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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure, by 
+Edward Hooker Dewey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure
+
+Author: Edward Hooker Dewey
+
+Release Date: November 2, 2008 [EBook #27128]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NO BREAKFAST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Susan Skinner, Bryan Ness and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
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+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+DR. DEWEY'S BOOKS.
+
+=The True Science of Living; or, The New Gospel of Health.= $2.25, sent
+postpaid.
+
+"Dr. Dewey's logic seems unanswerable."--_Alexander Haig, M.A., M.D.
+Oxon., F.R.C.P._, London, Eng. author of "Uric Acid as a Factor in the
+Causation of Disease," "Diet and Food."
+
+"I am glad to find myself in general accord with the views of Dr.
+Dewey."--_A. Rabagliati, M.A., F.R.C.P._, Edinburgh, Scotland, author of
+"Air, Food, and Exercises."
+
+"Dr. Dewey has written an epoch-making book."--_Emmett Densmore, M.D._,
+New York.
+
+"'The True Science of Living,' in its adaptation to the needs of
+humanity, ranks, in my estimation, with the writing of the Egyptian
+prince, the Jewish law-giver, the inspired Moses."--_Amos R. Collins,
+M.D._, Westerly, R. I.
+
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+make a new race."--_J. W. Dill, M.D., D.D._
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+it, and, written in a lively, conversational style, will not be 'heavy'
+or a bore to those who read it."--_The Independent, New York._
+
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+from the first chapter, and its logical reasoning cannot be
+gainsaid."--_Chautauquan._
+
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+
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+
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+McClellan Birney_, President of Woman's Congress.
+
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+place in every household, and should be read by every woman in the
+world."--_Chester County Times._
+
+"Plain, common sense, devoid of puzzling, technical terms. Every woman
+who cares for ideal health should purchase this book, and help to
+inaugurate the 'new era' for her sex."--_The Search Light._
+
+=Chronic Alcoholism.= Price, 50 cents.
+
+[Illustration: (signed) E. H. Dewey.]
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+NO-BREAKFAST PLAN
+
+AND
+
+THE FASTING-CURE.
+
+BY
+
+EDWARD HOOKER DEWEY, M. D.
+
+
+
+MEADVILLE, PA., U. S. A.:
+PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR.
+1900.
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1900,
+BY EDWARD HOOKER DEWEY.
+
+REGISTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL, LONDON, ENGLAND.
+
+_All Rights Reserved._
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+GEORGE S. KEITH, M.D., LL.D., F.R.C.P.E., SCOTLAND,
+
+A. RABAGLIATI, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., EDINBURGH,
+
+AND
+
+ALEXANDER HAIG, M.A., M.D., OXON., F.R.C.P., LONDON, ENGLAND,
+
+WHO HAVE COMMENDED THE WRITINGS OF THE AUTHOR IN THEIR
+OWN PUBLISHED WORKS,
+
+THIS BOOK IS
+
+GRATEFULLY DEDICATED.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+This volume is a history, or a story, of an evolution in the
+professional care of the sick. It begins in inexperience and in a haze
+of medical superstition, and ends with a faith that Nature is the all in
+all in the cure of disease. The hygiene unfolded is both original and
+revolutionary: its practicality is of the largest, and its physiology
+beyond any possible question. The reader is assured in advance that
+every line of this volume has been written with conviction at white
+heat, that enforced food in sickness and the drug that corrodes are
+professional barbarisms unworthy of the times in which we live.
+
+E. H. DEWEY.
+
+    MEADVILLE, PA., U. S. A.,
+        _November, 1900_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+THE NO-BREAKFAST PLAN.
+
+I.
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+Introduction--Army experiences in the Civil War--Early years in
+  general practice--Difficulties encountered--Medicinal treatment
+  found wanting as a means to superior professional success           13
+
+II.
+
+A case of typhoid fever that revolutionized the Author's faith
+  and practice--A cure without drugs, without food--Resulting
+  studies of Nature in disease--Illustrative cases--A crucial
+  experience in a case of diphtheria in the Author's family           26
+
+
+III.
+
+A study of the brain from a new point of view--Some new
+  physiology evolved illustrated by severe cases of acute disease     34
+
+IV.
+
+The error of enforced food in cases of severe injuries and diseases
+  illustrated by several striking examples                            42
+
+V.
+
+An apostrophe to physicians                                           56
+
+VI.
+
+The origin of the No-breakfast Plan--Personal experience of the
+  Author as a dyspeptic--His first experience without a
+  breakfast--Physiological questions considered--A new theory of
+  the origin and development of disease and its cure--The spread of
+  the No-breakfast Plan--Interesting cases                            60
+
+VII.
+
+Digestive conditions--Taste relish--Hunger relish--The moral
+  science involved in digestion as a new study--Cheer as a
+  digestive power--Its contagiousness--The need of higher life in
+  the home as a matter of better health--Cheer as a duty              81
+
+VIII.
+
+The No-breakfast Plan among farmers and other laborers--A series
+  of voluntary letters to an eminent divine, and the writer put
+  down as a crank--The origin of the Author's first book--How the
+  eminent Rev. Dr. George N. Pentecost was secured to write the
+  introduction--His no-breakfast experience--The publisher converts
+  a prominent editor--The case of Rev. W. E. Rambo, a returned
+  missionary--The publishers' missionary work among missionaries--
+  The utility of the morning fast--Its unquestionable physiology--
+  Why the hardest labor is more easily performed and for more hours
+  without a breakfast                                                 85
+
+IX.
+
+The utility of slow eating and thorough mastication unusually
+  illustrated by Mr. Horace Fletcher, the author--What should we
+  eat?--The use of fruit from a physiological standpoint             105
+
+X.
+
+Landscape-gardening upon the human face--A pen-picture--
+  Unrecognized suicide--Absurdity of the use of drugs to cure
+  diseases--A case of blood-letting--Mission of homoeopathy--
+  Predigested foods                                                  110
+
+
+THE FASTING-CURE.
+
+XI.
+
+The forty-two day fast of Mr. W. W. C. Cowen, of Warrensburg,
+  Ill., and its successful end--Press account--The twenty-eight day
+  fast of Mr. Milton Rathbun, of New York, and its successful
+  end--Press account--A second fast of Mr. Milton Rathbun, of
+  thirty-five days, in the interest of science, and its successful
+  end--Press account--Adverse comments of Dr. George N. Shrady, an
+  eminent New York physician                                         117
+
+XII.
+
+The remarkable fast of forty-five days of Miss Estella Kuenzel,
+  of Philadelphia, resulting in a complete cure of a case of
+  melancholia--Press accounts--A still more remarkable fast, of
+  fifty days, of Mr. Leonard Thress, of Philadelphia, resulting in
+  a complete cure of a bad case of general dropsy--Press
+  accounts--General dropsy in a woman of seventy-six relieved by a
+  fifteen-day fast, with the cure permanent--Rev. Dalrymple's fast
+  of thirty-nine and one-half days without interruption of pastoral
+  duties                                                             136
+
+XIII.
+
+Insanity--A study from a new point of view--Its radical cure
+  deemed probable in most cases by protracted fasts--Feeding the
+  insane as practised in the hospitals sharply criticised--Some
+  direct words to physicians in charge                               157
+
+XIV.
+
+The evolution of obesity, and its easy relief by fasting--
+  Overweight prevented by a limitation of the daily food
+  and without lessening any of the powers or energies--The
+  evolution and prevention of apoplexy                               177
+
+XV.
+
+Chronic alcoholism--The evolution of the drunkard--His complete,
+  easy, rational cure by fasting--No case so grave as to be beyond
+  cure by this means--Asthma; Its cure through dietary means--A
+  railroad tragedy--The need of railroad men to save their brains
+  from needless waste of energy in their stomachs--An illustrative
+  case--Some of the Author's troubles from the ignorance of the
+  people--The death of Mrs. Myers, of Philadelphia, on the
+  thirty-fifth day of her fast--Adverse press accounts and
+  comments--Adverse comments of Prof. H. C. Wood, M. D., L. L. D.,
+  on fasting and fasters                                             183
+
+XVI.
+
+A successful sixty-day fast under the Author's care--More about
+  predigested foods--Bathing from a physiological standpoint--The
+  error of drinking water without thirst--Some earnest words to the
+  mothers of this land--What the No-breakfast Plan means for them
+  and their children--Concluding words                               199
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR                                    _Frontispiece._
+
+MRS. A. M. LICHTENHAHN, THIRTY-SIXTH DAY
+    WITHOUT FOOD                                          Opposite p. 54
+
+REV. GEORGE SHERMAN RICHARDS                                  "       94
+
+MRS. E. A. QUIGGLE                                            "      104
+
+MR. MILTON RATHBUN SHORTLY AFTER HIS FAST                     "      132
+
+MISS E. F. KUENZEL, FORTY-FIRST DAY OF FAST                   "      146
+
+MR. LEONARD THRESS, FIFTIETH DAY OF FAST                      "      152
+
+MISS E. W. A. WESTING, FORTIETH DAY OF FAST                   "      154
+
+
+
+
+THE NO-BREAKFAST PLAN.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+A hygiene that claims to be new and of the greatest practicality, and
+certainly revolutionary in its application, would seem to require
+something of its origin and development to excite the interest of the
+intelligent reader. Methods in health culture are about as numerous as
+the individuals who find some method necessary for the health: taking
+something, doing something for the health is the burden of lives almost
+innumerable. Very few people are so well that some improvement is not
+desirable.
+
+The literature on what to eat and not to eat, what to do and not to do,
+on medicines that convert human stomachs into drug-stores, is simply
+boundless. If we believe all we read, we must consider the location we
+are in before we can safely draw the breath of life; we must not cool
+our parched throats without the certificate of the microscope. We must
+not eat without an ultimate analysis of each item of the bill of fare,
+as we would take an account of stock before ordering fresh goods; and
+this without ever knowing how much lime we need for the bones, iron for
+the blood, phosphorus for the brain, or nitrogen for the muscles. In
+short, there is death in the air we breathe, death in the food we eat,
+death in the water we drink, until, verily, we seem to walk our ways of
+life in the very valley and shadow of death, ever subject to the attack
+of hobgoblins of disease.
+
+How many lives would go down in despair but for the miracles of cure
+promised in the public prints, even in our best journals and monthlies,
+we cannot know. It is the hope for better things that sustains our
+lives; suicide never occurs until all hope has departed. Even our
+medical journals are heavily padded with pages of new remedies whose use
+involves the most amazing credulity. Perhaps it is well, in the absence
+of a sound physiological hygiene, that the people who are sick and
+afflicted shall be buoyed up by fresh, printed promises. Perhaps it is
+also well for the physician to be able to go into the rooms of the sick
+inspired from the advertising pages of his favorite medical journals.
+
+Are they not new stars of hope to both physician and the people? Why
+should we not hope when new remedies are multiplying in such infinite
+excess over newly discovered diseases? _New diseases?_ What is there
+essentially new that can be treated with remedies, in the coated
+tongues, foul mouths, high temperature and pulse, pain, discomfort, and
+acute aversion to food, that is to be found in the rooms of the sick?
+Are there really specifics for these conditions?
+
+The hygiene to be unfolded in these pages is so new, so revolutionary,
+that its first impress has never failed to excite every form of
+opposition known to language, and yet its practicality is so great that
+it is rarely questioned by those who fairly test it. It has not been
+found wanting in its physiology, nor has it failed to grow wherever it
+has found lodgement.
+
+The origin and development of this new way in health culture seem to
+require something of professional autobiography, that it may be seen
+that it is a matter of evolution and not of chance, not a fad that has
+only its passing hour.
+
+After receiving my medical degree from the University of Michigan, and
+serving a term as house physician to the U. S. Marine Hospital at
+Detroit, Michigan, I entered one of the large army hospitals at
+Chattanooga, Tenn., at the beginning of the Sherman campaign in Georgia,
+where I found a ward of eighty sick and wounded soldiers fresh from the
+battle of Resacea. My professional fitness for duties so grave and so
+large in extent was of a very questionable order, and I did not in the
+least overestimate it.
+
+It had not escaped my notice, even before I began the study of medicine,
+that whether disease were coaxed with doses too small for mathematical
+estimate, or whether blown out with solid shot or blown up with shells,
+the percentage of recoveries seemed to be about the same regardless of
+the form of treatment.
+
+I was reared in a large family in a country home, several miles from a
+physician, where all but the severest sicknesses were treated with
+herb-tea dosage, and this was true of all other country homes. With all
+this in mind I had begun the study of medicine with a good deal less
+than the average faith in the utility of dosage, and it was not enlarged
+by my professor of materia medica.
+
+I entered upon my serious duties as did good, rare, old Bunyan into his
+pulpit, with a feeling fairly oppressive that I was "the least of all
+the saints." My materia medica was in my vest pocket; my small library
+in my head, with its contents in a very hazy condition. With a weak
+memory for details, and marked inability to possess truth except by the
+slow process of digestion and assimilation, my brain was more a
+machine-shop than a wareroom; hence capacity of retail dealing was of
+the smallest. I was not in the least conscious at this time that a large
+wareroom amply stored by virtue of a retentive memory was not the most
+needed as an equipment for all the practical affairs of life. I have
+ever found it necessary to dodge some memories, when there was lack of
+time to endure a hailstorm of details.
+
+That I did not become a danger to the hapless sick and wounded only less
+than their diseases and wounds, was wholly due to my small materia
+medica, to utter lack of pride in knowledge that had not become a power
+with me, and to that lofty ambition for professional success which moved
+me to seize aid from no matter where or whom, as the drowning man a
+straw.
+
+It was my great professional fortune that the medical staff of this
+hospital of more than a thousand cots was of a very high order of
+ability and experience, and that I entered at the beginning of a
+campaign in which for more than three months there was a fitful roar of
+artillery and rattle of musketry every day; hence a continuous influx to
+cots vacated by deaths or recoveries.
+
+In all respects it was the best equipped hospital for professional
+experience of any that I knew anything about. There was one rigid rule
+that I believe was not carried out in any other hospital: post-mortems
+in all cases, numbering from one to a dozen daily, and all made with a
+thoroughness I have never seen in private practice.
+
+The features of my hospital service that impressed me most were the
+post-mortem revelations and the diverse treatments for the same disease.
+I soon found that, no matter what the disease, every surgeon was a law
+to himself as to the quality, quantity, and times of his doses, with the
+mortality in the wards apparently about the same.
+
+Post-mortem examinations often revealed chronic diseases whose existence
+could not have been suspected during life, and yet had made death
+inevitable.
+
+Another advantage in army hospital practice was the stability of the
+position and the absence of the harassing anxiety of friends, thus
+affording the highest possibilities of the judgment and reason. And
+still another advantage was the high social relations existing between
+the medical officers, due to the absence of all causes for jealousy,
+neither the position nor salary depending on superior endowments or
+professional success.
+
+I was aware that, in spite of my lack of experience and the presence of
+a most painful sense of general insufficiency, my sick and wounded were
+about as safe in my hands from professional harm, even from the first,
+as the patients of the most experienced medical officer in the hospital.
+
+With high professional ideals, with no ability to make use of hazy
+conceptions or ideas, having no pride in knowledge that had not become
+my own, I began at once to reinforce myself from the experience and
+wisdom of my brother officers, whose advisory services were always
+readily and kindly rendered.
+
+From the first and all through my military service my severely sick had
+the advantage of all the borrowed skill and experience I could command.
+As for surgical operations, they were all performed in the presence of
+most of the medical staff, some of whom were of great experience.
+
+The surgery of the army hospitals of 1864 was of the highest character
+in skill and in careful attention to all the details involved, and the
+fatalities were generally due to the gravity of the wounds requiring
+operations and lack of constitutional power for recovery, rather than to
+the absence of the germ-killer. At that time the microbe was not a
+factor in the probabilities of life or death. In all else the care of
+the wounds could hardly be surpassed.
+
+As for the medicinal treatment of my sick, it was unsatisfactory from
+first to last. After all the years since I cannot believe that, except
+for the relief of pain, any patient was made better by my dosage; and in
+all fatalities the post-mortem revealed the fact that the wisest dosage
+would have been without avail.
+
+But in the study of the history of disease as revealed by symptoms my
+hospital experience was invaluable. I have since found that my greatest
+service at the beds of the sick is as an interpreter of symptoms rather
+than a vender of drugs. The friends of the sick read indications for
+good or bad with wonderful acuteness, as a rule; and I have rarely found
+myself mistaken in my ability to read the condition of patients in the
+faces of the friends, even before I enter the rooms of the sick.
+
+As my experience enlarged so did my faith in Nature; and, since there
+was no similarity in the quality, sizes, and times of the doses for like
+diseases, my faith in mere remedies gradually declined.
+
+After a year and a half of large opportunities to study the diseases of
+men in the early prime of life, in the care of the simple surgery of
+shot and shell, I left the army with such familiarity with grave
+diseases and death in various forms as to enable me ever after to retain
+complete self-possession in the presence of dying beds in private
+practice.
+
+I began the general practice of medicine in Meadville in the autumn of
+1866. Among the many physicians located in the city at that time were
+men of ability and large experience. There were those who administered
+with sublime faith doses too small for mathematical estimate; those who
+with equal faith administered boluses to the throat's capacity for
+deglutition; those who fully believed in whiskey as nourishment, that
+milk is liquid food, and who with tremendous faith and forceful hands
+administered both until human stomachs were reduced to barren wastes and
+death would result from starvation aggravated by disease.
+
+Most of the cases of disease that fall to the care of the physician are
+trivial, self-limited, and rapidly recover under even the most
+crucifying dosages; Nature really winning the victories, the physician
+carrying off the honors.
+
+This is so nearly true that it may be stated that, aside from the domain
+of surgery, professional success in the general sense depends upon the
+personal qualities and character of the physician rather than the
+achievements of the materia medica.
+
+People have a confidence in the power of medicine to cure disease
+scarcely less than the dusky warrior has in the Indian medicine-lodge of
+the Western wilderness, and a confidence about as void of reason.
+
+The physician goes into the rooms of the sick held to the severest
+accountability in the matter of dosage; and the larger his own faith in
+medicines the greater his task; and, if he is of my own, the so-called
+"old school," or Allopathic, the more dangerous he is to the curing
+efforts of Nature.
+
+With the people the disease is simply an attack, and not the summing up
+of the results of violated laws going on perhaps from birth. With the
+people the symptoms are merely evidences of destruction, and not the
+visible efforts to restore the normal condition. Hence the failures to
+relieve always raise more or less questioning, among friends in painful
+concern, as to the ability of the physician to discharge his grave
+duties.
