be said that the subject suffers from Bright's disease, from eczema, from diphtheria, or from small-pox, but behind the symptom lies the cause, and, as before stated, the body is not to be thought of as ill in a specific locality or in an individualized organ. It is sick as a whole, though the signs of physical unbalance are more visible, more severely expressed, in one part or another. Illness results when equilibrium no longer exists between nutrition and elimination, resulting in a blood current vitiated at its source, powers of resistance lowered, and soil for germs produced. One remedy alone may cope with this condition, and it is that which nature indicates and employs--elimination of the toxins that cause disease, and rest for organs that have been functioning under stress.

    Nature inevitably focuses her efforts at cure upon the point or points of least resistance, upon those outlets of the body that are least able to withstand the pressure exerted to expel material noxious to the system. In health the latter is discharged through those channels that are especially designed for the purpose. The simplest forms in which illness is manifested are colds, headaches, and rashes that appear upon the skin. Because of injudicious feeding, of congestion and overwork, the digestive organs are hampered in function. Elimination through bowels, kidneys, lungs, and skin is naturally continued to the limit of the power of these organs. When any one of them is overtaxed, a portion of its labor is necessarily thrown upon the others. They respond, and in responding they too show distress. When the skin is thus called upon for work beyond its limitations, pimples or rashes appear on its surface. Likewise when the breathing apparatus labors with excess of toxic matter, the latter appears as a discharge from the mucus membrane of the throat and the nose, and, if these organs are unable to cope with their unaccustomed task, the lungs in turn are called upon, and, unless speedily relieved, they become clogged and inflamed, a condition dangerous in the extreme. Normally equal balance should exist among all of the organs of elimination. Each should perform its allotted task proportionately with the others. The arms of the scale of intake and outgo should constantly remain at level, and this they do when health is the rule.

    The social surroundings of a fasting patient are of the utmost import. The effect of mental states upon physical well being will not be dwelt upon here, but, when friends and family object to the administration of a fast, their opposition is more than apt to be the cause of an emotional crisis. These objections are mainly made because of lack of knowledge of the purpose of the fast and of the details of its application. Ignorant of the principle that underlies this wholly natural agency for the cure of disease, its outcome is feared, and, while the patient is ready and willing to submit to the regimen imposed, relatives and friends may resist to the point of compulsion. Since peace of mind and quiet environment are essential, in these circumstances separation from anxious but misguided intimates is virtually indispensable to favorable result.

    Worry, anger, grief, and other morbid emotions are also most detrimental to progress towards cure. One instance comes to mind of a case that had fasted but eight days for functional disease of no especial gravity. Improvement had been continuous, but diferences had occurred between the patient and her husband and the latter, in an interview with his wife on the eighth day of her fast, so angered and distressed her that a nervous congestive chill, with suffusion of blood to the brain and lungs resulted, death succeeding. No argument could convince the orthodox mind that the fast was not responsible for the fatal consequence in this case. But the woman would have died just as surely had the scene related taken place before the omission of food, when the patient was physically and nervously weaker than at the time when anger and grief were so strongly excited.

    In cases of functional disease, when the patient is not so depleted as to be bedridden, moderate daily exercise during a fast is beneficial. The ordinary duties of life may sometimes be continued with advantage, but, while some fasting subjects may follow their usual vocations, others are compelled to rest throughout the period of abstinence. Usually the greater part of the latter are sufferers from disease either chronically functional or organic in character. Mild mental activity is of value because of the diversion of the mind from contemplation of physical ills. The ideal method in personal conduct during a fast, however, embodies the practice of the sick animal, which remains quiescent, resting absolutely the while it refrains from eating.

    It is to be emphasized at this point in the discussion that it is far better that the patient should so occupy himself while fasting that, in so far as is possible, his illness and his treatment be not at any time uppermost in his mind. This is not always a condition easily brought about, for, because of comparatively limited knowledge of the method, the majority of its cases is recruited from the chronically invalided, usually medically treated for years, and accustomed to constant thought of personal pain and distress. It may here be said that the relief occasioned by the fast very often permits these cases in large part to forget their ailments, and to devote their attention to the essentials of living. Occupation and diversion assist materially in accomplishing this result.

    In the ordinary case of functional disease the fast to complete purlfication is at once suggested. The law of hunger determines its duration, and, all other things being equal, surroundings and mental attitude being in accord, this course will assure restoration to health. When the environment is not congenial, or when, in the opinion of the director of treatment, the condition is such as to require it, a partial fast interrupted by periods of corrective diet, may be used to advantage. Sometimes, too, the facilities for carrying out a complete fast are not afforded, and here the partial or interrupted fast may be deemed a better policy than its finished counterpart. The end is eventually identical, although it is somewhat longer in accomplishment.

    There are cases in which the poisonous products of digestive ferment are present in quantity such as to tax the eliminative organs beyond their capability. When this is so, when certain serious and extreme symptoms occur after a fast is begun, these signs are in effect evidences of organic deficiency, and both knowledge and caution are then most necessary in order to carry the case to successful conclusion. Because of the general belief that every symptom is a sign of segregated disease, the average mind has been imbued with the idea that it must regard the symptom to the exclusion of the underlying cause. When, as happens in a fast, a characteristic sign of disease appears in aggravated form after months or years of intermittent occurrence, experience leads to the conclusion that illness is no longer due to simple functional derangement but to actual organic deficiency. Here the partial or interrupted fast is desirable, not because the protracted fast would not accomplish results with better prospect of favorable outcome, but because the patient, no matter how well he may be advised, is apt to fail to appreciate what temporary symptomatic aggravation in the fast implies.