+
+This unreasoning, unreasonable "blind faith" in remedial means is as
+strong in the most intelligent as in the most ignorant, and it has ever
+given me more trouble than the care of the sick. Another serious
+complication of the sick-room arises from near-by friends who are very
+certain that their own physicians are better fitted by far for the
+serious work of prescribing for the sick.
+
+In addition to the serious work of attacking the symptoms of disease as
+so many foes to life, there is also a care as to what unbidden food
+shall go into unbidden stomachs, that the system shall be supported
+while life seems to be in the hands of its greatest enemy.
+
+The universal conception of disease as a foe to life, and not as a
+rational process of cure; the boundless faith in remedies as means to
+resist the attack, revealed by symptoms, makes the professional care of
+the sick the gravest of all human occupations, and the most trying to
+both head and heart.
+
+With all these taxing conditions confronting me, I opened an office in a
+field which seemed to be more than occupied by men of large experience.
+
+With all my army experience I still had a hazy conception as to Nature
+in disease. That the vital forces needed the support of all the food the
+stomach of the sick could dispose of, was not a question of the remotest
+consideration. That medicine did in some way act to cure disease I could
+not fully question.
+
+I was now to enter a service in which, from the care of infancy in its
+first breathings to old age in its last, every resource of the materia
+medica, of the reason, judgment, and of the soul itself, was to be
+called in in every grave case, and to be held to a responsibility
+measured by preposterous faith in medicines.
+
+I entered upon my duties with a determination to win professional
+success by the most thorough attention to all the details of service
+upon the sick and their friends, and I confined my efforts almost wholly
+to acute cases. None of my professional colleagues were winning laurels
+by the treatment of chronic diseases, and not having faith in drugs for
+such I had my scruples about fees for failures that seemed inevitable.
+
+And yet with the most painstaking service fortune would play with me at
+times in the most heartless manner. At one time four of my adult
+patients were awaiting burial within the radius of a half mile. As they
+were all physical wrecks, and died after short illnesses, there could be
+no question raised in any just sense as to the character of my services,
+but the fatalities were scored against me. Such fortune would be
+annihilating but for the fatalities inevitable with all practitioners.
+
+For full ten years I visited the sick and dosed them according to the
+books, but with far less force of hands and faith than any of my
+brethren, and all were enjoined to take nourishment to keep up the
+strength for the combat with disease.
+
+My doses were confined to only a few Sampsons of the materia medica, and
+these were administered with a watching for favorable results that could
+hardly be surpassed, and yet always with disappointment.
+
+I was innocent enough to believe that a large practice could only be
+built up by the most painstaking and persistent effort; later on I found
+that a large practice was but little dependent upon the skill and
+learning displayed in the sick-room. One physician could immediately
+secure a large patronage because she was a woman; another, because he
+belonged to this or that nationality, or there was something in the
+personal outfit rather than in the professional that incited large hopes
+for the ailing.
+
+In all my cases of acute sickness there was always a wasting of the body
+no matter how much they were fed; a like increase of general strength
+when a normal desire for food occurred no matter how little they were
+fed. I saw this with eyesight only; but I saw with insight that a large
+practice could be carried on by doctors too ignorant to know that there
+was an alphabet in medical science.
+
+I was not then so fully aware of the depths of ignorance among the
+people as to what cures disease, did not know that faith in doses was so
+large, as child-like even with the most cultured as with the ignorant. I
+was not so well aware, as I became later, that the physician himself
+must have such energy of faith in the materia medica as to reveal it in
+every line of his countenance when in the rooms of the sick.
+
+As the years went on, my faith in remedies did not increase; but I had
+to dose to meet the superstitious needs of the people. My practice,
+though far short of what it seemed to merit from the pains bestowed upon
+it, was large enough for all the needs of profitable study had I been in
+a condition for thought and reflection. It was not to my encouragement
+that there were those doing a far larger business with doses simply
+crucifying, and because crucifying, a far larger attendance was the
+direct result.
+
+I now see, as I did not then so clearly, that Nature's victories are
+often won against the desperate odds of treatments that are simply
+barbarous; and yet Nature is so powerful, so persistent in the attempts
+to right all her wrongs, that she wins the victory in the great
+majority of cases no matter how severely she may be taxed with means
+that hinder. The great majority of the severely sick of a hundred years
+ago recovered in spite of the bloody lancet and treatments that are the
+barbarism of to-day.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+I was called one day to one of the families of the poorest of the poor,
+where I found a sick case that for once in my life set me to thinking.
+The patient was a sallow, overgrown girl in early maturity, with a
+history of several months of digestive and other troubles. I found a
+very sick patient, so sick that for a period of three weeks not even one
+drink of water was retained, not one dose of medicine, and it was not
+until several more days that water could be borne. When finally water
+could be retained my patient seemed brighter in mind, the complexion was
+clearer, and she seemed actually stronger. As for the tongue, which at
+first was heavily coated, the improvement was striking; while the
+breath, utterly foul at first, was strikingly less offensive. In every
+way the patient was very much better.
+
+I was so surprised at this that I determined at once to let the good
+work go on on Nature's own terms, and so it did until about the
+thirty-fifth day, when there was a call, not for the undertaker, but for
+food, a call that marked the close of the disease. The pulse and
+temperature had become normal, and there was a tongue as clean as the
+tongue of a nursing infant.
+
+Up to this time this was the most severely sick case I ever had that
+recovered, and yet with not apparently more wasting of the body than
+with other cases of as protracted sickness in which more or less food
+was given and retained. And all this with only water for thirst until
+hunger came and a _complete cure_!
+
+Such ignoring of medical faith and practice, of the accumulated wisdom
+and experience of all medical history, I had never seen before. Had the
+patient been able to take both food and medicine, and I had prohibited,
+and by chance death had occurred, I would have been held guilty of
+actually putting the patient to death--death from starvation. Feed, feed
+the sick whether or not, say all the doctors, say all the books, to
+support strength or to keep life in the body, and yet Nature was absurd
+enough to ignore all human practice evolved from experience, and in her
+own way to support vital power while curing the disease.
+
+I could recall a great many cases in which because of intense aversion
+to food patients had been sick for many days, and even weeks, with not
+enough nourishment taken to account for the support of vital power; but
+the fact did not raise a question with me.
+
+The effect of this case upon my mind was so profound that I began to
+apply the same methods in Nature to other patients, and with the same
+general results. The body, of course, would waste during the time of
+sickness; but so did the bodies of sick that were fed. As for medicines,
+they were utterly ignored except where pain was to be relieved, though
+unmedicated doses were alike a necessity with all. Not a single
+medicine was given except for pain, and occasionally in cases in which I
+had reason to think the entire digestive tract needed a general clearing
+of foul sewage. Thence on, that supreme work, the cure of disease, in my
+hands became the work of Nature only.
+
+In a general practice I was able to carry out the non-feeding plan by
+permitting the various meat teas or the cereal broths, none of which can
+be taken by the severely sick in quantities to do harm. By withholding
+milk I was enabled to secure all the fasting Nature required, while
+satisfying the ever-anxious friends with tea and broth diversions.
+
+This was a line of investigation that I felt ought to be of the deepest
+interest to every thinking, high-minded physician, to every intelligent
+layman; and very early the evidences of the utility of withholding food
+from the sick during the entire time of absence of desire for it, its
+absolute safety, were beyond any questioning.
+
+I had no fatalities that were apparently in any way due to the enforced
+lack of food. In cases of chronic disease in which death was inevitable,
+such as cancer, consumption, etc., patients were permitted to take what
+they could with the least offence to the sense of relish. In every case
+of recovery there was a history of increasing general strength as the
+disease declined, of an actual increase of vital power without the
+support of food that had no more relish than the dose that crucified
+the nerves of taste.
+
+In all America milk is the chief reliance to support vital power when no
+other food can be taken. Milk in one stage of normal digestion gets into
+the form of tough curds ready for the press, and curds should always be
+thoroughly masticated before swallowing.
+
+Sir William Roberts, of England, in his exhaustive work on _Digestion
+and Diet_, asserts that milk-curds are not digested in the stomach
+during sickness, but are forced into the duodenum, where, he asserts,
+they are digested, but he gives no reason for his faith that there is
+power to digest in the duodenum where there is none in the stomach.
+
+It was not difficult to make the mothers in the homes understand that
+taking milk by the drink was equivalent to swallowing green cheese-curds
+without due mastication.
+
+With these hygienic conceptions and methods I continued to visit the
+sick as a mere witness of Nature's power in disease rather than as an
+investigator, yet without being able to understand the secret of the
+support of vital power without food. But whatever risk there might be,
+or how strong my faith when my patrons were the subjects of what might
+be called foolhardy experiments, there came a time when this faith was
+to have the severest of all tests.
+
+An epidemic of diphtheria broke out among my nearest neighbors, and
+after four deaths in as many families within a stone's throw of my
+residence a son of mine aged three years was taken. I had never given
+him in all his life even a cross look, and whatever sin there was in
+making idols of children in this I was the worst of all sinners, and I
+did not quite believe, as some Christian folks would have me, that my
+happiness through him was not the very incense of gratitude to the great
+Author for the gift of such a treasure of the heart.
+
+In my hour of trial two of my ablest and most experienced medical
+friends came to me. Quinine and iron in solution were their verdict--and
+the little throat was not copper-lined; and, in addition, all the strong
+whiskey possible to force into the stomach: all this would have required
+manacled wrists and the prying apart of set jaws. He had never received
+anything from me more violent than caresses, and this abomination of
+dosage was to be sent down a bleeding, ulcerated way, over raw surfaces
+that would writhe and quiver under the added torture. This would not be
+rational treatment for ulcerations on the body, and the loss of strength
+through resistance and structural injury to the throat had no promise of
+redemption except in the minds of my medical friends.
+
+It happened that I left home without getting the prescription filled,
+and, not getting back as soon as expected, the anxious wife procured the
+medicines and succeeded in getting one dose into the stomach, and also
+in raising a nervous hurricane that took an hour to allay. She was then
+informed that such a dose would be cruel even to a horse. Thence on he
+took nothing into his stomach but the water that thirst compelled, and a
+little dosage with it to meet the mother's need; and so I stood beside
+the suffering idol of my heart, with the entire medical world against
+me--strong enough, only rejoicing in my strength to defend him against
+the barbarism of authorized treatment. My only comfort was that in his
+time of supreme need I could give him supreme kindness, and if death
+must come there would not be the additional laceration of avoidable
+cruelty inflicted; and Nature, with every possible aid that could add
+comfort to the suffering body, won the victory.
+
+Since then the medical world has advanced to antitoxin as a specific,
+leaving me nearly alone to plodding ways that are by sight and not by
+faith. That the treatment of my sick son in the absence of the only
+supposed specific was in advance of my time, the medical world cannot
+now question.
+
+As the months and years went on, it so happened that all my fatalities
+were of a character as not to involve in the least suggestions of
+starvation, while the recoveries were a series of demonstrations as
+clear as anything in mathematics, of evolving strength of all the
+muscles, of all the senses and faculties, as the disease declined. No
+physician whose practice has been extensive has failed to have had cases
+in which the same changes occurred, and in which the amount of food
+taken did not explain this general increase of strength.
+
+Believing I had made a most important discovery in physiology, one that
+would revolutionize the dietetic treatment of the sick, if not
+ultimately abolish it, my visits to the sick became of unsurpassed
+interest, I watched every possible change as an unfolding of new life,
+seeing the physical changes only as I would see the swelling buds evolve
+into the leaves or flowers, reading the soul- and mind-changes in the
+more radiant lines of expression.
+
+I saw all these things with the naked eye, and more and more marvelled
+at the bulk of our materia medicas, the size of our drug-stores, and the
+space given to healing powers in all public and medical prints.
+
+For years I saw my patients grow into the strength of health without the
+slightest clue to the mystery, until I chanced to open a new edition of
+Yeo's _Physiology_ at the page where I found this table of the estimated
+losses that occur in death after starvation:
+
+    Fat             97 per cent.
+    Muscle          30    "
+    Liver           56    "
+    Spleen          63    "
+    Blood           17    "
+    Nerve-centres    0
+
+And light came as if the sun had suddenly appeared in the zenith at
+midnight. Instantly I saw in human bodies a vast reserve of predigested
+food, with the brain in possession of power so to absorb as to maintain
+structural integrity in the absence of food or power to digest it. This
+eliminated the brain entirely as an organ that needs to be fed or that
+can be fed from light-diet kitchens in times of acute sickness. Only in
+this self-feeding power of the brain is found the explanation of its
+functional clearness where bodies have become skeletons.
+
+I could now go into the rooms of the sick with a formula that explained
+all the mysteries of the maintenance and support of vital power and cure
+of disease, and that was of practical avail. I now knew that there could
+be no death from starvation until the body was reduced to the skeleton
+condition; that therefore for structural integrity, for functional
+clearness, the brain has no need of food when disease has abolished the
+desire for it. Is there any other way to explain the power to make wills
+with whispering lips in the very hour of death, even in the last moments
+of life, that the law recognizes as valid?
+
+I could now know that to die of starvation is a matter not of days, but
+of weeks and months; certainly a period far beyond the average time of
+recovery from acute disease.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+There fell to my care a very much worn-out mother, who took to her bed
+with an attack of inflammatory rheumatism, with the joints so involved
+as to require the handling of a trained nurse. The agony was such that
+the hypodermic needle was required to make existence endurable, and it
+was used with the idea that the brain would be less injured by the
+remedy than by the agony with its inevitable loss of sleep.
+
+I know of no disease in which treatment has been more savage than in
+this. The remedies in common use at that time were mainly new and of
+supposed specific powers; but they were so violent, and proved to be so
+futile, that they have all been given up since by the majority of the
+profession.
+
+As the days went on the disease declined in spite of the enforced
+comfort through the needle; there were easier movements, a clearing of
+the skin from sallow to a tint of redness, and finally, after a month,
+the armchair could be used for a change.
+
+On the morning of the forty-sixth day there was revealed in the face the
+perfect color of health, and happiness marked every line of the
+expression. There was ability to walk through several rooms of her home.
+But it was not until the afternoon that the first food was desired and
+taken, and never before was plain bread and butter, the supreme objects
+of desire, so relished. In the following few months there was an actual
+gain of forty pounds.
+
+My next marked case is a wonderful illustration of the self-feeding
+power of the brain to meet an emergency, and a revelation, also, of the
+possible limitations of the starvation period. This was the case of a
+frail, spare boy of four years, whose stomach was so disorganized by a
+drink of solution of caustic potash that not even a swallow of water
+could be retained. He died on the seventy-fifth day of his fast, with
+the mind clear to the last hour, and with apparently nothing of the body
+left but bones, ligaments, and a thin skin; and yet the brain had lost
+neither weight nor functional clearness.
+
+In another city a similar accident happened to a child of about the same
+age, in whom it took three months for the brain to exhaust entirely the
+available body-food.
+
+I will now enter upon a study of the brain and its powers along these
+lines, to be enlivened by illustrative evidence. What reason and
+physiology had I with me that I should use methods in the sick-room
+wherein the entire medical world was against me, and with severest
+condemnation?
+
+The head is the power-house of the human plant, with the brain the
+dynamo as the source of every possible human energy. We think, love,
+hate, admire, labor with our hands, taste, hear, smell, see, and feel
+through the brain. Broken bones and wounds heal, diseases are cured
+through energy evolved in the brain or the brain system as a whole. The
+other so-called vital organs and the muscles are only as so many
+machines that are run by the brain power, with the stomach an
+exceedingly important machine. That powers so rare do not originate in
+the bones, ligaments, muscles, or fats, does not need argument; that
+when the nerve-trunks that supply the arm or leg are severed power of
+movement and feeling is lost, is known to all; and equally would the
+power of the stomach be abolished were the nerve-trunks cut off. In a
+general way, then, it may be stated that the strength of the body is
+directly as the strength of the brain.
+
+With this physiology, who in or out of the medical profession can fail
+to see clearly that the digestion of even an atom of food is a tax upon
+the strength of the brain for whatever of power needed by the stomach,
+the machine, for this purpose? Unless it can be proved that the stomach
+has powers not derived from the brain system, this will have to be
+admitted.
+
+How is the strength kept up in the light of this physiology? The
+universal belief is that it is kept up by the daily food. In proportion
+to the prostration of sickness, so are physicians anxious to conserve
+the energies by working the stomach to the limit of its powers.
+
+The impression that there must be something digested to support the
+vitality of the system is a belief, a conviction that has always been
+too self-evident to suggest a doubt.
+
+If the well need food to keep up the strength, the sick need it all the
+more; this is the logic that has been displayed upon this question. Let
+us keep it clear in mind that, if the nerves going to the stomach are
+severed, paralysis will result as in the case of the arm, in order more
+definitely to conceive the stomach as a _machine_ that requires power to
+run it even to a tiringout degree. This is strikingly illustrated by the
+exhausted feeling that invites the after-dinner nap for rest, which,
+however, does not rest overfilled stomachs, overfilled brains. The brain
+gets no rest while getting rid of food-masses with more of decomposition
+than of digestion.
+
+If food really has power to keep up the strength, there should not be so
+much strength lost by the general activities--indeed, it would seem that
+fatigue should be impossible. But the fact remains that from the first
+wink in the morning to the last at night there is a gradual decline of
+strength no matter how much food is taken, nor how ample the powers of
+digestion; and that there comes a time with all when they must go to
+bed, and not to the dining-room, to recover lost strength. The loss of a
+night of sleep is never made up by any kind of care in eating on the
+following day, and none are so stupid as not to know that rest is the
+only means to recover from the exhaustion of excessive physical
+activity.
+
+The brain is not only a self-feeding organ when necessary, but it is
+also a self-charging dynamo, regaining its exhausted energies entirely
+through rest and sleep. There is no movement so light, no thought or
+motion so trivial, that it does not cost brain power in its action--and
+this is true of even the slightest exercise of energy evolved in
+digestion.
+
+Why, then, do we eat?
+
+For two reasons, or perhaps three: we eat because we are hungry. We
+rarely fail to eat excessively to satisfy the sense of relish after the
+normal hunger sense has been dissipated; we may eat to satisfy relish as
+we eat ice cream, fruits, and the enticing extras that beguile us to put
+more food into the stomach after it is already overfilled for its
+working capacity. But our actual need of food, the best reason for
+taking it, is to make up for the wastes from the general activities; and
+this is a process in the order of Nature that actually tires the entire
+brain system, or, in the common phrase, the whole body, unless the
+stomach has powers not derived from the brain system.
+
+Now as we need not, cannot feed the brain in time of sickness, what can
+we feed? In all diseases in which there are a high pulse and
+temperature, pain or discomfort, aversion to food, a foul, dry mouth and
+tongue, thirst, etc., wasting of the body goes on, no matter what the
+feeding, until a clean, moist tongue and mouth and hunger mark the close
+of the disease, when food can be taken with relish and digested. This
+makes it clearly evident that we cannot save the muscles and fat by
+feeding under these adverse conditions.