    An organ structurally defective cannot be expected to work to full normal capability. Each of the organs of the body will at all times do its utmost, will labor to the limit of its powers, but, forced beyond this limit, it must fail to respond. In cases of this sort, a fast is to be approached with care and intelligence, for only thus may be discovered the organic limitations, the organic deficiencies, of the body in question. During a fast all vital parts are engaged in a supreme process of purlfication--of casting out the toxic substances that are causing their disease. And, when it is seen through symptoms increased in severity that one or other of these parts is incapable of full duty, the process of elimination is to be assisted by natural stimulation of organs other than the one that is deficient in functioning ability. Such assistance may only be had by the employment of the hygienic accessories later to be described in the text.





CHAPTER V
ILLUSTRATIVE CASES


FASTING APPLIED TO CASES OF INFLAMMATORY
RHEUMATISM, CHOREA, EPILEPSY, PREGNANCY, ETC.


    THE CASES dealt with in this chapter are typical but not exhaustive. They are selected from a large number solely because of their representative character, and as evidence that, since the fast is the most effective of all eliminative agents, it reaches indiscriminately but in like manner every phase of functional disability and all organic disease that is not beyond repair. Properly administered, the fast with its accessories insures in all such cases full systemic purification, which is the basis of health.

    The first case selected is that of the disease symptom known as inflammatory rheumatism. When first seen the patient, a boy seventeen years of age, was in a precarious state. His condition had been declared by the medical adviser as hopeless, and a limit of twenty-four hours was set within which death must occur. The resources of the physician had been exhausted, and in his opinion all that could be done was to alleviate the excruciating pain with opiates, thus permitting dissolution to take place while the youth was under their influence, and this was the course pursued. The distracted family as a last resort turned to the fast. After examining the case, the writer accepted the responsibility, and a description of the condition of the young man will perhaps throw stronger light upon the contrast that is always displayed between the methods followed by man in disease and those which nature employs.

    The boy had been in bed for five weeks; his body showed all of the evidences of the ravages of disease and of those of the remedies that had been applied. The left arm, wrist, and hand were greatly swollen and painful, as were also both knees and ankles. The face was flushed, the breathing stertorous, the pulse very irregular, while the body temperature was 105 degrees. In all respects the working foundation for favorable outcome was most insecure. For two weeks immediately preceding the change in treatment heart action had been stimulated with digitalis and with strychnine; food had been forced upon a protesting stomach as many times daily as the patient could be induced to swallow; and, when the pain had become too severe to be borne, or when delirium occurred, codein and other opiates had been used unsparingly. In addition, within the preceding seven days two quarts of brandy had been poured into the youth. As the result of disease and of drugs the patient could neither lie down nor sit up, and his position was a painful compromise.

    Death seemed imminent, but food was at once withheld, and a gentle massage treatment was administered in order to equalize circulation as much as was possible in the circumstances. A half hour after this, an enema of warm water brought away a large amount of fecal matter, all of which resulted in pulse and temperature showing decided downward tendencies, while the patient rested more quietly and easily than for many days.

    In acute crises, such as this, drastic measures are imperative, and, on the second day, application of more vigorous massage and of more copious enemata brought temperature and pulse to still lower register; consciousness, which had been intermittent, fully returned; the swelling in the arm was reduced; and pain had abated. In a week the young man was able to lie at full length, and the swelling, excepting in the ankles was scarcely perceptible. Before this, natural sleep had returned, while temperature and pulse were but slightly above normal. During this interval two enemas daily had been administered, and masses of feces more or less hardened had been removed on each occasion. Sponge baths twice each day had also aided in relieving discomfort while assisting elimination, and at the end of the first week of fasting tub-baths were begun.

    The fast was broken on the eleventh day with a small amount of tomato broth fed morning and night, the supply being increased as the patient showed increasing ability to digest his food. Five weeks from the beginning of treatment the youth was enjoying a daily walk of several miles, and thereafter, adhering strictly to the dietetic regimen prescribed, he rapidly developed to a condition of normal health and eventually to a robust physique.

    The second case, a man sixty-one years of age, was stricken with paralysis of the entire right side, and, receiving no help from medicine, he determined upon an absolute fast. The preparatory period covered but ten days, a time too short to permit of wholly satisfactory approach to total abstinence, but nevertheless at its completion a fast of forty days, which proved eminently successful in outcome, was undertaken. Paralysis of this nature, known as hemiplegia, is usually caused directly by hemorrhage in some portion of brain tissue. For its relief but one course can be followed--to permit natural processes to absorb the formed blood clot, thus removing inflammation and pressure, releasing nerve force, and allowing connective tissue again to form by natural processes of healing. Constant ingestion of food in the circumstances serves to aggravate and to prolong recovery, since to facilitate the process of absorption the blood should be relieved as rapidly as possible of the burden of waste it has been carrying, waste that in all probability was directly the cause of the brain hemorrhage. The fast by compelling the dominance of elimination at once reduces the density of the blood through removal of circulating refuse, and gives the natural assistance necessary for the disposal of obstructions to the passage of nerve force through nerve channels--thus restoring sensation and motion the loss of which constitutes paralysis.

    The patient in question weighed at the time of his apoplectic seizure 228 pounds. Each day of abstinence showed loss in weight, and at the end of the fast the latter was reduced to 174 pounds. Bile in abundance was discharged with the enemas, and at intervals vomiting of the same fluid occurred. The fast was broken with grape-juice and orange-juice, but after a few days more solid food was taken. It is well to quote from a personal letter from the patient, reading as follows:--

    "I was totally incapacitated from actual manual labor of any kind before my fast, and I lived in dread of a second stroke, with a strange, unnatural depression evident upon slight over-exertion. Great drowsiness affected me, and on occasions I would sleep thirty to thirty-six hours, almost without intermission. My mentality was impaired, my eyesight defective, and my speech impeded. My right hand and arm were clumsy and weak, and at this stage all ordinary human aid seemed powerless.

    "I began the fast, and contrary to my expectations, I had no hunger from the third day to the fortieth. To affirm that there was no inconvenience, however, would be untrue, for by every avenue of elimination most offensive impurities were thrown off, and at times these could not have been borne had the object been lost sight of. My weight before I undertook the fast was 228 pounds, and the girth of my abdomen, 45 inches. After I had completed the total abstinence period, I weighed 174 pounds, and measured in girth 38-1/2 inches. I am cured of my paralysis; my mentality is clear and normal; my entire digestive system is apparently perfect; my vision is better than for years; my hand and arm are strong; I have no dread of a second stroke; I have no sleepy spells; I feel lighter all over; and, when weary, I am quite refreshed and ready for further exertion after a short rest."

    A case of the disease symptom known as chorea occurring in a woman twenty-eight years of age next offers itself for description. Preparation was undergone for several weeks and a fast of twenty-two days resulted in the return of hunger with complete restoration to health. The medical history of this case showed obstinate constipation for twenty years; and there were nervous tendencies that had been persistently present in aggravated form. Medical advice and direction had been constantly followed since birth, yet, when first seen, the muscles controlling and forming legs, hands, arms, and face were in constant action, and no effort of the will could command them. During the first week of the fast, improvement in the latter respect appeared, so much so that the young woman was able to walk without any evidence of extraordinary lack of coordination, and by the fourteenth day all muscular signs of nervousness had completely disappeared.

    No unusual symptoms developed in this case. The enemas brought away solid matter in decreasing amount until the seventeenth day, and thereafter but a small quantity of bilious fluid. Body manipulation and the baths were daily resorted to, and the loss in weight was not remarkable. There were almost no unpleasant symptoms, and this was of the absence of structural organic defect, and because the patient had always led an outdoor life and possessed an equable disposition. After a time devoted to a dietetic regimen and judicious exercises, the case was discharged as restored to health and with no traces of her former nervous disorder. An added benefit was discovered in that, although there had been decided impairment of sight, myopic in character, the patient was able to dispense with lenses six weeks after the beginning of the fast.

    The distressing affliction, epilepsy, is a disease symptom that may be traced to the source of all functional disorder, the digestive machinery.

    The case of a young woman, twenty-nine years of age, will demonstrate the effect of the fast and its adjuncts upon this characteristic of disease. Before entering the fast, the patient had tentatively followed a dietetic regimen, and had noted decided improvement in general health, but there was no cessation of the attacks peculiar to the symptom named. Medical attendance had been continuous for years, but no improvement had resulted; rather the reverse, for the epileptic seizures had increased in number and severity as time went by. Before the fast the attacks were recurring at intervals of two weeks, and the latest seizure had happened but three days before the fast began. Food was denied for fifty-six days, and, from the moment of the inception of the method to the present writing not a convulsion has occurred, nor has there been a semblance of attack, while in general health the patient has been better than at any time of her life.

    The fast in this instance is to be noted in several minor ways, one of which is that on each of the fifty-six days the patient walked a distance of at least two miles; another, that on the fortieth day of abstinence a mass of dead intestinal worms passed from the bowels in the enema. Improvement was constant from the first, but, after the evacuation of these parasites, it increased rapidly, and natural hunger asserted itself on the fiftyfifth day. The loss in weight was consistently normal, averaging about three-quarters of a pound for each day of the fasting period.

    The medical history of the next subject, a woman forty-five years old, tells of continuous treatment for thirty years for the disease symptom known as psoriasis in its diffuse form. At the time that the patient sought natural means of assistance the inflamed, bleeding surfaces characteristic of the symptom covered at least one-third of the skin of the body, and they were not confined to any particular locality, appearing indiscriminately upon trunk, arms, and legs, but the hands, face, and feet were not affected. The sores were exuding bloody serum, and there was intolerable itching, so much so that in order to exist in any condition approaching comfort, local application of mercurial preparations had long been resorted to, to relieve both the pain and the inconvenience. These of course were only temporary in effect, and the major symptoms returned shortly, more angry and more obstinate.

    The general health of the patient apart from the distressing symptom described was excellent, strange to say. And to this a strong constitution and robust physique in large part contributed. Perhaps, as is at times assumed, the channel taken by nature to rid the body of toxic matter, if sufficiently extensive, precluded the development of other and differing symptoms of disease. This has been held to have been proved in instances of syphilitic infection, which in the majority of cases seems to grant immunity from minor though equally infectious disease, the latter being subordinated to the dominant blood taint.

    When first under observation the patient weighed 172 pounds, and her habits were those of a woman in comfortable circumstances with the idea ingrained that three and even four generous daily meals were necessary for the conservation of health and strength. She was, however, disheartened and discouraged because of the almost unbearable distress occasioned by the state of her body, and, as a last resort only, she consented to undergo a fast.