+
+Another very important, unquestioned fact is that disease in proportion
+to its severity means a loss of digestive conditions and of digestive
+power.
+
+Cheer is to digestion what the breeze is to the fire. It may well be
+conceived that there are electric nerve wires extending from the depths
+of the soul itself to each individual gland of the stomach, with the
+highest cheer or ecstacy to stimulate the highest functional activity,
+or the shock of bad news to paralyze. From cheer to despair, from the
+slightest sense of discomfort to the agony of lacerated nerves,
+digestive power goes down. Affected thus, digestive power wanes or
+increases, goes down or up, as mercury in a barometer from weather
+conditions.
+
+Digestive conditions in their maximum are revealed in the school-yard
+during recess, when Nature seems busy recovering lost time.
+
+How compares the ramble of a June morning, with the blue and sunshine
+all above, the matchless green of the trees, and all the air fragrant
+with the perfume of flowers and alive with music from the winged singer,
+in digestive conditions, with those in the rooms of the sick, where
+there is only distress felt in the body and seen in the faces of the
+friends?
+
+In time of health, if we eat when we are not hungry, or when very tired,
+or in any mental worriment, we find that we suffer a loss of vital
+power, of both physical and mental energy. How, then, can food be a
+support to vital power when the brain is more gravely depressed by
+disease? Yet from the morning of medical history the question of how
+vital power is supported in time of sickness has never been considered,
+because there has never been any doubt as to the support coming from
+food. I assume this to be a fact, since all works on the practice of
+medicine of to-day enjoin the need to feed the sick to sustain their
+depressed energies--all this without a question as to whether there is
+not a possibility of adding indigestion to disease when food is enforced
+against Nature's fiat.
+
+Since vital power is centred in the brain, do we need to feed, can we
+feed, for other than brain reasons? This physiology admitted, there is
+no other conclusion possible than that feeding the sick is a tax on
+vital power when we need all that power to cure disease.
+
+With all this physiology behind me, for more than a score of years I
+have been going into the rooms of the sick to see the evolutions of
+health from disease, as I see the evolutions from the dead wastes of
+March to the affluence of June, and from the first I had the exceeding
+advantage of being able to study the natural history of disease, a
+history in which none of the symptoms were aggravated by digestive
+disturbances.
+
+As there was no wasting of vital power in the hopeless effort to save
+the body from wasting, I had a clear right to presume that my patients
+recovered more rapidly and with less suffering. With no perplexing
+study over what foods and what medicines to give, I could devote my
+entire attention to the study of symptoms as evidences of progress
+toward recovery or death; and in addition to all this there was the
+great satisfaction of being strictly in line with Nature as to when and
+what to eat.
+
+As to the danger of death from mere starvation, the following remarkable
+case reveals how remote it is in the ordinary history of acute diseases.
+The late Rev. Dr. Merchant, of Meadville, Pa., a short time before his
+death, which occurred some months ago, informed me that a brother
+entered the army during the War of the Rebellion with a weight of one
+hundred and fifty-nine pounds. He was sent home so wasted from
+ulceration of stomach and bowels that he actually spanned his thigh with
+thumb and finger. He lived ten days only, to astonish all by the
+clearness of his mind even on the last day of his life, when he could
+think on abstruse questions as he had never been known to do in health.
+At death his body weighed only sixty pounds.
+
+It was Dr. Merchant's opinion, from a history of the case, that no food
+was digested during the last four months of his life; but it is my
+opinion that it took a much longer time than this for the brain to
+absorb more than ninety pounds of the body. That life was shortened by
+the more rapid loss of the tissues from the disease is to be taken into
+account in estimating time in starvation.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+Feeding the sick! Who that rule in kitchens and feed the well do not
+realize with weariness of brain the demands of the stomach that at each
+meal there shall be some change in the bill of fare?
+
+The chief reliance of physicians for the maintenance of strength while
+sick bodies are being cured is milk. As a food, milk was mainly destined
+for the calf, and not for man--certainly not after the coming of the
+molars. It is not a food that will start the saliva in case of hunger,
+as the odors from the frying-pan or from roasting fowl, yet because it
+plays such an important part as a complete food for some months in the
+life of the calf, and because it can be taken without especial aversion
+when the odors of the cooking-stove are an offence to the nostrils; it
+is given by the hour, day after day, and in some cases week after week;
+and there are physicians by the thousands who reinforce this inflexible
+bill of fare by the strongest alcoholics, whiskey being generally
+selected.
+
+In this connection I shall say of alcoholics that they contain not an
+atom that can be converted into living atoms; they congest and irritate
+the stomach, and hence lessen digestive power; and benumb all the brain
+powers and faculties.
+
+As a daily ration without change, this combination, strictly adhered to,
+would prostrate the energies of a giant, and he would find himself
+mustered out of all active service in less time than the hapless sick
+are often compelled to endure such feeding. Does Nature so conveniently
+reverse herself to meet an emergency that the sick can be built up and
+sustained by such feeding as would debilitate the well?
+
+In the city where I live the physicians average well in learning,
+ability, character, and experience. Among them are the extremists in
+dosage: those with a hundred remedies for a hundred symptoms; others
+with such boluses as would writhe the face of an ox. There are some with
+extraordinary force of command in the rooms of the sick, who believe
+that whiskey is nourishing and that milk is liquid food; that doses go
+into human stomachs to travel the rounds of the circulation, and finally
+drop off at the right place for either patchwork or original work.
+
+Whatever there is in drugs to cure disease, whatever in milk and the
+strongest alcoholics to sustain the strength, every protracted case has
+been made to reveal in their forceful hands. I have no reason to believe
+they exceeded authorized treatments. I have no reason to doubt that in
+all countries, in all lands, where there are educated physicians, the
+same appliances are in common use, appliances that will make the next
+short step from the lancet and bolus of a darker age the estimate of the
+time to come.
+
+The treatments of the sick are always changing, while the process of
+cure remains the same. Only in the case of broken bones are we compelled
+to let Nature do all the curing, while we may take pride in some
+progress in the mechanical appliances.
+
+As milk and stimulants are a common, authorized means to sustain the
+sick, and as they are poured into human stomachs with all the faith with
+which lancets were once forced into congested veins, their efficiency
+for good or evil must be studied by comparison.
+
+Treatments must lessen both the severity and the duration of disease to
+be of permanent benefit. For a study by comparison, this opportunity
+came to me. There was a call to attend a case of typhoid fever in a
+young girl. In the same vicinity there had been under the care of one of
+my forceful brethren a woman in middle life, whose stomach was
+habitually rejecting all the milk and alcoholics poured into it, the
+doctor having a theory that good would result no matter how brief the
+time they were retained.
+
+For a month my patient swallowed only the desired water and doses which
+did not corrode, a desire for food coming at the end of the month. The
+only day and night nurse was an overwrought mother, who got into bed
+with the same disease as soon as the daughter got out of it. There was
+another month of severer sickness, when without food and without the
+horror of dosage, as before, the call for food marked the close of the
+disease. My services ended here some days before the undertaker took
+charge of the doctor's case.
+
+A girl in her later teens, with a mild, so-called malarial fever, fell
+into the same forceful care. There was a true history in this case of
+nearly two gallons of whiskey, and daily milk from the quart at first
+down to inability to take the least nourishment at last. Then there were
+more than a month of days when vital power sustained itself without the
+ways of violence, death occurring during the _nineteenth week_.
+
+The ravenous brain had absorbed the lips to such thinness that the
+depressions between the teeth were clearly revealed. From the first dose
+to the last breath this was a case of dying, and the most persistent
+fight for life against immense odds I have ever become aware of in an
+acute case. In this case the stomach had become so seared by the
+alcoholic that digestion was impossible, as would have been the case in
+a body that was not sick.
+
+Near this home there was a more delicate girl of about the same age
+taken with the same fever; but with mild dosage and no food--in Nature's
+care--hunger came at the close of the fourth week.
+
+Later on in the same family there was a case of la grippe, in which for
+several years there had been chronic, ulcerative bronchitis that bid
+defiance to blisters and inhalations, the various specifics of another
+forceful predecessor, who also was a believer in large doses and full
+rations of alcoholized milk.
+
+The coughing was so persistent, so continuous, that only the hypodermic
+needle met the need. To prevent the tearing of a raw surface in the
+bronchial tubes by the cough was as necessary as to apply splints to a
+broken bone. There was no food for six weeks, and Nature made most of
+her opportunity, not only to cure the acute disease, but also the
+chronic disease, which for nearly ten years since has remained cured.
+
+I was summoned to Asheville, N. C., to see a young man in the last stage
+of consumption. I found him nearly a skeleton, though he had been eating
+six times daily for several months by the decree of a really learned
+physician. The belchings from gas were loud and frequent; the sputa by
+actual measure was about six ounces during every twenty-four hours.
+
+A fast was ordered, and on the third day a mass of undigested food was
+thrown up. As soon as the stomach and bowels became empty there was
+comfort all along the line, and the cough was so diminished, that less
+than an ounce of sputa was raised in twenty-four hours.
+
+After a week of fasting there came a natural desire for food, and thence
+on he enjoyed without distress of stomach all he wished to take. Thence
+on he lived with only the least discomfort, and with whispering lips he
+dictated to me his will, conveying large property. He could look with
+meaning when the power to whisper was gone, and life ended as the going
+out of a candle.
+
+For months his sufferings had nearly all been due to food masses in a
+state of decomposition. He saw clearly and mentioned often that his had
+been a case of starvation from overfeeding. Nature finally had to
+succumb because she was not also able to deal with a clearly avoidable
+disease, indigestion; but she kept up a brave fight until the body was
+nearly absorbed.
+
+As soon as the stomach and bowels became empty the friends noticed that
+nervousness largely disappeared. His sleeps were much longer, because
+not broken by coughing as before; and as the brain was not taxed with
+food masses there was an accumulation of power that was clearly revealed
+in the cheer of expression and a calmness as if heavenly rest had come
+at last.
+
+A few years ago an attorney in this city had to endure a course of fever
+to which was added all the known barbarism of the times. Under enforced
+food and stimulants his mind at last became so weak that the dosings
+were forced down his throat. There were many weeks of life at lowest ebb
+before the man of torture (the doctor) was compelled to discontinue his
+evil work, and there were then months, extending to years, during which
+there appeared a colorless ghost of his former self on the streets--and
+this in spite of a wood-chopper's daily eatings, which were far in
+excess of power to digest.
+
+At last he was brought to his couch with a mild fever complicated with a
+variety of other ailings. Not one of his friends who knew him
+intimately expected his recovery, as it was believed by them that there
+were chronic conditions that were beyond cure, and this because there
+had been death in manner, movements, and looks for months. And yet he
+had been able to take a stomach to his office every morning for many
+weeks filled with pancakes, sausage, fried potatoes, etc., only to
+shiver before the stove between his stomach-fillings.
+
+To this possibly hopeless case I was called, and from that time he was
+to suffer only from the disease. For nearly three weeks no food was
+called for; and yet power so increased that he became able to dress
+himself; and on the morning before hunger finally called for food he
+came down from his bedroom with a son on his back who weighed not less
+than seventy-five pounds. Thence on, life, color, mind, muscle, rapidly
+came until there was such regeneration as to reveal a new body and a new
+soul.
+
+Some years before this event an only son was taken sick with a mild
+fever. A young physician and friend of the patient was called whose
+faith in drugs, milk, and whiskey was boundless. He was fresh from his
+university, and therefore Nature had no part, through experience at the
+sick-bed, in the cure of disease. For many weeks these remedies of
+torture were vigorously and persistently enforced. But the time came
+when Nature would bear no longer. The father, a personal friend, came to
+see me simply to unburden himself, and as he was not able to give me the
+case I was unprofessional enough to advise that the attendance should
+go on, but that there should be a complete rest the physician should not
+know of. This was done, and in a few days there was a call for food, the
+first call in more than two months. Of course, there was a recovery,
+which was an exceeding victory for Nature against extraordinarily
+adverse conditions, but it required many months to restore the wrecked
+balance.
+
+As I write this experience the following comes to me as a still stronger
+indictment against authorized medical method. A. B., when in the early
+maturity of his physical manhood, was stricken with a partial paralysis
+that sent him to his bed. It was simply the case of a wound of the brain
+requiring rest as the chief condition for cure. But milk, whiskey, and
+drugs were used with the greatest persistence, and after three months he
+became able to be about, no less feeble in mind than in body, and with
+teeth utterly ruined by the dosage. For fully five years he went about
+his home and along the streets as one in a dream. For ten years there
+was inability to attend to his ordinary business. Life came at last
+through the no-breakfast plan.
+
+The most remarkable fight for life on the part of Nature against the
+adverse conditions of drugs, alcoholics, and milk I have ever known was
+in the following case: A spare woman, of perhaps forty years, came to
+her bed the victim of habitual bromidia and chloral, invited by severe
+headaches. The treatment of this case was as follows: whiskey every
+hour, milk every other hour; corrosive medication and powerful brain
+sedative every night, which would have paralyzed digestive energy for
+many days. There was not an hour during the twenty-four in which there
+was not dosing either to cure the disease or to sustain the system. The
+average quantity of whiskey was six ounces daily, and of milk nearly a
+quart. This treatment was borne for weeks, merging into months. There
+was no disease not caused by the treatments, and the battle went on
+until there was only the shadow of a woman left when Nature rebelled
+against further violence. A few days of peace were granted because hope
+had departed; but it took Nature more than a year to recover from the
+damage.
+
+A man of iron and steel, in the early prime of life, was the victim of a
+severe injury. With the agony of lacerated nerves and the hypodermic
+needle to make the digestion of food impossible, milk and whiskey were
+poured into an unwilling stomach from the first, and both were used
+until neither could be retained; and then the lower bowel was
+extemporized into a stomach. For one hundred and forty-six days, from
+three to seven doses of morphine were put into the arm daily; and
+morphine dries both mouth and stomach and lessens all energies of the
+brain. The body itself was not sick; there was no hint of disease in it;
+yet there were drugs prescribed that cost dollars by the score, and
+there were alcoholics by the gallon. For months the pain, alcoholics,
+and morphine kept the mind in such a daze that there were only the
+imbecilic mutterings of a dreamer in trouble.
+
+The only treatment indicated in this case was the best of surgery for
+the injury, and some easing doses for a short while at first, to relieve
+pain. No food would be desired or digested; so the fast would go on
+until there would be a natural hunger, which would only manifest itself
+when there would be marked relief from pain. The meals, thence on, would
+be so far apart that all would be keenly relished; and there could be no
+loss of weight when meals would be so taken.
+
+It is not surprising when I say that a seared stomach and a brain
+converted into a whiskey pickle had no part in the digestion of milk:
+else why did the weight of one hundred and sixty pounds at the time of
+the accident fall to eighty-five at the time of hunger? And all this
+drugging and alcoholics for a man who was not really sick! and the bill
+of fare that was not changed during one hundred and sixty days! and the
+time lost, and the expense entailed, and the anxious, aching hearts that
+were nearest the bed of horrors--of horrors, torments clearly invited.
+
+By way of contrast the following case is given. During vacation a lad of
+twelve years of one of my families took to his bed with appendicitis in
+severe form. A learned physician was called, and there were many days of
+morphine, with other medication and all the food that could be coaxed
+into an unwilling stomach. Enough morphine was given daily to paralyze
+digestive energy for at least two or three days in one in ordinary
+health. There was a month of this war against Nature, when the violence
+of the acute attack subsided and a partial victory was gained against
+great odds.
+
+On my return I found him under heavy dosage for the recovery of strength
+and lost appetite. Colorless, anæmic, languid--he was barely able to
+walk. He was immediately put under my care, and therefore under a fast
+that ended in a few days in such hunger as had not been felt in several
+months; and color, cheer, energy, weight evolved in a month. But there
+was also a developing abscess deep in the groin, and the time came when
+a grave operation was necessary to save life. He was made ready for the
+surgeon's knife that cut its way down, down many inches to relieve walls
+ready to burst from the tension. The wound remained in the care of the
+surgeon, but the life in my care. Who deny that the anæsthetic, the
+shock of the operation, and the subsequent pain will not abolish all
+power to digest as well as all the desire for food? Here was a patient
+waiting for Nature to rally, which she did on the third day in a call
+for food; and thence on one daily meal was keenly relished, and the
+wound was healed--a wound that was three inches long on the surface and
+six inches deep. On the fifteenth day the lad was able to be dressed and
+able to walk about his room, and with a freshness of color that was
+never observed in him before. What law of body was violated in the
+preliminary treatment intended to prepare Nature for the ordeal and to
+enable her to rally from it?
+
+This fresh tragedy in one human life has become known to me while I
+write. A man, a giant, in his eighty-eighth year, lost his appetite, and
+was put to death by the following means: A pint of whiskey and from one
+to two quarts of milk daily to keep him nourished. Five months passed
+without any change in the bill of fare--five months of delirium, of
+imbecilic muttering before the last breath was drawn. These tragedies
+are common the world over. Do I cry against them with too loud a voice?
+Would that I had a voice of thunder!
+
+I have given a few examples of the crucifixions of the sick and the
+afflicted, whereof I have many, and they are the real history of cases
+known, and are constantly occurring in every community.
+
+The cure of disease and injury by fasting--the mode of Nature--made the
+greatest impression in families in which there was intelligence enough
+to comprehend it; but the victories of Nature were complicated by cases
+in which death was inevitable. With a feeling that I must give the new
+hygiene to the world in printed form, I did not enlarge in public over a
+method that would be certain to be suggestive of starvation, where food
+was supposed to be of the greatest importance.
+
+My sick-room success failed to enable me to draw larger checks; but the
+satisfaction of going into the rooms of the sick and not having to rack
+my mind over what medicine to give, what food to be taken, was a great
+compensation for the absence of a large bank account. Professional
+attainments and abilities play only a small part in the mere business
+side of the medical profession. An innocent public believes with intense
+convictions in the efficacy of dosage; and with distorted vision, as the
+famous knight of La Mancha, sees giants in professional healers who are
+really only windmills, with whom personal contact in the sick-room is
+only too often a danger measured by its closeness.
+
+Think of the wasting of the body during sickness; of the brain system,
+which is life itself, that does not waste: think of the cases of
+recovery in which for weeks no food is possible for stomach reasons; of
+the more frequent cases in which recoveries take place after weeks of
+such scant food as not to be taken into account as a support to vital
+power by minds governed by reason. Think how disease, in proportion to
+its severity, is a loss of digestive power, and with cure energy
+entirely of the brain, how serious a matter it is to lessen it by waste
+of energy in forcing decomposing food masses through a digestive channel
+nearly two rods long, food masses that the brain will have none of, and
+that do not save the fat and muscles; think of all this physiology, and
+raise this question: "Is this man alone in his faith and practice, or
+is Nature so in line with him that the entire medical profession is
+wrong in their dosings and feedings?"