    After three weeks of preparation, abstinence from food succeeded and continued without interruption for seventy-five days. At no time during this period was anything excepting water ingested, and at no time was the patient unable to cover on foot the distance from her home to the office of her physician. Once this subject had grasped the philosophy of the method and had experienced the progressive improvement that marked her case, an excellent physical organization and a determined will made her more than equal to the attainment of the object in view, and, as a consequence, she was easy to treat.

    The fast was typical and was remarkable in nothing save its length, a phenomenon due again to the extreme resistance which is always discovered in the normally functioning body. Loss in weight not unusual, and at the end of the fast a diminution in this respect of but 32 pounds was noted, the patient then tipping the scales at 140. Until the twentieth day, there was in evidence slightly lowered temperature and pulse, with some chilliness, but, while pulse and temperature remained below register in the early stages of abstinence, by the sixth week normal had been reached. The enemas contained solid feces until about one-third of the fasting period had elapsed, and thereafter, until the last week without food, large amounts of yellowish-white mucus formed part of the discharge. This catarrhal refuse eliminated thus from the intestines indicated that the eliminative function had again been established through normal channels. In fact, a significant feature connected with any symptom of disease of the character expressed in this subject is the failure of function through normal avenues other than the skin to perform, the surface of the body suffering from overwork and disease in consequence.

    It was not until the fourth week that visible improvement in exudation from the open sores became noticeable in respect to granulation, although the exudation had begun to diminish during the third week and at this time also the itching had greatly subsided. As healing of the sores progressed, the unpleasant minor symptoms disappeared, healthy skin soon forming in patches that increased in size and gradually covered the denuded spaces.

    After breaking the fast, general health continued excellent, and the sole remaining signs of the psoriasis were the scarred edges surrounding areas latest to heal. Even these in time vanished, and no trace, excepting slight discoloration, the result of previous mercurial treatment, was left as a reminder of the hideous and distressful malady of previous years.

    While the patient during the first few days of the fast felt some trepidation as to its efficacy and its outcome, after improvement of the condition appeared, its psychological effect was such that her determination to carry on to the return of hunger became fixed. Again it is to be noted that fear enters and disaster results while fasting a functional case only when the method is incorrectly conducted. This case is a supreme example demonstrating the truth that, in the absence of organic disease, there is no danger whatever in abstaining from food until nature asserts by the return of hunger that systemic purification is completed.

    Another case presents itself--that of a woman thirty-four years old, partially paralyzed and suffering from general functional disease. In this patient two of the dorsal vertebrae had been displaced in early life in such manner as to compress the spinal cord, thus causing paralysis of the lower trunk and legs. In the absence of any history of accident the only tenable theory of causation of this condition is that of lack of development of the muscles supporting the spine in the dorsal region, this in turn due to faulty nutrition in youth. In all her life this woman had never known a moment of comparative health, and intermittently in earlier days severe fevers with inflammatory intestinal symptoms had occurred, eventually creating contractions in the colon, a condition that caused constipation and consequent septicemia. When first examined, the case had been bedridden for one year, and it was evident that by reason of the very evident ankylosis existing in the displaced vertebrae referred to there was small hope of correcting the paralysis noted. The symptom that impelled the employment of means other than medicine for relief in this case was an ominous congestive chill from which the woman with difficulty rallied. The fast was entered and carried to what may be regarded as a successful end after fifty-eight days of abstinence.

    The medical history of this case showed an inherited tendency towards scrofula or constitutional tuberculosis, and there had been manifested at intervals offensive running sores, the thumb and index finger of the left hand having been amputated some years previous because of a non-healing scrofulous abscess. All of the ulcers that had appeared had, without exception, been diagnosed by attending physicians as tubercular in character and had been treated from the medical viewpoint accordingly.

    Two days after the beginning of the fast, an abscess broke through the surface of the skin at the base of the spine immediately over the sacrum. The discharge from this sore was most profuse and offensive, and the area affected spread until it was at least three inches in diameter, with depth such that within ten days after the skin had broken the periosteum of the sacrum was exposed. For a week hot fomentation were continuously applied, and gangrenous tissue in process of formation was cauterized by carefully focusing the rays of the sun upon the ulcer with a large reading glass. By the tenth day the discharge ceased being offensive, and shortly thereafter healthy granulation or healing began. When the fast was at an end, the sole evidence of the existence of this sore was a circular spot of slightly reddish normal skin of which a subjacent cushion of soft and healthy tissue showed that natural work of repair had proceeded despite total abstinence from food. This is undoubtedly the point of greatest interest and import to be noted in the treatment and progress of the case, for it is to be remembered that the blood of this woman had in all probability been tainted from birth, and that it had been poisoned and repoisoned for years by continuous addition to accumulated toxic substances. Elimination of body waste had never been successfully accomplished in this patient, but once it could proceed undisturbed in function, nature was able not only to cast out existing impurity, but also to repair diseased tissue by selecting healthy pabulum from the store of nutriment husbanded within.

    The discharges resulting from copious daily enemas were noticeable for their exceeding foulness, and for excessive amounts of dark bilious fluid evacuated until about the thirtieth day of the fast. Loss in weight was not exceptional, totaling, as it did, but 20 pounds. When it is considered that the patient weighed but 85 pounds at the beginning of the fast, it is seen that, proportionally speaking, this loss conforms with results tabulated later in the text.

    Dates are also of interest in this case, which was under treatment during the winter of 1907-8. The woman died of pneumonia early in 1923. In the interim of full fifteen years, she was able to get about in a wheeled chair, was in good general health, and conducted a business of her own, the only inconvenience she suffered being that incident to her incurable paralysis.

    Another instance is that of a woman twenty-eight years old in whom poor nutrition and what is called a bilious temperament occasioned a condition of disease that was expressed in periodical headaches and in melancholia with a tendency toward mania. But for the care and devotion of an older sister, the patient, long before coming under observation, would have been placed in an institution for the insane. In fact, it was because the physician last consulted had recommended that she be restrained that her relatives in despair resorted to the fast.

    Examination discovered a pulse continually at 128 or thereabouts with temperature varying from above to below normal by several degrees. Diet had consisted largely of meat and its extracts, this being at once changed to vegetable broths. Daily enemas were thoroughly administered and at first hot towel packs were used upon the spine in order to control circulation and to steady the fluctuating pulse, but these were discontinued shortly as heart action made constant improvement from the beginning of treatment. Dark, foul-smelling discharges that did not cease until the latter portion of the fast formed the bulk of the liquid in the return from the enemas.

    This patient also showed extraordinary vigor and vitality throughout a period of forty-two days of abstinence from food, and she daily walked a distance of several miles, underwent manipulative treatment, and returned to her home without undue fatigue. Towards the end of the fast she was able and desirous of increasing the amount of exercise, and her mental condition exhibited improvement from the inception of the work. On the thirtieth day of the fast and thereafter the young woman performed her portion of the housework well and cheerfully. Hunger returned on the forty-first day, and the fast was broken at the end of the forty-second. Two weeks later the sisters sailed for their home abroad, and letters written by the patient since their arrival show a mind in every respect rational.

    Tuberculosis of the lungs is a symptom of disease that needs to be uncovered and treated in its early stages if recovery is to be hoped for, and the case of a woman thirty-two years old is cited to illustrate the treatment of a consumptive, the outcome of whose case proved a cure. This patient abstained from food for twenty-four days, but preparation, the fast, and the period of dieting after the latter was concluded, covered full six months. When first under observation, the sputum contained the bacilli typical of the symptom; both lungs were affected; the characteristic cough, high temperature and pulse, were present; in fact, the case displayed all of the signs that distinguish the symptom. The fast was begun after usual preparatory diet, and was continued as noted for twenty-four days, during which no unfavorable symptoms occurred. However, from the latter part of the preparatory period there was excessive discharge of sputum, but during the fast this showed daily diminution in amount, and there was also pronounced decrease in the number of bacilli at the several periodical examinations made. The enemas were charged with bilious products and old feces, these toxic disturbers disappearing only during the last week of abstinence. Fever had vanished as had also the cough by the fourteenth day, and, when the sputum was examined on the twenty-second day of fasting there were no traces of bacilli tuberculosis.

    To anticipate successful issue, the treatment of tuberculosis of the lungs should be undertaken before the stage of excessive structural break-down of lung tissue has been reached. If the treatment outlined is begun at this time a cure is altogether probable. Otherwise, the case classes itself with that of advanced organic disease, which, in the light of previous discussion, bars remedy.

    Medical diagnosis of the next instance, a man thirty-eight years old, pronounced it a case of valvular heart disease, and medical prognosis gave no hope of recovery. There was severe pain in the regions of the heart, the stomach, and the liver, and at times in the abdomen. Heart-beats were most irregular; and, in view of the very apparent seriousness of the condition, a fast was begun without preparation. Large amounts of dark bilious fluid came away with every enema, and excruciating pain and nervous excitement were experienced until the twentieth fasting day when at least a teacupful of gall-stones was evacuated. Great relief followed, but gall-stones singly and in small numbers were passed with the exereta until the thirtieth day of abstinence. The fast was broken on its thirty-fifth day, when the weight of the patient was 174 pounds, this showing a reduction of 20 pounds within the period given. In the early part of this fast there were slight sub-normal temperature and much fasters' chilliness, but temperature and heartbeat as well reached normal by the twentieth day. Before this the pulse had been at times above, at times below register, according to the degree of activity of circulating poison. After breaking the fast all functions became and continued normal; weight was gradually gained and soon reached 185 pounds; and from the completion of treatment general health was excellent.

    An interesting addendum to this case is found in its later history. The patient, after strictly adhering to the rules prescribed as to diet, exercise, and general care of the body for at least a year and a half after his restoration to health, lapsed and fell into laxness in eating and in drinking, with the result that, two years subsequent to the crisis already related, an abscess formed upon the fioor of the stomach, and the case again came under observation and treatment, undergoing this time a fast of forty-five days. The man suffered great pain until the ulcer discharged, which occurred about ten days after the fast began, and was evidenced by the passage of blood and pus from the bowels. The patient hovered between life and death for several weeks, but absence of food prevented irritation of the ulcer, which rapidly healed, and, since hunger was in evidence, the fast was broken on the forty-sixth day.

    It is the fixed opinion of the author that in no instances is the medical theory of "feeding to keep up strength" so palpably in error, as in cases of the kind just cited. Whether the ulcer is located in the stomach, in the duodenum, or in any other portion of the alimentary tract, non-irritation is a first essential to healing, and non-irritation may be had in the alimentary tract only through the omission of the ingestion of food. And, more, while it is true that food is never essential in disease, the application of the method outlined herein to a condition such as was exhibited in the second siege of illness undergone by the ease just noted is so plain in exposition and so beautifully reasonable and convincing in argument that no unbiased mind should read this description without being satisfied of its truth and in consequence of the efficacy of the method itself.