+
+I conclude these cases with an illustration. Think of all this enforced
+feeding, of the doses to relieve, of the wasting of brain power, and
+compare with the following illustration, in which case no food was taken
+for thirty-six days, and yet it was possible for the patient to be about
+during the greater part of the time.
+
+    NOTE.--In this case severe indigestion and nervous troubles and
+    almost daily headaches had been a torture for years. On the
+    morning of the thirty-sixth day, on which the photograph was
+    taken, a visit to the dentist for the extraction of a tooth
+    revealed no fear, as had formerly been the case. Eating was
+    resumed on the thirty-eighth day with no inconvenience. Since
+    then (over six months ago) no trace of the former troubles has
+    reappeared. Loss of weight about twenty pounds.
+
+[Illustration: Photograph, by Henry Ritter.
+
+MRS. A. M. LICHTENHAHN,
+
+THIRTY-SIXTH DAY WITHOUT FOOD.]
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+"Physician, heal thyself!" There is a world of sarcasm in these three
+words; for about the only advantage the physician has over the laity is
+that he can do his own dosing. As a general fact, he does no more to
+prevent bodily ailings than other people, and is just as liable to
+become the victim of bad habits.
+
+It is my impression that, in proportion, as many physicians become the
+slaves of tobacco, opium in some form, and alcoholics as are to be found
+in any other class of people; they are quite as likely to be the victims
+of various chronic ailings as other people, and with equal impotency to
+relieve. Every day I see physicians going to the homes of the sick with
+cigars on fire, signals of the brain system in distress undergoing the
+lullaby of nicotine; going into rooms where the purest air of heaven
+ought to prevail, as animated tobacco-signs.
+
+Where is there virtue in this world that is of any practical good whose
+vital force is not to be found in example rather than in precept? Who
+has more need to go into the room of the sick with the purest breath,
+the cleanest tongue, the brightest eyes, the purest complexion, the most
+radiant countenance, and with a soul free from the bonds of ailings or
+habits that offend and disable, than the physician? Where is the logic
+of employing the sick to feed the sick? Is not that a sick doctor whose
+nerves are so full of plaints as to need the frequent soothings only
+found in a cigar, that also sears the nerves of taste? Is he not very
+sick when those nerves require the stronger alcoholic?
+
+There is contagion in good health and sound morals, when daily
+illustrated, no less than in courage and fear. No physician can be at
+his best in the rooms of the sick if he be under any bondage from
+disease or habit.
+
+"Physician, heal thyself!" Physician, how does it happen that you have
+need to be healed, and of what worth are you if you can neither prevent
+disease nor cure yourself with your dosings? What availeth it to a man
+to talk righteously when virtue is not in him?
+
+Ailings, habits blunt all the special senses and the finer instincts and
+tastes, and impair the power to reason clearly, to infer correctly, to
+conclude wisely. Only the well have that hopefulness that comes from
+power in reserve, power that is not wasted through acquired disease and
+acquired habits. The contagion of health is a power no less than courage
+or fear.
+
+That man, self-poised, void of fear, General Grant, crushed the
+Rebellion with a single sentence, "I will fight it out on this line if
+it takes all summer." That sentence made every man in his army a Grant
+in courage and confidence. Grant in his prime could puff his cigar while
+commanding all the armies of his country; but the cigar ultimately
+destroyed his life, and there was no physician to interpose to prevent
+one of the most torturing of deaths.
+
+Where is the logic of the sick trying to heal the sick? This question
+will be more frequently asked in that time to come when the drug-store
+annex to the sick-room will be much smaller than is now thought
+necessary.
+
+Human expression is studied in the rooms of the sick as nowhere else;
+and if the lines are not obscured by the fogs and clouds of disease the
+signs can be much more clearly distinguished.
+
+A man is now under my care whose soul is of the largest mould, and who
+is so supremely endowed by reason of intellect, varied tastes and
+acquirements, as to make life on earth well worth living. His long
+chronic local ailment has not impaired his power to read me for signs of
+hope as it seems to me I have never been read before; and never before
+have I so felt the need to enter a room of the sick with a larger stock
+of general health. For the time I seem to him to be holding before his
+eyes the keys of life or death.
+
+The physician should be able to go into the room of the sick to see with
+clearest vision whatever is revealed to the natural eye; and no less to
+see with eyes of understanding that he may be an interpreter of
+conditions that indicate recovery or death. He is the historian of
+disease, and therefore before he can write he must see clearly all that
+can be known about the process of cure as revealed by symptoms.
+
+The eye is at its best only in perfect health no less than the reason,
+the judgment, and the spirits. A few years ago a drouth of many weeks
+occurred; in some meadows and pastures the grass seemed dead, beyond the
+possibility of growth. Every shade of the green had departed; but warm
+rains came, and in a few days there was a green carpet plush-like in its
+softness and delicacy.
+
+So the progress of cure may be read on the tongue, on the skin, in the
+eyes, where there are both eyesight and insight to see and to study.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+For many years I entered the rooms of the sick a sick man myself; I was
+the victim of that monster of hydraheads, dyspepsia, or, to call it by a
+more modern title, indigestion.
+
+In my later teens my stomach began seriously to complain over its tasks,
+and a pint of the essence of bitterness was procured to restore it to
+power. My mouth was filled with teeth of the sweet kind; hence my horror
+for the doses far exceeded the milder protests of the stomach. Not the
+slightest benefit came from my medicinal sufferings, and this ended all
+routine treatment of my stomach. My intense aversion to the flavor of
+strong medicines caused me to inflict them as rarely as possible upon
+other mouths during the drug period of my practice.
+
+Mine seemed to be a weary stomach, in which the tired sense was a close
+approach to acute pain for hours after each meal. When a medical student
+I found nothing in the books, in the advice of my preceptor, nor in the
+lectures at the university, but what proposed to cure me through drugs
+that were abhorrent. As I never encountered any cures nor received the
+slightest benefit from my experiments, I was deterred from injuring
+myself through persistent dosage.
+
+In the early part of my student career I was behind a drug-counter,
+where I had ample experience in putting up prescriptions, and had an
+excellent opportunity to measure medical men as revealed in their
+formulas and the results in many cases in which failure was the rule in
+chronic ailings; and I was not encouraged to abuse myself through the
+results as revealed by any form of medication.
+
+For the benefit of those who suffer from complainings of the stomach I
+give a condensed summing-up of myself. I was born with a wiry
+constitution, but of the lean kind, and a weak stomach, the chiefest
+ancestral legacy. With ability to see with intense sense very much to
+enjoy in this world, my resources in this way were boundless, hence I
+was always full of hope and cheer.
+
+All the senses of my palate were of the acute kind, and so were a
+continual source of the penalties of gluttony. Whatever else there might
+be alack with me, there was never a lack of appetite. I was able to eat
+at each meal food enough which, if fully digested, would have redeemed
+the wastes of any day of labor; and not only this, but also enough of
+sugar-enticing foods to anticipate the wastes of the following day.
+
+Growing up in the country and with an intense fondness for the tart
+sweetness of apples, pears, and peaches, and the harmlessness of eating
+them no matter how full the stomach with hearty food, without question
+my stomach was never void of pomace during the entire fruit season.
+
+Whenever I sat down to eat there was an onrush of all the senses of the
+palate as the outrush of imprisoned children to the ecstatic activities
+of the school-yard; hence over-eating always, with never a sense of
+satiety. The penalties were realized in painful digestion, with the
+duodenum the chiefest of protesting voices.
+
+A time came when gas would so accumulate as to make the heart labor from
+mere pressure, the inevitable insufficiency of breath causing a lack of
+aëration of the blood. With a constant waste of power in the stomach
+there was always a sense of weariness; hence I was never able to know
+the luxury of power in reserve. All through life my best efforts were
+the result of intellectual inebriation, with always corresponding
+exhaustion as the direct result. This weakness compelled me to waste the
+least time on people who could not interest me, and to spend much time
+alone to recharge my exhausted batteries.
+
+For such a case as mine there is not to-day to be found an intelligent
+hint in any medical text-book as to the physiological way to recovery.
+
+The breakfasts in my house were of a character that, without ham,
+sausage, eggs, steaks, or chops, they would not have been considered
+worth spending time over. I had reached a time when a general collapse
+seemed to be impending; but it was stayed for a few years by the new
+life that came to me through the evolutions of health in the rooms of
+the sick that seemed to portend possible professional glories: but as
+the years went on I suffered more and more from nervous prostration
+through waste of power in the stomach.
+
+My friends began to enlarge upon my wretched looks, and with no little
+concern; but none were wise enough to realize that my need was for words
+that reminded of life and not of death.
+
+By chance I met an old friend on the street when he happened to be
+thinking about ways in daily food in Europe, from which he had just
+returned, and at once he began to talk, not about my wretched looks, but
+about the exceedingly light breakfasts customary in all the great
+centres where he had been. They consisted only of a roll and a cup of
+coffee. I was impressed just enough not to forget the fact, but without
+there being a hint in it to set me to thinking.
+
+But the time came, "the fulness of time." There came a morning when for
+the first time I remembered that when in ordinary health I had no desire
+to breakfast; but there was a sense of such general exhaustion from
+power wasted over an unusual food mass not needed at the previous
+evening meal that my morning coffee was craved as the morning dram by
+the chronic toper. Only this, and a forenoon resulted of such comfort of
+body, such cheer, and such mental and physical energy as had never been
+realized since my young manhood was happy in the blessed
+unconsciousness of having a stomach that, no matter how large or how
+numerous the daily meals, never complained.
+
+As for the dinner that followed, it was taken with an acuteness of
+relish and was handled with a power of digestion that were also a new,
+rich experience; but the afternoon fell far short of the forenoon. The
+experience was so remarkable that I at once gave up all eating in the
+morning, and with such reviving effects upon all my powers that the
+results began to be noticed by all friends.
+
+So originated the no-breakfast plan. Up to this time I had never had a
+thought of advising anyone to do without food when desired; much less
+that any of the three daily meals should be given up. My war was against
+feeding when acute sickness had abolished all desire for food, and this
+I had been able to conduct many years without exciting suspicion of a
+general practice of homicide.
+
+The improvement in my own case was so instant and so marked that I began
+to advise the same to others, and with the result that each would make
+known the redeeming work to suffering friends, and so the idea spread in
+a friend-to-friend way.
+
+Now the American breakfast, in point of sheer necessity, is believed to
+be the most important meal of the day, as the means for strength that is
+to be called out for the forenoon of labor, and believed with a force of
+insistence that warrants a conclusion that a night of sleep is more
+exhausting to all the powers than the day of labor.
+
+To go into the fresh air, to do anything with an empty stomach, is to
+invite a fainting by the way, is the general impression; but there were
+scarcely any cases in which there was not sufficient improvement to
+prevent all possibility of a return to the heavy breakfasts that had
+been abandoned.
+
+How did this scheme affect me in a professional way, that is, in the
+reputation as a physician of average balance of brain functions? Some of
+my professional brethren of strong conviction and ready command of
+language began at once to try to abolish the dangerous heresy by
+suggesting that on this one subject I was absolutely crazy. Of course,
+their patrons took up this idea with avidity; and so there was a babble
+of tongues, with myself the central point of attack as crank-in-chief of
+all cranks. This is not the language of exaggeration; for whatever the
+law and modern civilization permitted to abolish me professionally was
+inflicted with tongues by the thousands, the war being made all the more
+exciting and interesting by the enthusiasm of new recruits to the heresy
+from the professional domains of my medical brethren.
+
+What did I gain by this professionally? Mostly the odium of heresy
+during the first few years; but with it was the supreme satisfaction
+that came from seeing more additions to bright eyes and happy faces than
+medicine ever gave, and in a way that would redound to my own good at
+some time. The fact is, that as a means to better health, no matter what
+nor where the disease, there is no limit to its application. As a
+universal panacea its powers are matchless.
+
+For a time I saw no farther than a cure of stomach condition and
+resulting general comfort. That any disease was to be cured otherwhere
+than in the stomach by means so simple, did not occur as an original
+conception; but the fact that giving up the morning meal was attended
+with improvement of all local diseases set me to thinking. Many of my
+patients became thin under the regime; but as this was attended by an
+increase of strength, not even the alarm of anxious friends without
+faith was ever able to induce a return fully to the old ways.
+
+But how explain the loss of weight? A clue came from the following case:
+The first-born of a young mother had an habitual diarrhoea from birth
+lasting many months; and yet it seemed well nourished, for it was
+unusually fat and heavy for its age; but the days and nights were long
+in the care of this apparently well-nourished child. The symptoms were
+heedless to the every-hour dosing of pellets, or from the tumblers of
+apparently purest water.
+
+Now this mother, young as she was, was a woman of convictions, and with
+courage to follow each to an ultimate conclusion. She had heard of
+miracles resulting from only three feedings per day during the nursing
+period; and so, notwithstanding a storm of opposition from a vast
+circle of relatives, she put this first-born rigidly on the three-meal
+plan, with the result of immediate cessation of the bowel trouble, but
+with rapid decline in weight.
+
+This caused anxiety, and I was called upon for advice. In every respect
+except the weight-loss the improvement was wonderful. After much thought
+there was a sudden flash of the truth: there were an abnormal weight and
+bulk, due to the general dropsy of debility, similar in character to the
+swelling of the feet and limbs in the old and feeble. The thickened
+walls of the bloodvessels, toned with health, caused absorption; but the
+eyes of the friends would not open to the miracle for a very long time,
+and so render justice to the heroine, the young mother. As an aider and
+abettor of such a flagrant system of starvation, I had my full share of
+opprobrium; but, aided by the strong-minded, sensible mother, Nature
+gained a sweeping victory, and thus this case cleared my mind from
+confusion as to the anomaly.
+
+One of my medical friends with whom calomel was as a sheet-anchor often
+asserted that babies would actually get fat on it. That bulk would
+actually increase by use of the forceful medicine is likely; but that
+the increase would be dropsical I think is unquestionable.
+
+The dropsy of debility is due to a loss of tone of the vascular system;
+the walls of the vessels become thinner and therefore dilate. In the
+feet and limbs of the old and greatly enfeebled by disease the veins
+become distended to abnormal size by the force of gravity, resulting in
+effusion of water into the cellular tissues, which increases when in the
+upright position during the day and decreases when in the horizontal
+position at night.
+
+A toning up of the entire vascular system, by which a reverse current
+from the tissues into the bloodvessels is made possible, is the only
+means for relief.
+
+This flash-light upon the part physics plays in the cure of disease put
+me upon the true lines of investigation, and furnished a key for the
+solution of many problems. From this time on I was to be kept busy, not
+in winning victories, but in studying them.
+
+This new physiology was not fully apprehended until long after the
+no-breakfast plan was taken up. It came to me link by link; but the
+missing link was the fact that food only restores waste, that lost
+strength is only restored by sleep; and it now seems to me that I was
+very dull not to have found it out long before I did. It seems to me
+that no method of health culture, none in the treatment of disease can
+have any physiological basis where these facts are not taken into
+account.
+
+For a time I failed to look beyond the ailments of the stomach for
+curative results, until really surprising news began to reach me from
+many sources. There would come to me those who had to tell about clearer
+vision, acuter hearing, a stronger sense of smelling, etc., senses that
+were not thought to be affected by disease; or there would be news that
+chronic, local ailings, as nasal or bronchial catarrhs, skin diseases,
+hemorrhoids, or other intractable disease, in some mysterious manner,
+were undergoing a decline under the new regime.
+
+In the domain of drugs we have medicines that vivid imagination has
+endowed with presumed affinities for locations that are diseased. They
+enter the circulation and happily get off at the right spot, to act
+curatively; but no theories are advanced as to how they aid in the
+construction of new cells or atoms, or how they aid in the disposal of
+the old ones.
+
+Construction, destruction! There is no death of atoms: really nothing is
+generated, nothing destroyed: the change is but the rearranging of
+ultimate elements; and how is a drug to influence any more than would be
+in case of the affinities of chemistry?
+
+Hazy conceptions, crude means! The ultimate cell multiplies by division
+to become bone, nails, hair, ligaments, muscles, fat, the brain, the
+whole body. Where along the line in the reconstructive work called by a
+disease or injury is a medicine to apply with power to aid? In what way
+the need to be expressed, in what operative way the helpful assistance
+made clear, that faith without works that are seen can be made strong?
+
+The chemist never rushes into print with news that another element has
+been discovered until demonstrative evidence has placed the matter
+beyond all question. If anything new is discovered in the firmaments,
+adequate means to an end will be able to reveal it to all interested
+eyes.
+
+The impressions of science are quite different from the impressions of
+the materia medica; and the miracles of cure that are displayed by the
+column in even the highest class public prints are never in reach of
+scientific explanation.
+
+A new element is announced; we know instantly that it has been actually
+discovered. A new cure is announced; we instantly may know that the
+evidences will never be displayed along the lines of science.
+
+I now unfold a theory of my own of the origin and development of
+disease, and the development of cure, in which the physical changes
+involved in some of the processes are in reach of the microscope.
+
+It is my impression that, with rare exceptions, people are born with
+actual structural weaknesses, local or general, that may be called
+ancestral legacies. These are known as constitutional tendencies to
+disease.
+
+In parts structurally weak at birth the bloodvessels, because of thin
+and weak walls, are larger than in normal parts, and because of
+dilatation the blood circulates slower. There is an undue pressure upon
+all between-vessel structures, a pressure that must lessen the nutrient
+supply more or less, according to its degree. The death of parts in
+boils and abscesses is due, I believe, to strangulation of the
+nerve-supply. The bloodvessels are elastic, and capable of contraction
+and dilatation, a matter regulated by the brain.
+
+Now in these weaknesses always lie the possibilities of disease; they
+may be supposed the weak links in the constitutional chain, and can no
+more be made stronger than the constitutional design than can the body
+as a whole. By whatever means brain power is lessened abnormality is
+incited in the weak parts; hence gradually from the original weakness
+there is a summing up, as a bronchial or nasal catarrh, or other acute
+or chronic local or general disease.
+
+The first step in any disease is the impression that lessens brain
+power; the slightest depressing emotion, the slightest sense of
+discomfort, lessens brain power, and to a like degree the tone of all
+the bloodvessels; hence dilatation in degree. That the stomach, as the
+most abused organ of the body, plays the largest part in over-drafts
+upon the brain is not a matter of doubt.
+
+Let us develop a chronic disease along these lines, with nasal catarrh
+for an illustration. As tone is regulated entirely by the brain system,
+all taxing of the brain increases the debility of the nasal structures.
+In course of time the debility so increases through whatever also
+debilitates the brain, that a stage is reached when water in the blood
+begins to escape through the thin walls of the vessels and mingles with
+the natural secretion of the membrane, and a catarrhal discharge is the
+result. In severe cases a time may be reached when death of parts from
+the strangling pressure may occur, and then we have an ulcerative
+catarrh.
+
+This evolution will go on as determined by the gravity of the ancestral
+weakness, by the natural strength of the dynamo, the brain, and the
+severity of the debilitating forces to which it may be subjected.
+
+No one is ever attacked by a nasal or any other catarrh, nor by any
+other chronic ailings. They all start from structural weaknesses that
+are inherited, and they are the evolutionary results of brain-wearying
+forces.
+
+If a specialist were asked to express the actual condition of a diseased
+structure that seems to call for medicinal aid, and to tell just how
+medicated sprays, washes, and douches are to reach all the parts
+involved, with healing power, and in what way that power is
+exercised--in other words, what work actually is to be done, and how
+medicine is to do it--he would not be able to enlighten his questioner
+no matter how fertile his conception, how dexterous his use of language.
+In fact, the healing power of drugs exists in fertile imaginations
+rather than among those ultimate processes where disease is cured, where
+disease destroys.
+
+As the care moves by the power evolved in the dynamo, so do the
+bloodvessels contract and relax as determined by brain conditions.
+Dilating bloodvessels, effusion of water from thinning walls, the
+between-vessels starving pressure, increasing general debility of all
+the structures involved--this is the gradual evolution of catarrh and of
+all other chronic diseases.
+
+From this it was seen that no form of local treatment can avail to
+relieve the operative cause in cases of this kind. Tone must be added to
+all the weakened, dilated vessels, in order to contract and thicken
+their walls so as to stop the leakage, and to relieve that pressure upon
+the between structures that have become anæmic through lack of
+nourishment.
+
+That an evolution in reverse is the one need scarcely calls for
+argument. It is the brain that needs our attention, and we meet its need
+by saving its rare powers from wasting.
+
+We will do this by cutting down, as far as possible, all the activities
+for which it furnishes power, even as we would diminish the number of
+cars where power in the dynamo had become deficient; we will either
+sever the wires that connect with the stomach, or make a marked
+reduction in the labor to be performed in the stomach. With power
+accumulating in the brain, power will reach the utmost recesses of
+debility and disease, with Nature to do all the healing.
+
+To reinforce this physiology, this statement may be made with the
+strongest emphasis: the medical treatment of chronic disease fails
+inevitably because it fails to consider the vital force involved. The
+brain has no part in the treatment of chronic disease by the specialist,
+where drugs are a means to an end never reached: there are only a
+disappointment and an interchange of pocket-books.
+
+In all parts suffering with pain there is congestion, swelling. The
+bloodvessels are distended; hence the nerves suffer violence in
+stretching or from pressure. The pain simply adds to the abnormal
+conditions by causing an active determination of the blood to the
+involved parts. To relieve pain, then, is curative, because it lessens
+the abnormal congestion.
+
+The no-breakfast plan with me proved a matter of life unto life. With my
+morning coffee there were forenoons of the highest physical energy, the
+clearest condition of mind, and the acutest sense of everything
+enjoyable.
+
+The afternoons were always in marked sluggishness by contrast, from the
+taxing of digestion.
+
+Without realizing that the heavy meals of the day were a tax upon the
+brain, I would scarcely get away from the table before I began to feel
+more generally tired out than the severest taxing from a long forenoon
+of general activity ever made me. With the filled stomach, fatigue,
+general exhaustion, came as a sudden attack rather than as an evolution
+from labor, and there would be several hours of unfitness for doing any
+kind of service well.
+
+In the application of this method to others I had the great satisfaction
+of good results without any exceptions; and the missionary work was
+begun by friends among friends, fairly spreading better health and
+adding thereby more and more disaster to my name.
+
+More and more I became a focus of adverse criticism in all matters where
+level-headedness was deemed important. My acute cases began to be
+watched with hostile interest, as if homicide from starvation were the
+inevitable result in all cases. My country had become the country of an
+enemy.
+
+Not being able to give my patients clearly defined reasons for the
+general and local improvements resulting from a forenoon fast as a
+method in hygiene, it had to be spread from relieved persons to
+suffering friends; and according to the need, the sufferers from various
+ailings would be willing to try anything new where efforts through the
+family physician or patent medicines had completely failed; it was
+spread as if by contagion, among the failures of the medical profession.
+
+Among those to become interested at an early date was a prominent
+minister who wore the title of D. D., and for a time his interest was
+intense. He came to me one day with word that a member of his household,
+well known to me as a young woman of unusual ability and culture, had
+not been able to take solid food at his table for a year, and he
+believed that my treatment would avail in her case. To this she was very
+averse, since every treatment her hapless stomach had received had only
+added to the debility, until disability had become the result. She
+finally came to me to be relieved from the forceful importunity of her
+reverend friend, who had excited my eager interest with a prophecy that
+unusual literary distinction would follow a cure, as there were
+abilities of the very highest order, in his estimation.
+
+She came, and I had no difficulty in securing such a vacation for the
+worn-out stomach that it could begin with solid food when the time to
+eat arrived. The vacation was so brief and power had accumulated so
+rapidly that almost any food could be taken without discomfort, and no
+trouble ever came not invited by a relapse from the better way of living
+that had really created a new stomach.
+
+This case caused more notoriety over the no-breakfast plan than any that
+ever occurred in the city. As a writer of biographies and of articles in
+high-class journals and magazines, this talented woman has been a
+miracle of patient, persistent study and investigation.
+
+This endorsement in high places greatly added to my reputation as a
+physician with distorted mind, for the idea that any good could come
+from a short fast, to be followed by the giving up of that needed
+morning meal, was too absurd for sober reflection, too violently
+revolutionary to be even patiently considered.
+
+The no-breakfast plan was not so very long in becoming known over the
+entire city; a bridge had been crossed, and every plank taken up and
+destroyed; thence the ways into new families were nearly closed.
+
+I am enlarging a little upon the opposition that met me from all points,
+because all who are to be convinced that these are the true ways in
+health culture will begin at once to enlighten their ailing friends, and
+will, therefore, encounter the same opposition. "Sir, you have not had
+enough opposition," said bluff, old Samuel Johnson. There will be no
+need to complain of any lack of this kind in the efforts to render
+suffering friends the only aid possible, that will be in persistent
+efforts of Nature.
+
+My medical brethren considered the scheme only as they would consider an
+invasion of smallpox or a heresy whose methods were a danger to life.
+One physician, a woman specialist, informed me that she was continually
+importuned as to her professional opinion of the new craze that had
+invaded the city. That all other physicians were equally called upon,
+that they would condemn, was inevitable; and I permitted them the
+largest liberty without the least resentment; but there was the
+sustaining cheer of seeing the happiest faces that only increased as the
+heresy spread.
+
+My attendance upon the severely sick became more taxing because of the
+exceeding concern in the immediate environment, that the pangs of
+starvation were being added to the pangs of disease.
+
+As none of my professional brethren ever manifested any desire to be
+enlightened on this subject, I did not volunteer, since I felt the wiser
+way would be to wait an adequate amount of evidence before making any
+public announcements of presumed important discoveries in practical
+hygiene.
+
+My experiences in the rooms of the sick had convinced me, long before I
+gave up my morning meal, that death from starvation was so remote as
+practically to exclude it from consideration; hence with the great
+improvement that was the immediate result in my own case I could from
+the first speak with a "thus saith the Lord" emphasis on the safety of
+going through a forenoon "on an empty stomach."
+
+As no one could come into my office without my being able to give the
+assurance of at least some relief that would be immediately realized,
+that would be felt even to the finger-ends, my office became more and
+more a lecture-room, a school of health culture for the education of
+missionaries, for a friend-to-friend uplifting into higher life.
+
+All I needed for my own sake was that missing link to clothe my words
+with all the desired power. With so much to enliven, to encourage, it
+was as if I were sitting at the very feet of Nature, so thrilled by her
+wonderful stories that I was utterly unconscious of the storm of
+ridicule and epithet to which I was subjected.
+
+Once in a while Nature would favor me with a miracle in the way of an
+inspiring change. A man in the early prime of life had reached a
+condition in which he habitually rejected every breakfast. Two trips to
+Europe and a year in the hands of a Berlin specialist for the stomach
+failed to relieve; and yet he was not so disabled as to prevent him
+attending to his ordinary business affairs; the stomach seemed to be
+eccentric in being merely irritable without structural disease.
+
+I asked him if he felt that the breakfasts which would not stay down
+were doing him any good. To this he had to assent that they were not. I
+told him if the breakfast only to result in a heave-offering were
+omitted he would be better able for his duties of the forenoon. He began
+at once to raise his brows.
+
+It was not difficult for him to see that if no breakfasts were put into
+his stomach none would have to be thrown up with sickening effort, and
+hence he could not but be better for the forenoon services if the sick
+spell were omitted. The fact was, the breakfast would soon be rejected,
+and then the hours of rest would enable the stomach to handle the dinner
+without the repetition of the morning sickness.
+
+Only a few words from me of this kind, and thence on there were no
+breakfasts; and from the first all the complaints from the stomach
+ceased, and he used to remark that he began to get well as soon as I
+began to talk to him.
+
+Now this man with his family was a recent arrival in this city, and his
+first intimate acquaintance was one who had been relieved of weekly
+headaches of a skull-bursting kind through the no-breakfast plan--thus
+the missionary contagion.
+
+For many years I was content to allow people to have the morning coffee
+or tea as desired, with the largest liberty of dinner gluttony; and this
+was really the only means possible for the introduction of an innovation
+so radical. To have given nothing to relieve the morning want for
+something in the stomach to set the wheels of life in motion would have
+been a failure from the first. With all the coffee break of the fast was
+attended by so marked an increase of cheer and general strength, and the
+enjoyment of the general meal at or before noon was so immeasurably
+increased, that the method spread as a contagion against which
+professional denouncement and ridicule were in vain.
+
+And with all converts I found that the experiences in the penalties of
+gluttony were so enlightening, so restraining, that there was apparently
+little need to say much more as to the quantity or quality of food, what
+and how to eat.
+
+The enthusiasm of all over the forenoons of power and comfort, to be
+followed by a luxury of meals never before realized, fully satisfied my
+pride in professional success; and all the more because the penalties of
+gluttony were seldom charged to my account.
+
+It was only after the missing link was found and added to the chain that
+I could fully realize the enormous waste of strength and the mental and
+moral degradation from eating food in excess, because the enticements of
+relish are taken for the actual needs of the body. Think of it! Actual
+soul power involved in ridding the stomach and bowels of the foul sewage
+of _food in excess_, _food_ in a state of decomposition, to be forced
+through nearly two rods of bowels and largely at the expense of the soul
+itself!!
+
+Oh, gluttony, with its jaws of death, its throat an ever-open gate to
+the stomach of torment!
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+When I finally arrived at a point of vision where I could see the
+stomach as a mere machine, that it could no more act without brain-power
+than brawny arms with their nerves severed could wield a sledge, I began
+a study of digestion with new interest, with a view to save power from
+undue waste.
+
+It is the _sense of relish_, of flavor, that is behind all the woes of
+indigestion, and not the sense of hunger. The sweetened foods; the pies,
+cakes, puddings, etc., that are eaten merely from a sense of relish
+after the sense of hunger has become fully sated, and generally by far
+more of the plainer foods than waste demands, is the wrecking sin at all
+but the humblest tables.
+
+_Rapid eating_, by which there is imperfect solution of the tougher
+solids and a filling of the stomach before the hunger sense can
+naturally be appeased, is the additional evil to insure serious
+consequences to the stomach and brain.
+
+For merely _practical purposes_, all that is necessary to know about the
+digestive process is that by a peculiar arrangement of the muscle forces
+of the stomach the food is made to revolve in such a way as to wipe the
+exuding digestive juice from the walls; that, therefore, the finer the
+division of the solids by mastication the more rapid the solution to the
+absorbing condition. That meat in finer particles will sooner dissolve
+than meat in large, solid masses is clearly seen.
+
+It will be recalled that digestive conditions are really soul
+conditions, as if there were actual wires extending from the very depths
+of the soul itself to each individual gland, with power to ebb and flow
+as the mental condition shall determine.
+
+It may be presumed that _power_ to digest is the power to revolve food
+in the stomach and the power to generate the gastric juice as determined
+by the power of the brain, the glands themselves not holding their juice
+in mere reserve, but power to generate in reserve. Thus it is seen that
+food in excess is in every way exhaustive as the immediate result.
+
+These may be called the subjective conditions of digestion. Now let us
+consider some of the objective conditions from the standpoint of moral
+science. What the sunshine of a warm day is to all growing things on the
+earth, so is that shining seen in other faces that reaches the depths of
+the human soul with brightness and life.
+
+_Overeating_ is so universal from the general ignorance of practical
+physiology that few stomachs have a time for a full clearing with the
+needed rest before the time of another filling arrives. It is therefore
+a matter of sheer necessity not only to attain and maintain the utmost
+possible cheer of soul, but it is also a necessity to have cheer in
+other souls with whom relations are intimate.
+
+As a matter of extraneous _digestive aid_, a cheerful soul in a family
+is an abiding source of digestive energy to all in social contact. It
+affects the digestive energy of all, as the breeze the fire, as the
+clearing sky the low spirits from the gloom of chill and fogs. The eyes
+that do not glisten with higher life, the lines upon the face that are
+not alive with cheerful, kindly emotions, the frowning look, the word
+that cuts deeply, have their repressive effects upon digestive energy
+within their remorseless reach.
+
+The _moral science_ of digestive energy is a new study; it is not known
+as a factor in the process of digestion; but the time is coming when
+cheer of soul will become a study as of one of the finer arts, and then
+human homes will not be so much like lesser lunatic asylums without the
+restraining hands of a wise superintendent.
+
+Life will be different in homes when all within the age of reason shall
+realize that their words without kindness, their looks without cheer,
+are forces that tend to physical and moral degradation, really nothing
+less than death-dealing energies upon all lives within their reach. The
+power of human kindness has ever been a favorite theme with the
+moralist, but it has not been considered with reference to its power
+upon digestion.
+
+_Anger_ is mental and moral chaos; it is insanity; it is revenge in the
+fury of a hurricane; and sensitive natures have the greatest need for
+the largest measure of health in order that these human tempests shall
+be under larger restraint.
+
+The gloomy, the irritable, the dyspeptic Christian is a dispenser of
+death and not of the higher life, and his religious faith does not
+spread by the contagiousness of example: and because of the solemnity,
+of the exceeding importance of his sense of the possibilities of the
+life beyond death he has all the more need to have that physical and
+moral strength that his daily walk, conversation, and mien may be
+consistent, forceful, and uplifting.
+
+To this great end study, study to see _cheer_ everywhere, and above all
+things to possess it. Good health is also contagious, and, no less than
+disease, has a reflex impression. Only above the chill dampness, the
+fogs, and clouds is the clear sky with the blazing sun. There are
+undreamed-of possibilities of getting above the worriments of life
+through an intelligent understanding and application of the physiology
+of cheer as the chief force in the life of the body, mind, and soul.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+Having finally arrived at the conviction that from the first wink in the
+morning until the last at night strength departs, not in any way to be
+kept up by food, that from the last wink at night until the first in the
+morning strength returns, I became fully endowed to tell all the sick
+and afflicted in the most forceful way that with the strength of the
+brain recharged by sleep is all the labor of the day performed, and that
+no labor is so taxing upon human muscles that it cannot be performed
+longer without fatigue when the breakfast is omitted.
+
+That this is possible came to me as a great surprise and in this way: a
+farmer with a large assortment of ailments came to me for relief through
+drugs. He was simply advised to take coffee mornings, rest mainly during
+forenoons, and when a normal appetite and power to digest would come he
+would be able to work after resuming his breakfasts. This man, who was
+more than fifty years old, was the first manual laborer to be advised to
+observe a morning fast.
+
+Several months after, he came to me with news that his ailing had all
+departed, and that he had been able to do harder work on his coffee
+breakfasts than ever before with breakfasts of solids. And if he so
+worked with power during forenoons, why not others? Why not all?
+
+This no-breakfast plan was so contagious that I was not long in finding
+that farmers in all directions were beginning to go to their labors with
+much less food in their stomachs than had been their wont, and in all
+cases with added power of muscle.
+
+Only recently three farmers went into the field one hot morning to
+cradle oats, the most trying of all work on the farm; two of them had
+their stomachs well filled with hearty foods. With profuse sweating and
+water by the quart because of the chemical heat arising from both
+digestion and decomposition, these toiled through the long hours with
+much weariness. The third man had all his strength for the swinging of
+the cradle, the empty stomach not even calling for water; with the
+greatest ease he kept his laboring friends in close company and when the
+noon hour came he was not nearly so tired as they.
+
+A man who had been a great sufferer from indigestion, a farmer, found
+such an increase of health and strength from omitting the morning meal
+that he became able to cradle rye, a much heavier grain than oats,
+during an entire forenoon "on an empty stomach." Later he went from one
+December to the following April on one daily meal, and not only with
+ease, but with a gain in weight in addition. During these months this
+man did all the work usual in farm-houses, besides riding several hours
+over a milk route during the forenoons.
+
+In this city resides a carpenter, formerly subject to frequent
+sicknesses, who for the past five years has walked nearly a mile to the
+shop where he is employed without even as much as a drink of water for
+breakfast; and this not only without any sicknesses, but with an
+increase in weight of fifteen pounds also.
+
+More than a dozen years ago a farmer who was not diseased in any way,
+but who had been in the habit of eating three times a day at a
+well-spread table, and at mid-forenoon taking a small luncheon for
+hunger-faintness, omitted his breakfast and morning luncheon, and has
+been richly rewarded since then in escaping severe colds and other
+ailings. He conclusively felt that his forenoon was the better half of
+the day for clear-headedness and hard labor; he has added nearly a score
+of pounds to his weight, and his case has been a wonder to all his
+farmer friends, who see only starvation in cutting down brain and
+needless stomach taxing.
+
+I must now ask the reader to bear with me while I apply the principles
+of this new hygiene with a good deal of reiteration, trying to vary them
+in utterance as far as possible. The need of daily food is primarily a
+matter of waste and supply, the waste always depending upon the amount
+of loss through the general activities, manual labor being the most
+destructive.
+
+Across the street from where I live a new house is being built: for
+many days during the chilly, windy month of March several men have been
+engaged high in the air, handling green boards, studs, and joists for
+ten hours each day; and yet these men are not eating more food daily
+than hundreds of brain-workers who never have general exercise. The
+workmen across the street eat to satisfy hunger; the brain-workers, to
+satisfy the sense of relish; and the meals of the latter are habitually
+in excess of the real demands because of wasted bodies.