    A short description of a fast for chronic digestive disturbance is presented in the following case, that of a man of forty-five years of age. The fast itself covered a period of forty-nine days, and from its beginning until the forty-fifth day the patient was confined to his bed. This is a striking example of the extreme toxemia that sometimes occurs during fasting when the organs of elimination are called upon to cope with an accumulation of waste that taxes them to the utmost Because this material is liquefied in form, both in consequence of the body secretions and of the water of the enemas, it is more easily absorbed from the walls of the intestines, and in this instance, the weakness in evidence was directly occasioned by this sort of self-poisoning. But the condition gradually improved as the eliminative organs became equal to their tasks, and on the forty-fifth day, hunger returned and with it strength. The fast was broken on the morning of the fiftieth day and afterwards the patient walked several miles on the city pavements with but little fatigue. There were no unusual symptoms other than the toxemia mentioned, and from the breaking of the fast, improvement was constant and permanent.

    In another instance the fast was undertaken by a woman forty-one years old for the purpose of correcting heart irregularity caused by functional disease and obesity. The patient who was under height weighed 200 pounds, and she gave no medical history excepting that some years previous she had been operated upon for chronic inflammation of the fallopian tubes. The fast proper was somewhat lengthy, covering sixty-three days and again it is to be noted that the patient was at all times during abstinence able to attend to her home duties and to make on foot the daily trip to the office of her physician. There was but little fasters' chilliness, and there were no unusual symptoms, excepting that, about the period included between the thirtieth and fortieth days, a gain in weight of from one to two pounds daily occurred, but at the end of this interval gradual decrease in weight again began and continued to the end of the fast, when weight was reduced to 140 pounds. In the meanwhile heart irregularity had disappeared, and by careful attention to her dietary, the patient has succeeded in having no return of the obese symptoms, while general health has been consistently excellent.

    Medical diagnosis of the next case classified the symptom as cancer of the stomach. The patient, a man forty years old, was really suffering from an ulcerated condition of the upper portion of the intestinal tract, and he underwent a fast of fifty days in which no marked peculiarities developed. Weight was reduced from 145 pounds to 105 pounds, and the subsequent gain both in weight and in strength was typical. In two months after breaking the fast the patient balanced the scales at 175 pounds.

    A young man of twenty-three offers a case of the insanity of syphilis of the type known in medicine as meningitis. In this subject the blood taint was acquired by contact, and, when observed and first under treatment the case was in what is known as the secondary stage of infection. The state of the patient was such that he had but little control over his faculties, both mental and physical. He would answer questions in a slow, drawling, sleepy manner with but small evidence of sanity in his replies unless shocked in some way. He was shameless in response to the calls of nature and showed abnormal erotic tendencies. Weight when treatment began was 150 pounds. After low diet and an absolute fast of twenty-eight days, the time of dieting and of the fast occupying three months, weight was reduced to 110 pounds. From the inception of the fast improvement was continuous, and this applies both to the physical symptoms of the disease and to the mental state of the subject. At the completion of total abstinence there was no evidence of insanity, and at present writing, ten full years from the treatment of the case, no signs of blood taint are in any manner apparent.

    A young man, nineteen years old, who had been led into habits of body and of thought detrimental to normal development, became, as a result, a victim of the symptom of disease known as epilepsy. For five years he had suffered from the convulsions characteristic of the malady, recurrent at intervals of from one to two weeks. Medicine had exhausted its resources in this case, which was but another of the "last resort" kind, yet after a short while, the patient and his family were responsive to the results of treatment and thereafter were enthusiastic in carrying out its details. For five months a regimen of restricted diet and of fasting was pursued. The time of total abstinence from food intermittently included in this period was sixty days. All general unfavorable symptoms gradually subsided, and the recurrence of the epileptic seizures became reduced in number to such degree that, at the end of the second short fast, four weeks had intervened between attacks; and, when feeding was permanently resumed, no further seizures were apprehended, nor did they occur. Before disease was fully eradicated the weight of the patient was reduced from 140 pounds to 105 pounds. Increase after the fast took place and at the end of the rebuilding period the young man weighed 148 pounds.

    A woman, thirty-six years of age, at the end of the third month of pregnancy developed severe symptoms of cholemia, a condition of the liver in which its functions of conversion and elimination are arrested. Vomiting of dark green bilious fluid took place, and the patient was in a state verging upon coma. Immediate action was demanded, and food was at once omitted, while copious enemas were administered twice daily for the time being. The latter brought away dark and foul discharges which continued with no apparent improvement until the seventeenth day of abstinence. On the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth days the patient lay in a semi-conscious state, but she revived on the morning of the eighteenth day, when there was a decidedly favorable change in the character of the bowel passages. Rapid return to consciousness occurred, and increased strength with no unfavorable symptoms marked all succeeding days until the twenty-second, when the fast was broken with fruit juices, and thereafter convalescence proceeded without interruption.

    The loss in weight in this case was 22 pounds. Temperature and pulse were continually above individual normal until the latter part of the fast, the former ranging between 99 and 102, and the latter from 80 to 110, although a decided drop in both was always observed after the administration of an enema. No return of nausea occurred after breaking the fast, and thereafter the general health of the patient was excellent. At term an eight-pound child was easily delivered, perfect in development and vigorous in health.

    On the fifteenth day of this fast, while the patient was lying in partial coma, as described above, a consultation was held with a former medical associate. The latter advocated, as the only means of saving the life of the mother, the immediate abortion of the fetus, and the abandonment of the fast. His opinion was, however, overruled, and the result of the case justified the stand then taken, for as the attending physician at confinement, five months later, he freely expressed his surprise at the state of health of the mother, the ease with which delivery was had, and the remarkable vitality of the infant, and he acknowledged his error in judgment with a complete reversal of his condemnation of the treatment the patient had undergone.