+
+In spite of the apparent overeating of the brain-worker, I believe the
+farmer and the manual laborer break down at an earlier age, for the
+reason that they overwork and generally eat when too tired to digest
+fully: the farmer is rarely content to do one day's work in one day when
+the crop season invites him to make the most of fair days.
+
+With successes rapidly multiplying in all directions within my circuit,
+the desire became urgent for some way to make my new hygiene known to
+the public. My first thought was to get some eminent divine interested
+through a cure that would compel him to a continual talk as to how he
+became saved.
+
+At a great denominational meeting in Chicago I chanced to hear a
+splendid address from a sallow-faced professor of a divinity school, the
+Rev. Dr. G. W. N.; and after a great deal of reflection I resolved,
+without consulting him, to write him a series of letters on health
+culture, hoping that he would become so immediately interested as to
+permit me a complete unfolding of my theory and practice.
+
+I began the series, taking all the chances to be considered a crank;
+they were continued until the end without response, when later I
+received a brief note with sarcasm in every line. At least my letters
+had been read; for he informed me that he had no confidence in my
+theory, giving me a final summing up with his estimate that there were
+more "cranks" in the medical profession than in any other. I was not in
+the least cast down at this long-range estimate, since I had become
+quite used to close-at-hand ridicule.
+
+There was before me the unknown time when a still more eminent D. D.
+would both accept and practise my theory, and also give the world his
+estimate in an elaborate preface to a book that in the fulness of time
+the ways opened to me to write and have published.
+
+I was sent for by a man who had become a moral and physical wreck, his
+body being reduced to nearly a skeleton condition from consumption. As
+he was taking an average of two quarts of whiskey per week, I accepted
+the charge of his case with reluctance.
+
+I was not able in any way to change his symptoms for the better; there
+had been no hint of hunger for many weeks, and the mere effort to
+swallow or even taste the most tempting dainties was painful to witness.
+He was taken with a severe pain in his side, which was fully relieved
+with the hypodermic needle, and there followed several hours of general
+comfort and no desire for the alcoholic. Seeing this I was strongly
+impressed that by continuing the dosings for a time the seared stomach
+might get into a better condition and the fast be followed by a natural
+hunger.
+
+This is what actually followed: in about a week the dosings were reduced
+to mere hints, and without any desire for stimulants there came a desire
+for broiled steak and baked potatoes, which were taken with great
+relish. Thence on this was mainly the bill of fare, and the half-filled
+bottle remained on his table _untouched_, undesired; and in time there
+were added more than a score of pounds to his wasted body.
+
+Now it chanced that this regenerative work was seen day after day by his
+friend, who was badly in need of an all-round treatment to meet the
+needs of his case; he was a man of keen intellect, of real ability of
+both mind and muscle. Becoming deeply interested in the theory behind
+the miracle he saw unfolding day after day, and all the more because of
+a total extinction of the drink-habit that was deep seated through long
+duration, he began to omit his morning meals.
+
+He saw more than his own case. He had been a manager of book agencies,
+and when he found also his desire for the cigar undergoing a rapid
+decline, he became possessed with the idea that a book might be written
+on the subject. The time came when he could sit down in the office of
+the Henry Bill Publishing Company, Norwich, Conn., a picture of health,
+to interview Mr. Charles C. Haskell on the subject of publishing a
+book. Mr. Haskell had known him in less healthful years, and he
+marvelled at the change.
+
+I had duly suggested, and with great emphasis, that no publisher would
+listen to him unless he were sick enough to be interested in the theory
+and would give a test by actual trial. He found Mr. Haskell in very low
+health. Experts had sent him on a tour through Europe in search of that
+health he failed to find; his body was starving on three meals a day
+that were not digested, and he began to arrange his affairs with
+reference to a near-at-hand breakdown.
+
+To this man was made such an appeal as men are rarely able to make,
+because a regenerated life was also vocal in utterance. To him a miracle
+seemed to have been wrought, and he listened to each word as if to a
+reprieve from a death seemingly inevitable.
+
+As there was no disease of the stomach, it required only a few days for
+Mr. Haskell to acquire so much of new life that he felt as one born
+again, and a week had not passed before I had his earnest request to put
+my hygiene into a book, he taking all chances of failure.
+
+He began to advise all ailing friends to give up their breakfasts or to
+fast until natural hunger came, getting many marvellous results. One of
+his first thoughts was to have the forthcoming book introduced by some
+eminent divine who could write through the inspiration of experience.
+
+In a visit to Norwich of that evangelist of world-wide eminence, George
+F. Pentecost, D. D., then of London, Eng., the opportunity came, and
+for a case of "special conversion" he was made the guest of Mr. Haskell.
+He was easily persuaded to the system, and his need is expressed in the
+following from the introduction of _The True Science of Living_, which
+was actually written without his having read a single line of the
+manuscript.
+
+"Taking the theory upon which this system of living is based into
+account--and even to my lay mind it seemed most reasonable--and the
+testimony which I personally received from both men and women, delicate
+and biliously strong, workingmen, merchants, doctors, and preachers,
+delicate ladies for years invalided and in a state of collapse, and some
+who had never been ill, but were a hundred per cent. better for living
+without breakfast, _I resolved to give up my breakfast_. I pleaded at
+first that it might be my luncheon instead, for I have all my life
+enjoyed my breakfast more than any other meal. But no! it was the
+breakfast that must go. So on a certain fine Monday morning I bade
+farewell to the breakfast-room. For a day or two I suffered slight
+headaches from what seemed to me was the want of food; but I soon found
+that they were just _the dying pains of a bad habit_. After a week had
+passed I never thought of wanting breakfast; and though I was often
+present in the breakfast-rooms of friends whom I was visiting, and every
+tempting luxury of the breakfast was spread before me, I did not desire
+food at all, feeling no suggestion of hunger. Indeed now, after a few
+months, the thought of breakfast never occurs to me. I am ready for my
+luncheon (or breakfast if you please) at one o'clock, but am never
+hungry before that hour.
+
+"As for the results of this method of living, I can only relate them as
+I have personally experienced them:
+
+"1. I have not had the first suggestion of a sick headache since I gave
+up my breakfast. From my earliest boyhood I do not remember ever having
+gone a whole month without being down with one of these attacks, and for
+thirty years, during the most active part of my life, I have suffered
+with them oftentimes, more or less, every day for a month or six weeks
+at a time, and hardly ever a whole fortnight passed without an acute
+attack that has sent me to bed or at least left me to drag through the
+day with intense bodily suffering and mental discouragement.
+
+"2. I have gradually lost a large portion of my surplus fat, my weight
+having gone down some twenty pounds, and my size being reduced by
+several inches at the point where corpulency was the most prominent; and
+I am still losing weight and decreasing in size.
+
+"3. I find that my skin is improving in texture, becoming softer, finer,
+and more closely knit than heretofore. My complexion and eyes have
+cleared, and all fulness of the face and the tendency to flushness in
+the head have disappeared.
+
+"4. I experience no fulness and unpleasantness after eating, as I so
+often did before. As a matter of fact, though I enjoy my meals (and I
+eat everything my appetite and taste call for) as never before, eating
+with zest, I do not think I eat as much as I used to do; but I am
+conscious of better digestion; my food does not lie so long in my
+stomach, and that useful organ seems to have gone out of the
+gas-producing business.
+
+"5. I am conscious of a lighter step and a more elastic spring in all my
+limbs. Indeed, a brisk walk now is a pleasure which I seek to gratify,
+whereas before the prescribed walk for the sake of exercise was a
+horrible bore to me.
+
+"6. I go to my study and to my pulpit on an empty stomach without any
+sense of loss of strength mentally or physically--on the other hand,
+with freshness and vigor which is delightful. In this respect I am quite
+sure that I am in every way advantaged."
+
+Rev. George Sherman Richards, after more than fifteen years of frequent
+severe headaches that were supposed to be due to heredity, has had
+entire freedom during the five years of the No-breakfast Plan. He can
+hardly be surpassed as a picture of perfect health.
+
+One of the first prominent converts who finally surrendered to Mr.
+Haskell, whose persistence was beyond fatigue, was the editor of the
+Norwich, Conn., _Bulletin_, a special friend. There was no want of
+conviction on his part, but the evil day to begin the morning fast was
+continually postponed. Finally, one morning when he was specially busy
+and charged with impatience, the beaming and hopeful face of Mr. Haskell
+appeared. Said the busy man, "Mr. Haskell, if you will walk right out
+of that door, I will promise you to begin tomorrow morning to do without
+breakfasts." Mr. Haskell walked out--the breakfasts were given up, and
+some years later I was personally informed that he believed that his
+life had been saved thereby.
+
+[Illustration: REV. GEORGE SHERMAN RICHARDS,
+
+Rector of Christ Church, Meadville, Pa.]
+
+One of the expedients was to send a circular about the book to every
+foreign missionary of every denomination, and as a result one of these
+fell into the hands of Rev. W. E. Rambo, in India. He had become a mere
+shadow of his former self from ulcerated bowels, the sequel of a badly
+treated case of typhoid fever. For seven months there had been daily
+movements tinged with blood; the appetite was ravenous, and large meals
+were taken without any complainings from the stomach. Before a
+well-spread table his desire to eat would become simply furious, and it
+was indulged regardless of quality and quantity. His brain system had
+become so exhausted that reason and judgment had no part in this
+hurricane of hunger.
+
+There were seven successive physicians in this case, some of them with
+many titles. The first one he called on reaching New England cut his
+food down to _six bland meals daily_. All of them had tried to cure the
+offending ulcers by dosings. Think whether bleeding ulcers on the body
+would get well with their tender surfaces subjected to the same
+grinding, scratching process from bowel rubbish!
+
+He was in condition on his arrival to lose six pounds during the first
+week of six "bland" daily meals. After reading the _True Science of
+Living_ he discharged his physician and came under my personal care.
+These ulcers were treated with the idea of giving them the same rest as
+if each had been the end of a fractured bone. To relieve pain, to hold
+the bowel still, and to abolish the morbid hunger, a few doses with the
+hypodermic needle were a seeming necessity.
+
+In less than two weeks this starving man of skin and bones was relieved
+of all symptoms of disease, and there seemed a moderate desire for food
+of the nourishing kind. Less than two weeks were required for all those
+ulcers to become covered with a new membrane: but for full three weeks
+only those liquid foods were given that had no rubbish in them to prove
+an irritant to the new, delicate membrane covering the ulcers. For a
+time after the third week there was only one light daily meal, with a
+second added when it seemed safe to take it.
+
+In a little more than three months there was a gain of forty-two and a
+half pounds of flesh, as instinct with new, vigorous life as if freshly
+formed by the divine hand. My last word from this restored man was after
+he, his wife, and four children had been back in India for a year and a
+half, where they were all living on the two-meal plan without any
+sicknesses, and he had a class of one hundred and sixty native boys on
+the same plan.
+
+Who can fail to see the science and the sense to relieve all diseases
+of the digestive tract? There are no cases of hemorrhoids not malignant
+in character, in which total relief will not be the result if fasts are
+long enough; no cases of anal fistula that will not finally close if
+they can have that rest from violence that is their only need; and
+equally all ulcers and fissures that make life a history of torture.
+
+No case with structural disease of any part of the digestive tract not
+malignant has yet come under my care in which there has not been a cure,
+or in which there has not been a cure in sight. Through a fast we may
+let the diseased parts in the digestive tract rest as we would a broken
+bone or wound on the body.
+
+Several missionaries have regained health on these new lines, who have
+returned to preach and practise a larger gospel than before. One
+returned from the Congo region of Africa with such wreckage of health as
+to make any active service impossible. Mr. Haskell met him in New York,
+and in time he returned with twenty-four missionaries, all as converts
+to the new gospel of health, and to have that sustained health only
+possible through a larger obedience to the laws of God "manifest in the
+flesh"--obedience that takes into account the moral science, the physics
+and the chemistry of digestion.
+
+These and those others who have had their lives redeemed from lingering
+death through the simple, easy ways of Nature never suffer their
+enthusiasm to wane. Not to volunteer aid when unintentional suicide is
+going on seems nothing less than criminal.
+
+As a means to better health the utility of the morning fast is beyond
+estimate. In all other modes of health culture there is a great deal of
+time consumed in certain exercises that are certain to be given up in
+time. What the busy world requires is a mode to gain and maintain the
+health that requires neither time nor thought--one that is really
+automatic.
+
+We arise in the morning with our brain recharged by sleep, and we go at
+once about our business. If we take a walk or go to the gymnasium, we
+simply waste that much time, and we also lessen the stored-up energy by
+whatever of effort is called out. We can skip the dumb-bells and perform
+any other kind of exercise that is good for the health; and always with
+the certainty that we shall have more strength for the first half of the
+day if none is wasted in this way. As a matter of mere enjoyment, walks
+in fresh air are beneficial, but not as an enforced exercise for the
+reason of health.
+
+For the highest possibilities for a day of human service there must be a
+night of sound sleep; and then one may work with muscle or with mind
+much longer without fatigue if no strength is wasted over untimely food
+in the stomach, no enforced means to develop health and strength. When
+one has worked long enough to become generally tired there should be a
+period of rest, in order to regain power to digest what shall be so
+eaten as to cause the brain the least waste of its powers through
+failure to masticate.
+
+One need not always wait until noon to eat the first meal. Those in good
+health have found that they can easily go till noon before breaking the
+fast; but in proportion as one is weak or ailing the rule should be to
+stop all work as soon as fatigue becomes marked, and then rest until
+power to digest is restored. To eat when one is tired is to add a burden
+of labor to all the energies of life, and with the certainty that no
+wastes will be restored thereby.
+
+For the highest efforts of genius, of art, of the simplest labors of the
+hands, the forenoon with empty stomach and larger measure of stored-up
+energy of the brain is by far the better half of the day; and, more than
+this, it is equally the better for the display of all the finer senses
+of the tastes, the finer emotions of soul life. In addition to
+these--and what is vastly more important--it is by far the better half
+of the day for the display of that energy whereby disease is cured. All
+this with no power lost in any special exercise for the health!
+
+The time to stop the forenoon labor is when the need to rest has become
+clearly apparent; and there must be rest before eating, to restore the
+energy for digestion. This always determines Nature's time when the
+first meal shall be taken, and not the hour of the day.
+
+This is especially important to all who are constitutionally weak or
+have become disabled through ailings or disease. Disappointments have
+come to hundreds who have given up breakfasts, because of the mistaken
+idea that they must wait till noon before breaking the fast, and hence
+had become too tired to digest; and therefore experienced a loss rather
+than a gain from the untimely noon meals.
+
+The desire for morning food is a matter of habit only. Morning hunger is
+a disease under culture, and they who feel the most need have the most
+reason to fast into higher health. They who claim that their breakfasts
+are their best meals; that they simply "cannot do one thing" until they
+have eaten, are practically in line with those who must have their
+alcoholics before the wheels can be started.
+
+Now it has been found by the experience of thousands that by wholly
+giving up the morning meal all desire for it in time disappears, which
+could hardly be the case if the laws of life were thereby violated; and
+the habit once fully eradicated is rarely resumed.
+
+To give up suddenly the use of alcoholics or of tobacco in any of its
+forms is to call out loudest protests from the morbid voices that have
+been kept silent by those soothing powers; and yet no one would accept
+those loud cries as indicating an actual physiological need. The
+difficulties arising from giving up the morning meals--even as those
+from giving up the morning grog--are an exact measure of the need that
+they shall be given up in order that health, and not disease, shall be
+under culture.
+
+I once heard a Rev. Mrs. tell a large audience of ministers that for
+more than a week she spent most of her forenoons in bed to endure better
+the headaches and other angry, protesting voices that were averse to the
+no-breakfast plan. She won her case, and thence on a hint of headache or
+other morbid symptoms was a matter of humiliation and fasting, with
+prayer for forgiveness and for greater moral strength against the
+temptations of relish.
+
+With many people the breaking of the breakfast habit costs only less of
+will-power than is called out by attempts to break the alcoholic or
+tobacco habit; but by persistence a complete victory is certain for all,
+and the forenoons become a luxury of power in reserve.
+
+Now, I must warn all that very many persons who adopt the No-breakfast
+Plan are disappointed, because they have become chronic in the ways of
+unwitting sin: they are like thin-soiled farms long-cropped without soil
+culture. Harvests in either case can only come by the study and practice
+of the laws of nutrition.
+
+The besetting sin against all such ailing mortals, the lines of whose
+lives are frequently of the hardest, is that the friends all oppose
+cutting down the daily food from the dreadfully mistaken impression that
+weakness and debility from disease are the measure of the need to eat,
+not the measure of the inability to digest.
+
+Scores of times I have been written to by this class of patients as to
+their troubles from friends in this way. Scores of times I have been
+consulted as to the safety of this method in daily living for the old,
+as if it were a tax upon the constitutional powers to stop sinning
+against them! As well ask whether one may get too old as to make it
+dangerous to cut down daily whiskey or daily labor that is clearly
+beyond the reasonable use of the powers.
+
+Those who are the victims of chronic diseases and have become greatly
+enfeebled by overwork of body, mind, or stomach, will have to work out
+their salvation with most discouragingly slow progress; but not to work,
+not to try, is to invite the processes of disease culture.
+
+Now, as to the time when that first meal of the day shall be taken.
+Since the best meal of the day in all America with the great majority of
+the people is at noon, this time may well be selected as the most
+fitting. Since the man of muscle loses no time in taking his breakfast,
+he should be able with good sense to rest an hour before this noon meal.
+
+Those whose general energies give out earlier in the morning and do not
+care to have general meals prepared in advance of the usual hour, can
+put in the time in the best possible way by resting into power of relish
+and digestion, the evil of eating when tired being that the exhausted
+feeling is only increased.
+
+Now think what forenoons may be had with no time lost over breakfasts,
+none in thinking about the health or in doing anything for it, and not
+only to have the best and strongest use of the reason, judgment, and
+muscles, but also to have the best possible conditions for the cure of
+ailings! Think, too, what it would be to the mothers of the land not to
+have any need to go into their kitchens until the time to prepare the
+noon meal arrived!
+
+Can children while growing rapidly do without breakfasts? They certainly
+can without a hint of discomfort, and be all the better for it in every
+way.
+
+A few months ago I spent some hours in Illinois, where the no-breakfast
+plan had been practised for two years. When the plan was begun there was
+a pale, delicate mother of four children, who was enduring a life that
+had no cheer. During the first year the battle was a severe one, not a
+little aggravated by the assurance of all sympathetic friends that
+resulting evil was making its mark on all the lines of expression; but
+health with its life and color finally came to silence the uttered
+disapproval.