    A case analogous to the one just cited is that of a woman of twenty-seven, wife of a physician.

    She was between three and four months pregnant, and was suffering severe pain in the region of the uterus and in that of the stomach. The uterus was discovered to be displaced, and by manipulation and the use of tampons it was put into normal position. Nausea with vomiting was constantly distressing the patient when the case was presented, and an immediate absolute fast was decided upon. However, it was thought best that a preparatory period be observed, and for twelve days the patient subsisted upon liquid diet, after which the fast was begun and continued for thirty days. No unusual symptoms arose during this time, and constant general and specific improvement was noted from the beginning. Nausea decreased with progress and vanished about the twentieth day with no recurrence thereafter. Pulse and temperature were slightly below normal until after eating had been resumed. Preparation for the fast was made upon strained vegetable broths and it was broken upon the same dietary. Solid food was resumed twelve days after the completion of abstinence. At term the patient was delivered of a babe weighing seven pounds, as physically perfect and as healthy a specimen as that described in the previous case. The loss of weight in this instance was an even thirty pounds.

    It is to be remarked that the children of these two mothers are not only physically excellent examples, but are also mentally intelligent to a marked degree. These gratifying characteristics are to be attributed in great part to the purification of body undergone by the pregnant women at a stage of gestation early enough to provide for tissue structure in the forming fetal bodies unvitiated by disease in the systems of the mothers.

    The statement descriptive of the following case is given in the language of the father of the patient:

    "During several weeks prior to his sixth birthday, our oldest boy had complained of sore throat and general lassitude. This finally developed into an acute tonsilitis. On the third or fourth day he complained of pain in both knees, and by evening these joints were swollen and red, and the pain had become so intense that the weight of the bedclothes was unbearable. The physician whom we called--one of the regular school--promptly diagnosed the case as one of inflammatory rheumatism. He advised the use of hot applications to subdue the pain, and insisted on putting the left knee, which was the worse, in a splint so that it could not be moved. On his second or third visit he discovered mitral regurgitation, that common and ominous symptom, showing that the systemic poisoning had affected the valves of the heart. His prognosis was most unfavorable. He said that the acute stage would last probably six weeks, and that it would leave the patient with organic heart trouble.

    "At this point we decided to resort to a method in which we had long believed, but which we had failed to try at the outset of this sickness because we had not realized the seriousness of the case. We discharged the physician and began the treatment described herein under the direction of the author. She took off the splint and gave both knees a careful but thorough rubbing. They had been apparently too sensitive to touch before this, but by the time she had finished the massage, the child said that they felt better. She told us not to bother about his heart or anything else in the line of symptoms, but to stop feeding him, to give him daily baths, enemas, and manipulations--and to watch nature do the rest.

    "The pain kept up at intervals, intervals that grew steadily longer, however, for two days, and then it ceased entirely. Before the end of the week, the patient was able to be taken down town on a street car for manipulative treatment. His fast lasted twelve days.

    "Later in the summer he had a recurrence of old eye trouble, one resulting from an impure condition of the blood. He had been treated the summer before for this trouble, which had lasted several months. This time we at once began another fast, which continued for twenty-two days. At its end he stripped the bandage off: his eyes one evening and looked at us and we knew that the thing was conquered. During a few of the twenty-two days he had a little orange juice, and at all times he had all the water that he desired. A daily bath and rub were given with a copious enema each morning and evening.

    "At the time of writing, two years from the date of the last fast, there has been no recurrence of either the throat trouble, rheumatism, or eye trouble, and a regular physician, a friend of the family, who examined the boy a few months ago, pronounced his heart perfect."

    The next case is that of a cancer located on the right eyelid of a man sixty-two years old. This malignant sore had been in evidence for twelve years and the patient had been operated upon for its removal twice in this period. Its third appearance was made in virulent form and consultation with a medical specialist resulted in renewed recommendation of the knife, to which this time the patient refused to submit. He began preparation for a fast which lasted forty-five days, at the expiration of which all that remained of the suppurating sore was a reddish scar of its former seat. Four years later his personal report of the case shows no symptom of recurrence upon eyelid or elsewhere, and an excellent state of general health.

    The eradication of this symptom of extreme blood impurity by means of the fast fixes the value of the method in forms of disease that are supposedly incurable. It bears out the contention that disease is one with cure, that cure lies in the application of the single method of nature, elimination, which is one with purification. Cancer is but a symptom of general disease, and it may be eradicated when its ravages have not involved an organ to the degree of rendering it incapable of function.

    A cancer, a tumor, are evidences of the economy of nature in gathering her forces of relief at a single point. This single point, the symptom, is ordinarily plainly apparent. Medicine seeks to "drive it in"; surgery to "cut it out"; and neither, when applied, succeeds in removing the cause. Even though the actual growth and its nearby ramifications are extirpated by means of the knife, nature is still impelled to rid the body of its circulating impurity by the construction of destructive cells, and only blood purlfication can accomplish a cure.

    The next subject, a woman twenty-seven years old, suffered constantly from pain, more or less acute, in the left costar region, near the cardiac orifice of the stomach. She had severe headaches, coupled with nausea and vomiting of bile. Medical diagnosis varied with each physician consulted, and the young woman was treated within a period of several years for ailments ranging from ulceration of the stomach to appendicitis. In the course of her search for health she had made visits to famed sanatoria, but her condition steadily grew worse, and, because of it, she was rapidly verging upon melancholia. Hearing of the fast, she was at first interested, then hopeful, and on her own initiative she undertook short periods of abstinence with decided relief. The case was one that, when first observed, showed signs of obstinate intestinal obstruction, which might or might not prove to be a morbid growth, and caution was essential even during the preparatory work. But it was finally determined that a soup and salad regimen be followed, and the dietary indicated was continued for four months with gradual but not permanent relief. However, at the end of this time an attempt was made to change to solid food, when the system at once strongly rebelled, and the patient was actually forced into total abstinence. She fasted forty-three days.

    During the early portion of the fast there were headaches and vomiting of greenish bile and mucus, and these distressing symptoms were present until the thirtieth day, when the patient was compelled to take to her bed. The stomach had at all times resisted ingestion even of water, and in order to facilitate the discharge of bile and to reduce nausea, natural stomach-lavage was daily performed. This was done by having the patient drink warm water in quantity and then induce vomiting. Enemas and baths were administered in the usual number and manner. Body manipulation, with especial attention directed to the region under the left lower ribs, was carefully carried out, for by this time it had become obvious that the intestinal obstruction was caused by fecal impaction. On the forty-third day of the fast a broken-up mass of hardened fecal matter was passed with the enema. Extreme relief followed, and the fast was at once discontinued with gratifying results, the stomach accepting the broths, and normal digestion taking place. The feces passed were in the form of balls, black in color and extremely hard in character. This accumulation had been the cause of the symptoms described, all of them signs of exaggerated toxemia. Rapid recuperation ensued.

    For a year after the experience related the patient followed a strict dietary, and during this time she underwent a total of forty-five days of short periods of fasting. Her diet consisted in the main of raw tomatoes, hot tomato broth, and salads. At present writing, more than three years from the beginning of the first fast, the young woman is in excellent health.

    This case may be considered as perhaps the most aggravated instance of toxemia in the entire history of practice recorded herein. Life was saved only because the patient was constantly under observation, day and night, and distressing and dangerous symptoms were dealt with, as they developed, promptly and skilfully. The case also exemplifies the contention of the writer that at no time, even when acute crises occur, are special, fanciful auxiliaries necessary to combat conditions. Enemas, baths, body manipulation--all natural accessories--invariably prove fully equal to the task.

    Without citing individual instances, attention is here directed to the ease with which certain symptoms, to which in recent years the surgical branch of medicine has devoted much time and energy, yield to the fast and its accessories. The vermiform appendix in the human body is a slender blind sac, opening from the cecal portion of the large intestine. It is on an average from three to six inches in length, and of a caliber of that of a lead pencil. It is found in man and in some of the lower animals, and in a few of the latter it is large and performs a digestive function. In the human body its use seems to be more of a question of professional argument than one of determination, but it is quite probable that its function is that of stimulating peristalsis either through the secretion of a lubricant or by muscular contraction.

    Inflammation of the vermiform appendix constitutes true appendicitis. In the medical world appearance of this symptom demands immediate operation with removal of the offending organ. Observation of numbers of alleged cases of appendicitis leads to the belief that an inflamed appendix is a symptom of disease most rare in occurrence. Because the function of this organ has not been satisfactorily determined by science, and because its absence from the body seemingly creates no lack of harmony among other essential parts of the organism, extirpation has become the rule. And there has been exercised in this connection a great deal of snap judgment in diagnosis. Gas formed in the cecum, gall stones in the gall sac, inflammation of the right ovary and of the bowel in the ileo-cecal region, all have been mistaken for an appendix inflamed, and have occasioned operations unnecessary in the extreme with serious and perhaps fatal results.

    In the treatment of any intestinal inflammation, appendicitis included, no assistance is needed other than that which complete rest of the digestive tract and constant use of the enema afford. When no complications exist, the fast causes inflammation to subside, pain to cease, and fever to be reduced, by, at the most, the third day of abstinence, and the sole necessity for continuing the fast is found in seeking best and lasting results.

    Fasters' chilliness has been referred to a number of times, and it is as well to say here that body temperature when this sensation is in evidence is always more or less below normal in register. This feeling of chill may be attributed partly to the absence of food stimulation, but it is largely due to permeation of the circulation by bilious products that, in the circumstances, create, not fever, but a nervous reaction that causes muscular and skin contraction with an appreciable drop in body heat and probable lowered heart beat. It is to be recognized that so-called normal pulse and normal temperature terms that are relative, and that the limits placed upon them as standard vary in different persons, as do physical peculiarities. In some of the cases described and in others not mentioned, temperature and pulse remained below register during a portion of the fasting period, but as systemic cleansing progressed, average individual normal was gradually restored. When fasters' chilliness occurs, the hot therapeutic bath must frequently be resorted to in order that muscular relaxation may occur, thus permitting the temporarily inhibited eliminative function of the skin to be restored.

    Organic rest and systemic purification, resulting from the employment of the fast and its auxiliary eliminative agencies, form the basis of the method outlined in the text. The fast, than which no greater eliminative agent is known, is the fundamental of treatment, but additional natural therapeutic means that may in any manner assist in attaining results are never to be ignored, and these material auxiliaries are in most senses foreign to the domain of medicine. Manipulation of the body, specific and general, intelligently applied, proves of greatest worth during a fast and thereafter. Adjustment of the spinal column has its own especial place as a valuable accessory of treatment. And each of these therapeutic measures, with others that have been described, while not to be thought of as a panacea, is yet to be considered as an important adjunct in the natural treatment of disease.