+
+There was a boy in the home who was subject to the severest headaches
+every week, and who was much wasted in his body when he began: he had
+become robust and wholly relieved of all his ailings. There was a plump,
+rosy-cheeked girl of fourteen who for a year had taken only one daily
+meal, and yet a better nourished body I never saw.
+
+Now in this family the only warm, general meal, and this a plain one,
+was at noon. The evening meal was entirely of bread and butter taken
+without even a sitting at the table. What happy, healthy children they
+were! And the mother was in a great deal better health to do all the
+work of the kitchen: work, she strongly asserted, which was not nearly
+half of what it formerly was. For her there was a cure, a great increase
+of strength, and a great reduction of the most taxing of all the duties
+of the home-life.
+
+If there is such a thing as an attack of disease, it cannot occur in the
+forenoon when there is an empty stomach and all the powers are at their
+best for resisting disease; and where children are fed as these are,
+disease, acute or chronic, is only a remote possibility.
+
+I belong to a family of seven; the oldest is beyond seventy, the
+youngest beyond fifty. This No-breakfast Plan has been very closely
+adhered to with all for not less than twelve years, and during this time
+not one of us has had any acute sickness; and I am not aware that any
+have diseases of the chronic kind.
+
+    The accompanying illustration is that of Mrs. E. A. Quiggle,
+    sister of the Author, after twelve years' trial of The
+    No-breakfast Plan.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. E. A. QUIGGLE,
+
+Chicago, Ill.]
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+The utility of eating with thoroughness is strongly illustrated in the
+following cases:
+
+Mr. Horace Fletcher, the author and traveller, took to the
+one-daily-meal plan to cut down his abnormal weight, having the patience
+to masticate all sense of taste from each mouthful before swallowing. I
+saw him after he had been on this plan for some months: there had been a
+weight loss of some forty pounds; a nasal catarrh of many years had been
+cured, and he strongly asserted that in every way he felt himself
+twenty-five years younger.
+
+He had been living a week on baked potatoes for experimental reasons
+when I met him, and without experiencing any morbid sensations: a more
+perfect specimen of physical health I never gazed upon. To all
+dyspeptics who are willing to work for their health through pains and
+patience, his little work, _Glutton or Epicure_, is strongly
+recommended.
+
+A dyspeptic from Vermont came to me who for ten years had eaten three
+hearty meals daily, none of which had ever satisfied his hunger. He was
+in a very low mental state when he came, and feeble in body: for fully
+ten years both himself and physician had held the stomach accountable
+for all its complainings, and with no thought of avoidable cause.
+
+I put him on one meal a day, as there was still some power of digestion,
+and with the following list for the daily bill of fare: baked potatoes
+well buttered, bread and butter, beans dressed with butter, fish or lamb
+chops, and rice or oatmeal only if strongly desired; all sugar foods
+debarred, and no drinks except water as thirst called for it between the
+meals. The constipated bowels were permitted their own times for action.
+The mouthfuls were small and far apart--like dashes between words--not
+less than forty-five minutes were spent in masticating. Very soon there
+was a general rousement of new life in every way. His first surprise was
+in an unwonted sense of relish and a complete sating of hunger long
+before he had eaten the old-time amounts.
+
+There was a fresh revelation to me in this, as I had not before been so
+impressed that by slow eating the hunger-spell is also dissipated in
+part by time, and hence there is much less danger of eating to excess.
+Hunger comes in part from habit, and it is appeased, with or without
+eating, with equal completeness. The hunger-habit can be trained to come
+at almost any fixed time.
+
+Not long since I read of a farmer who kept his horses in apparently
+perfect condition on one feeding, and only at night: they had become so
+trained that they had no desire for food until their labors were over.
+At night they both ate and rested, and made good the waste of the day;
+they were fully nourished and rested by morning, and could labor all the
+forenoon without loss of energy diverted to digestion: at noon they
+would rest--become strong for the labors of the day.
+
+There can be no doubt, I think, that the strongest sense of hunger at
+the regular eating-time could be dissipated by a fast not longer in
+duration than that of an ordinary meal-time.
+
+My patient's bowels gave no hint of their locality until the eighteenth
+day, when they acted with little effort; on the twenty-fourth day again
+in a perfect way, and thereafter daily. The mind became ecstatic through
+perfect relief from mental and physical depression; there were no wants
+for other than those simple foods, and at the end of a month he left me
+with new views as to Nature's power of selection to meet her needs and
+of the vast utility of using both time and food to dissipate hunger.
+
+The waste with most people is so small that the cost of the food, the
+cost of time in preparation, could be reduced to a startling fraction if
+the need could be actually known, and the pleasures of the palate
+increased by an inverse ratio. There is no redemption for women on the
+earth who have the care of kitchens except through simpler, smaller
+meals--meals so very far apart that there shall be a maximum of the
+hunger-sense of relish and the resulting maximum of power to convert
+them into tissues instinct with life.
+
+It may be that the waste is so very trifling, especially with
+brain-workers, that one may be a vegetarian, fruitarian, or even an
+eater of pork, without positive violence to practical physiology. There
+is this further very practical consideration, that when Nature is so
+fairly dealt with that she can speak in natural tones she will call only
+for those foods easily available along geographical lines.
+
+There is this to be said about fruits, that all those containing acids
+decompose the gastric juice, as they all contain potash salts in union
+with fruit acids. As soon as they reach the stomach the free
+hydrochloric acid of the gastric juice unites with the potash, setting
+the fruit acid free to irritate the stomach. There is never any desire
+for acid fruits through real hunger, especially those of the hyperacid
+kinds: they are simply taken to gratify that lower sense--relish.
+
+The tropical fruits are without acids, and therefore are well adapted to
+a class of people who have only the least use for muscle and brains.
+Acid fruits can only be taken with apparent impunity by the young and
+old, who can generate gastric juice copiously. Because of the general
+impression that they are healthful and no tax, human stomachs are
+converted into cider-mills at will, regardless of between meal-times. By
+their ravishing flavor and apparent ease of digestion apples still play
+an important part in the "fall of man" from that higher estate, the
+Eden without its dyspepsia.
+
+What shall we eat? The fig-leaved savage under his bread-fruit tree, the
+fur-clad Eskimo in his ice-hut, need not be asked: the needed food is in
+all due supply with little cost of muscle and less of mind--and he has
+no mental condition that can disturb the digestion.
+
+The simpler waste-restoring foods have a flavor of their own that needs
+little reinforcement if developed by due mastication and with adequate
+hunger. In my own case butter duly salted seems to be my only natural
+appetizer aside from hunger; and yet I must own that at times new honey
+has a wonderful effect on the mouth-glands.
+
+The difference between eating from hunger and mere relish, as fruits and
+the various sweetened foods are eaten, is a new study in dietetics, and
+one more important can scarcely be conceived. It can hardly be
+intelligently studied without taking into due account this new
+physiology. With rarest exceptions the need of food is estimated by the
+mere pleasure that comes from relish--that kind of relish that is
+evolved from the pies, puddings, ice creams, the last course in Sunday
+dinners, never taken until the limits of stomach expansion are nearly
+reached.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+
+Some of the external evidences of that general regeneration which comes
+through Nature will now be given. We will study the human face as we
+study the earth when the favoring conditions of Spring rouse all Nature
+to newness of life. The face shall be our human landscape.
+
+I select a face in which the eyes are dull from debility, in which there
+is no sparkle of soul, and beneath are the dark venus-hanging clouds.
+The face has a dull, lifeless cast; the veins are all enlarged from
+debility, and cover the larger arteries as with a mourner's pall, save
+where there are patches as of clouds on fire, where disease of the skin
+enlivens the drear landscape. There are pimples large and small, some
+with overflowing volcanoes; there are no lines of expression: these are
+changed to lines of morbid anatomy. We listen, and there are no echoes
+of departed joys; look as we will, and we see no evidence of the
+existence of a soul.
+
+The ultimate of this picture is death from unrecognized suicide; death,
+a slow dying to every sense that made life worth living. There is this
+about these deaths that go on through the months and years: they
+exaggerate the worst instincts of the soul as it is dragged down--down
+through brain-wasting largely avoidable if only understood.
+
+The instant result of a total suspension of the use of the brain power
+in the digestive tract is the evolution of life: new life is sent to the
+remotest cell as by an electric charge. The nutrient vessels of the eye
+tone down in size, and there is polish, sparkle where there was only
+dimness; and on the face the venus clouds, black and red, begin to
+disappear; the toning of the veins condenses the skin, and thereby the
+ruddy arteries are uncovered, and a color that has life appears; the
+pimples, the hillocks, even have a brighter look as they slowly shrink
+from sight. Finally, the skin becomes of a plush-like texture, soft,
+condensed, and with tints that compare as the tints of flowers with the
+faded colors of the house-painter, or as the matchless tint and plush of
+the perfect peach to the spotted, colorless, wilted, degenerated
+representative awaiting the garbage-barrel; and the cherry lips, the
+cherry gums, and the whiter teeth--Nature does not match them
+otherwheres.
+
+Landscape gardening upon the human face has the largest, most inspiring
+possibilities; and there are no eyes so dull, no faces so void of light
+and life, no skin degraded to a parchment, for a public display of an
+assorted collection of evidences of physical poverty, in which these
+changes to a higher life are not in some degree easily possible.
+
+Face culture becomes of the profoundest interest when it is realized
+that whatever there is in eyes and lines of expression that reveals a
+soul in higher life, whatever there is in softness and delicacy of
+texture, in color that is alive with life, is only the external
+revelations of the higher life within. Nature is always at work over her
+waste places, whether about the roots in the mouth, or in the depths of
+the organs; and the aches, the pains of the living, and the agonies of
+the dying are only evidences of the earnestness and persistence of her
+efforts to right all her wrongs.
+
+In what ways are drugs available in this kind of landscape culture; how
+sent through the crystalline structures of the eye with clearing effect;
+how to polish the retina and the surfaces to a sparkle? What drugs for
+such culture? And yet the materia medica needs a hoist to place it on
+the shelf. These external changes that become clearly apparent to even
+dull eyes are the changes that also go on in the very depths of diseased
+structure, in all the special senses, in all those higher instincts and
+tastes that make man the best for self, for home, State and Nation--the
+image of his Creator. Is this high estate ever reached through dosage?
+
+Let this matter be again considered. In the days of the lancet, roots
+and herbs, of bleedings and sweatings, of fevers without water for
+parched tongues, throats, and stomachs, Nature had no part in the cure
+of disease in the professional or lay mind, except in rare instances in
+which there were those specially gifted with insight as well as
+eyesight.
+
+Now such barbarism was inflicted with intense force of conviction, and
+it was patiently endured with the largest faith. When a mere child I was
+a witness of the bleeding treatment upon my mother of saintly memory,
+and my child hands carried into the back yard nearly a quart of blood
+drawn for a bilious attack that lasted but a few days.
+
+There is this to be taken into account in the dose treatment of
+diseases--that most cases recover regardless of the time of treatment,
+even whether it is the most crucifying or whether there is no dosing.
+Therefore, the good effect of dosing is at best a matter of hazy
+inference, where real evidence is not possible. The lack of uniformity
+in the character and times of doses for similar diseases is a burlesque
+on science. What would a text-book on chemistry be worth with nothing
+more in the way of demonstrative evidence than we find in our materia
+medica in the summing up of the "medical properties" of drugs.
+
+In modern times homoeopathy has come in as a protest against the drawing
+of blood and the administration of drugs that corrode. For a form of
+skin disease sulphur has been given by the teaspoonful by my brethren of
+the "regular" school; with equal faith, my brethren of the homoeopathic
+school will give the fraction of a grain whose denominator will cross an
+ordinary page: at which extreme is the science of dosage, if any; or
+where between? I can hardly resist the conclusion that faith in dosage
+is, by as much, inability for the deduction of science.
+
+"I know whereof I believe," is the language of Science. "I believe," is
+the language of credulity--with all the ways back to cause too hazy for
+the perception of even the assuring guide-boards. Said that prince of
+American humorists, Artemus Ward, "I have known a man who drank one
+drink of whiskey every day, and yet lived to be one hundred years old;
+but do not believe, therefore, that by taking two drinks a day you will
+live to be two hundred years old." "I have known a man who had not a
+single tooth, and yet he could play a bass drum better than any man I
+ever knew;" but do not infer that the pulling of sound teeth will aid in
+bringing out all the possibilities of harmony, melody, and delicacy of
+tone of this particular instrument of song without words. I have seen a
+man seemingly in perfect health at one hundred years old who had eaten
+three meals a day; but may I infer that on four meals a day he would
+have lived to be one hundred and thirty-three and a third years old? A
+hundred times I have been told by physicians that they have had the best
+results from certain drugs; but in not one instance was any reason for
+their faith advanced.
+
+If I am to be governed by impressions as to the utility of what I may do
+for the sick, what is more impressive than to draw blood as they of old
+did, with recovery in most cases? Have we reduced the mortality of
+disease by a change in dosage? If so, how much, apart from the better
+sanitary conditions of living and from those involved in the care of the
+sick?
+
+I can easily see or believe there is utility in clearing the digestive
+tract at an early date in the case of severe sickness; I know that
+stomach and bowels are as machines run by brain power; but beyond this
+the materia medica is summed up in this way, "I dose my sick: they get
+well: therefore my treatment is successful; or if they die, it is the
+providence of God"--and with no thought that it may have been the
+providence of bad treatment.
+
+Men and brethren of the medical profession, you believe me a heretic in
+all my professional modes, and only endure me because I do not carry
+violent hands; but you would bar the sick-room from the bleeder of old.
+I may attack the lancet, the herbs, the ground-roots, whose doses were
+only as kindling-wood and sawdust a little more refined, and you will
+say "Amen" with emphasis. "But we, we live in a more enlightened age:
+our doses are more refined"--yes, but you administer them with the same
+force of conviction as to their utility in the cure of disease, and with
+little thought as to just why they are given and how they act.
+
+It is my present conception that feeding the sick as now very generally
+practised will be held, in a more enlightened age, as we now hold the
+lancet of a darker age--a twin relic of barbarism; and there will be
+only wonder that attempts were ever made to convert the lower bowel
+into a temporary stomach _thirty feet away_.
+
+How discriminating this deputy stomach that it selects the predigested
+food-ration from its unutterable lower bowel involvements; sending it
+pure and undefiled as ready-made flesh into the blood, only requiring it
+to be placed as bricks to a wall. Fortunately, these lower stomachs are
+not subject to nausea no matter how capable of otherwise rebelling, as
+they so often do.
+
+Predigested foods! If they nourish the sick, why not feed the well; why
+not abolish our kitchens at an immense saving in the time, expense, and
+worry of cooking, and live on them at an immense saving of the tax of
+digestion and the indigestive processes? Brethren of the medical
+profession, make haste to let the world know when you have found a case
+in which you have made use of the lower bowel so to nourish the sick
+body that it did not waste while the cure was going on.
+
+
+
+
+THE FASTING-CURE.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+NOTES AND PRESS COMMENTS ON VOLUNTARY FASTS.
+
+
+The first voluntary protracted fast for the cure of chronic ailing to
+reach the public prints as a matter of interesting news occurred in the
+case of Mr. C. C. H. Cowan, of Warrensburg, Ill., early in 1899. He had
+been on the two-meal plan for a time, and wishing for something more
+radical wrote to me as to his entering upon a fast. I probably wrote him
+as I now find it necessary to write all who feel that fasts are
+necessary and cannot have my personal care, "Go on a fast and stick to
+it until hunger comes or until your friends begin to suffer the pangs of
+sympathetic starvation; then compromise with the sin of ignorance by
+eating the least that will bring peace to their troubled souls."
+
+The results were summed up by the _Morning-Herald Dispatch_, Decatur,
+Ill., April 16, 1899:
+
+    "A few years ago Dr. Tanner, in New York City, fasted for forty
+    days and forty nights, and all the world wondered. Up to that
+    time the feat was considered impossible. From day to day the
+    papers told of his actions and his condition, and the entire
+    people became deeply interested in the performance. Medical men
+    and scientists became interested in the performance, and the
+    laity watched the faster through curiosity. Tanner's
+    accomplishment was considered marvellous by the medical
+    profession and laymen alike, but Dr. Tanner has long since been
+    a back number, and his performance is not now regarded as
+    remarkable, although there are not many persons who would care
+    to attempt the fast. Tanner was simply trying to prove that the
+    thing could be done. He did it, and within a year the man who
+    held the attention of the people of the country for forty days
+    was a visitor to this city. What Tanner did has been more than
+    accomplished by a Macon County man, but he went about his
+    undertaking quietly, and the fact that he was fasting was known
+    to only a few of his friends. The man is C. C. H. Cowan, of
+    Warrensburg, and for forty-two days and nights he abstained from
+    the use of food in solid or liquid form. He began his fast on
+    March 2 and broke it on the evening of April 13 at supper-time.
+    With the exception of the loss of thirty pounds of flesh, which
+    materially changed his personal appearance, Mr. Cowan shows no
+    ill-effects of his undertaking. When he began he weighed one
+    hundred and sixty-five pounds, and when he quit he weighed one
+    hundred and thirty-five pounds. Before his fast he was inclined
+    to be fleshy, and now, while still in fairly good flesh, his
+    clothing manifests a desire not to hold close communion with his
+    body. Mr. Cowan was in the city Saturday, and some of his
+    friends did not know him. He related his experience to some of
+    them, but he did this cautiously, and with the oft-expressed
+    hope that the papers would not devote any attention to the
+    affair, because he was not seeking and did not want notoriety.
+    At different times during his fast the _Herald-Dispatch_ has
+    referred to the fact in short items. Cowan is a disciple of a
+    Dr. Dewey, living at Meadville, Pa., who is an advocate of
+    fasting as a means of curing many of the ills to which the body
+    is heir. Dr. Dewey has many pamphlets touching the subject, and
+    has also written some books for his belief, and his reasons have
+    been made so plausible that a number of persons have coincided
+    with him. Cowan says the efficacy of the treatment has been
+    established in many instances, a fact that he can prove by ample
+    testimony. During his long abstinence from food he had numerous
+    letters and telegrams from Dr. Dewey, encouraging him in the
+    undertaking. When asked why he had fasted, Cowan explained that
+    for years he had suffered from chronic nasal and throat catarrh
+    which would not yield to medical treatment. His appetite was
+    splendid, and he ate many things that he really did not want. He
+    read Dr. Dewey's ideas, and became convinced that his system
+    needed general overhauling, and that this could be accomplished
+    through faithful adherence to the theory of Dr. Dewey. One of
+    these theories is to the effect that fasting rests the brain,
+    which is ofttimes overworked as a result of heavy feeding. It is
+    also supposed that the body throws off old mucous membrane of
+    the stomach and bowels, and that these are immediately
+    supplanted by new lining. Believing that he could get rid of his
+    catarrhal trouble and get the new lining referred to, Cowan
+    decided to fast, and without noise about the matter he
+    commenced, and up to Thursday evening he did not allow a bite of
+    food to pass his lips. The only thing that he took was water. Of
+    this he did not drink much, and he claims that he suffered no
+    pain or pangs of hunger. Looking at the matter now, it does not
+    seem to have been much of an accomplishment. After he once got
+    started he said it was an easy matter to carry out his plan
+    except for the worry of his family and some of his friends. They
+    thought that he was losing his mind and tried to induce him to
+    relinquish his idea, but he took some of them under his wing and
+    reasoned with them on the beauties of the treatment, expounded
+    the strong points, gave them reasons, showed them testimony of
+    others, and kept on fasting. When he began he had no idea that
+    he would continue for forty days; but as he progressed he had no
+    desire for food, and therefore did not desist. Thursday evening
+    he began to feel hungry, and that night he ate a reasonably good
+    supper. The return of hunger, according to his theories, was the
+    signal of the return of health. He feels confident that his
+    stomach has been relined, and for the present he knows that his
+    catarrh has left him. He is a firm believer in the new method of
+    curing bodily ailments, and says that during his fast he was
+    able to be around the village of Warrensburg every day, and was
+    able to perform his duties. His abstinence from food apparently
+    has not weakened his constitution. Since breaking his fast he
+    has partaken sparingly of food. Cowan's friends are very much
+    interested in the recital of his experience."
+
+It so chanced that during this fast much more than his ordinary business
+came to him, and without the least inability to perform it. I saw him
+several months later, and found his physical condition seemingly
+perfect. He had found out that for the best working conditions a nap at
+noon was better than even a light luncheon, and that one meal a day
+taken after his business was over was the best practice. This fast was
+not in the right locality to excite the attention it deserved.
+
+The second voluntary fast was destined to reach the ends of the earth
+through the public prints. The following appeared in the _New York
+Press_ of June 6, 1899:
+
+    "Twenty-eight days without nourishment and without letting up
+    for a moment on the daily routine of his business is the
+    unequalled record of Milton Rathbun, a hay and grain dealer at
+    No. 453 Fourth Avenue, and living in Mount Vernon. He is a man
+    of wealth, has many employés, and has been in the same business
+    in this city for thirty-nine years.
+
+    "He fasted because he wanted to reduce his weight, fearing that
+    its gradual increase might bring on apoplexy. He succeeded in
+    his efforts. He weighed two hundred and ten pounds when he
+    stopped eating; when he resumed he tipped the scales at one
+    hundred and sixty-eight pounds, a loss of forty-two pounds of
+    flesh.
+
+    "Mr. Rathbun's description of how he felt as the days and weeks
+    wore along and the pounds of avoirdupois slipped away one by one
+    is interesting. The remarkable point about it is that he
+    continued his work and kept well. He gave his account of it
+    yesterday to a reporter for _The Press_. Mr. Rathbun is known by
+    the business men for blocks around his own place of business,
+    and they all know of his fast.
+
+    "Every day his friends would come in and talk to him about it.
+    At first they told him he was foolish; that nobody could fast
+    that length of time, much less continue his work without
+    interruption. Then as the days went on and he kept up without a
+    break they began to be frightened.
+
+    "A crowd would gather about him every night at 6.30 o'clock,
+    when he would leave his office, for that was his hour for
+    weighing. Some days he would lose two or three pounds from the
+    weight of the day before; some days only one, but always
+    something. And as the record was scored up on the book each
+    night his friends would shake their heads and warn him to
+    beware.
+
+    "Finally, on the fifteenth day, his friends and employés got
+    together and made up their minds that something had to be done.
+    They were afraid that Rathbun would die. They appointed a
+    committee to wait on him in his office and beg him to eat
+    something. The committee took dainties to Mr. Rathbun, told him
+    their fears, and offered the good things to tempt him, but all
+    to no purpose.
+
+    "It was the night of April 23 that Mr. Rathbun took his last bit
+    of nourishment. He made no attempt to eat a large meal in
+    preparation for his fast. He ate his regular supply just as if
+    he had meant to continue eating on the following day. Then for
+    twenty-eight days he absolutely abjured all food. He drank
+    water, but that was all. Before going to bed he would take a
+    pint of Apollinaris.
+
+    "Had he remained at his home in bed or taken perfect rest, his
+    achievement would have been less remarkable. That is the course
+    which always has been adopted by the professional fasters. Dr.
+    Tanner, and the Italian, Succi, in their fasts were surrounded
+    by attendants who allowed them scarcely to lift a hand, so that
+    every ounce of energy might be conserved.
+
+    "Rathbun pursued a course diametrically opposite to this. He
+    worked, and worked hard. He came down earlier to his office and
+    went away later than usual. He made no effort to save himself.
+    On the contrary, he seemed determined to make his task as hard
+    as possible. On four of his fast days he spent the afternoons in
+    a dentist's chair, at which times his nerves were tried as only
+    dentists know how to do it.
+
+    "It was his idea to continue the fast until he began to feel
+    hunger. After the first twenty-four hours his hunger
+    disappeared, and he had no desire for food until the end of the
+    fourth week, when the craving set in, and he immediately set
+    about satisfying it in a moderate and careful manner. He
+    consulted two physicians while the fast was going on, to see that
+    he was suffering no injury that he could not appreciate himself.
+    One was Dr. F. B. Carpenter, of Madison Avenue and thirty-eight
+    Street, and the other, Dr. George J. Helmer, of Madison Avenue
+    and Thirty-first Street. He saw Dr. Carpenter on the eighteenth
+    and the twenty-first days, and Dr. Helmer on the twenty-fifth
+    day. Both expressed surprise at his long fast and astonishment at
+    his excellent condition.
+
+    "Mr. Rathbun is fifty-four years old, and five feet six inches
+    in height. He does not look more than forty years old, and he is
+    as active as a man of that age. He says he never felt better
+    than when he was fasting, and that he has experienced no bad
+    effects of any kind, while, on the other hand, he has reduced
+    his weight to a normal limit and removed all danger of apoplexy.
+
+    "He got the idea of the fast from the new theory exploited by
+    Dr. Edward Hooker Dewey, a practising physician of Meadville,
+    Pa., who recommends fasting as a cure for many ailments, and
+    advises all persons to go without breakfast and eat only two
+    meals a day.
+
+    "'I became intensely interested in this new system,' said Mr.
+    Rathbun yesterday, 'and I decided to put it to a practical test.
+    Dr. Dewey had said that he had many patients fasting all the way
+    from ten to thirty and forty days, and I concluded that if it
+    did them so much good it would be just the thing for me. So I
+    tried it.
+
+    "'On April 23 I ate my last meal, and from then until May 24 I
+    had absolutely nothing to eat. I drank water, of course, for
+    that is a matter of necessity. One cannot do without drink; but
+    I took no nourishment. For the first twenty-four hours I was
+    very hungry, and would have liked very much to take a square
+    meal; but I resisted the temptation, and after the expiration of
+    one day I had no desire to eat.
+
+    "'I had been in the habit of getting to my office about 8; now I
+    get there at 7. I generally had left at 5.30; I now stayed until
+    6.30. I had been in the habit of taking an hour or an hour and a
+    quarter for luncheon. The luncheon was now cut off, so I stayed
+    in the office and worked. I sat there at my desk and put in a
+    long, hard day's work, constantly writing.
+
+    "'At night I drank a bottle of Apollinaris, and went to bed at
+    8.30 and slept until 4 in the morning. I never enjoyed better
+    sleep than in those four weeks. And I was in excellent condition
+    as far as I could see in every other way. My mind was clear, my
+    eye was sharper than usually, and all the functions were in
+    excellent working order.
+
+    "'I had many amusing experiences. I went to a dentist on the
+    first day. I had some work requiring several hours' labor on the
+    part of the dentist. I said nothing to the doctor on the first
+    day. Four or five days afterward I kept a second appointment
+    with the dentist, and he asked me how the teeth worked which he
+    had fixed before. I said to him: "I haven't tried them yet."
+
+    "'You can imagine the look of surprise on his face. When I told
+    him that I was fasting, and had been since he had seen me
+    before, he showed the greatest concern, and said he did not
+    think I could go on with the dental work on account of the
+    weakness of my nerves. He solicited me to go out and have just a
+    bite of something. I refused, of course, and he continued the
+    work. I visited him on two days after that until he had finished
+    the work.
+
+    "'The men in my employ were greatly concerned about me, and
+    thought I would break down. I used to weigh every night before
+    leaving the office, and as they saw my constant wearing away
+    they became more and more frightened, and finally appointed a
+    committee to wait on me. The committee was headed by my manager,
+    who begged me to eat. He brought along some fine ripe cherries
+    to tempt me. I told him I would not eat them for one thousand
+    dollars, for I was interested thoroughly in the fast by that
+    time and would not have stopped.
+
+    "'After that they made no more attempts to stop the fast; but my
+    friends all shook their heads, and said that when I started in
+    to eat again I would find I was without a proper stomach.
+
+    "'On the twenty-eighth day the hunger began to come on again,
+    and I began to eat under the advice of Dr. Carpenter. On the
+    twenty-ninth day I drank a little bouillon, and afterward from
+    day to day increased the amount of food to the normal. I
+    suffered no inconvenience.'
+
+    "Mr. Rathbun says he is a firm believer in the no-breakfast
+    system of hygiene advocated by Dr. Dewey, and that neither
+    himself, his wife, nor any of the servants in his house eat
+    breakfast, and as a result all are remarkably well. His two
+    sons, one of whom was graduated at Harvard in 1896, and a
+    second, who is still at Harvard, practise the no-breakfast
+    system.
+
+    "Just before beginning his fast Mr. Rathbun ordered a suit of
+    clothes at his tailor's. He did not go for it until the end of
+    his long fast. Being something of a practical joker, besides a
+    man of great nerve, he walked into the tailor-shop and let the
+    tailor try his new suit on to see if it was all right.
+
+    "When he slipped on the coat the tailor stood aghast. There was
+    apparently the same man he had measured twenty-eight days
+    previously standing before him in perfect health, but as to
+    dimensions not at all the same man.
+
+    "'It doesn't fit any part of you,' said the tailor, after the
+    suit had been tried on. In the tailor's book Rathbun's
+    measurement was entered: 'Forty-three inches around the waist
+    and forty-two around the chest.' When he went for his suit his
+    measurements were thirty-eight around the waist and thirty-eight
+    around the chest.
+
+    "Dr. Dewey's theory, which led Rathbun to make his long fast, is
+    that the brain is the centre of every mind and muscle energy, a
+    sort of self-charging dynamo, with the heart, lungs, and all the
+    other parts only as so many machines to be run by it; that the
+    brain has the power of feeding itself on the less important
+    parts of the body without loss of its own structure, and that as
+    the operation of digestion is a tax on the brain, a long period
+    of fasting gives the brain a rest, by which means the brain is
+    able to build itself up, which means the upbuilding of the whole
+    body.
+
+    "In this way, it is asserted, the alcohol habit is cured and
+    other diseases eradicated.
+
+    "Dr. F. B. Carpenter said yesterday to a reporter for _The
+    Press_ that he had not recommended Mr. Rathbun to take the fast,
+    but had advised him while it was going on and after it was over.
+    The doctor said he was inclined to believe there might be
+    something in the no-breakfast system, as a great many persons
+    eat and drink altogether too much.
+
+    "Dr. Helmer said he had examined Rathbun on the twenty-fifth
+    day, and had found him in surprisingly good condition."
+
+Mr. Rathbun had been on the no-breakfast plan for several years, and he
+was one of the first to write me after my book came out. It was not
+without reason he feared apoplexy, for Ex-Gov. Flower, an over-weighted
+man, had gone down to instant death though seemingly in perfect health
+and in the prime of business energy and mental capacity. During his fast
+my only trouble with him was in his drinking so much water without
+thirst, thus greatly and needlessly adding to the work of the kidneys.
+
+Mr. Rathbun was so disappointed over the skepticism of New York
+physicians as to the reliability of the fast that he determined to
+undergo a longer one under such surveillance as would enforce
+conviction. He was mainly actuated, however, to go through the ordeal in
+the interests of science.
+
+Again I had trouble with him on the water question, wishing him to drink
+only as thirst incited. He was differently advised by an eminent Boston
+physician, who, taking a great interest in the case, wrote him that he
+should have great care to drink certain definite amounts for the
+necessary fluidity of the blood. I had to respond that thirst would duly
+indicate this need; that in my cases of protracted fasts from acute
+sicknesses not one had been advised to take even a teaspoonful of water
+for such reasons; that at the closing days before recovery of such cases
+there was only the least desire for water, and this with no indication
+of need from the blood. Mr. Rathbun did not escape some trouble from
+overworked kidneys, and he became convinced that my theory and practice
+were more in line with physiology.
+
+This fast was made a matter of daily record by the leading New York
+journals, and he became such a subject of general interest that in
+addition to his ordinary business he was greatly overtaxed, and was
+compelled to give up the fast on the thirty-fifth day, in part from the
+exhaustion of over-excitement.
+
+This case was summed up as follows by the _New York Press_, February 27,
+1900:
+
+    "Milton Rathbun has ended his long fast.
+
+    "After thirty-five days, in which solid food or any liquid other
+    than water was a stranger to his palate, he became extremely
+    hungry on Sunday night. At first he resisted the longing to eat
+    and tried to sleep it off. But he awoke in a few hours hungrier
+    than ever, and then he decided he had fasted as long as was good
+    for him.
+
+    "He ate a modest, light meal and went back to bed, only to awake
+    still hungry. Then he ate an orange, and was asleep again in a
+    jiffy. A bowl of milk and cream and crackers sufficed for his
+    breakfast, and at noon yesterday he enjoyed his first hearty
+    meal.
+
+    "As he walked around the parlor of his home in Mount Vernon,
+    lighter by forty-three pounds than he was on January 21, this
+    man of fifty-five years and iron will said:
+
+    "'I feel like a boy again. I think I could vault over a six-foot
+    fence.'
+
+    "Mrs. Rathbun herself knows what it is to fast. For five years
+    such a thing as breakfast has been an unknown quantity in her
+    house, save when guests were present or for the servants. To
+    this abstinence Mrs. Rathbun attributes the curing of catarrh,
+    from which she had suffered previously. And as she and her
+    husband do, so do their two sons.
+
+    "After the first few days of abstinence he had felt no desire to
+    eat until Sunday evening. Then he became hungry--ravenously so.
+    His first fast of a year ago--it was twenty-eight days then--had
+    taught him that sleep took away the longing for food, and, too,
+    he had said he would make his fast last forty days this time. So
+    he went to bed and to sleep.
+
+    "But he awoke at 11 o'clock; he was hungrier than ever, and he
+    decided not to resist his inclination for food. Calling his wife
+    he asked her for an orange, and ate it; then he took another.
+    His next demand was for oysters, and a dozen large, juicy ones
+    disappeared rapidly, to the accompaniment of five soda crackers.
+    Then he drank about two-thirds of a cup of beef-tea, and some
+    Oolong tea. His appetite was not sated by any means, but he knew
+    the danger of overloading his stomach, so he stopped.
+
+    "He soon was slumbering again, but he was wide awake at 2
+    o'clock in the morning. And his hunger was with him still. He
+    ate an orange to appease the craving, and again sought his
+    pillow. He slept again until 6 o'clock, and then, breaking some
+    crackers in a bowl of milk and cream, he ate again.
+
+    "At noon a meal was served to the still hungry man. He began
+    with a little clam-broth; then came half a dozen steamed clams,
+    followed by a small portion of mock-turtle soup. Of a squab he
+    ate one-half, and with it some canned pease and fried potatoes;
+    while for dessert he had a little lemon ice.
+
+    "'That was good,' he exclaimed, as he finished. The remark was
+    unnecessary; the relish with which he had eaten was convincing
+    testimony of his enjoyment. Asked why he had decided not to fast
+    for the full forty days, he said:
+
+    "'I ate just because I was hungry.'
+
+    "Asked how the weather affected him, he said:
+
+    "'When I began there was a spell of cold weather, and I found
+    it rather hard to keep warm at night. But it soon passed away,
+    and I made it a point to wear the same underclothing and outer
+    garments as usual. Oh, yes; I did wear a different pair of
+    trousers. I had them made five years ago, but they were so tight
+    around the waist I could never wear them. They are as loose as
+    can be now, however.'
+
+    "'From a scientific standpoint,' said Professor R. Ogden Doremus
+    yesterday, 'it is the most interesting and valuable experiment I
+    have known. Mr. Rathbun is a man of great nerve force. The very
+    fact that he attended to his business was what saved him, in
+    keeping his mind away from the thought of food. He could not
+    have done it had he been on exhibition or if he had remained at
+    home. If he had been at sea, in an open boat, he could not have
+    lasted more than ten days. He would have had nothing to think of
+    but his hunger.'
+
+    "Dr. George J. Helmer, who has given no little attention to Mr.
+    Rathbun, said:
+
+    "'I have examined him several times; I did so when his thirty
+    days were up. Well, it was remarkable. It's a wonderful
+    exhibition, that will attract the attention of the medical
+    world. His heart is as clear as a bell and his kidneys are
+    perfect. He is in absolutely rugged health. His temperature was
+    normal, his eye clear, and to-day, upon examination, any
+    insurance company would rate him as an A1 risk.'
+
+    "Following is from the diary kept during his fast, and furnished
+    by Milton Rathbun to _The Press_:
+
+      "_First Day_, Jan. 22, 8.45 A. M.--Weight, 207 pounds; height, 5
+      ft. 6-1/2 inches; chest measure, 43-1/2 inches; waist measure,
+      43-1/2 inches; hip measure, 46-1/2 inches; calf measure, 17
+      inches; biceps measure, 14 inches; forearm, 12 inches. 3 P. M.,
+      feels well, but hungry. In the evening felt well, not being
+      hungry or thirsty. Have taken no water.
+
+      "_Tuesday_, Jan. 23.--Slept well until 6 A. M. Rested a while,
+      then took sponge bath and rubdown. At 8.45 weighed 200 pounds.
+      Feel good, but a little weak. 12 o'clock M., no appetite and
+      feverish. 4 P. M., weighed 199 pounds; went home; drank one pint
+      of water during the evening.
+
+      "_Wednesday_, Jan. 24.--Slept well for nine hours. Got up at 6
+      A. M., drank one glass of water and took train to the city. 8.30
+      A. M., weighed 198-1/2 pounds; only half pound lost, which
+      shows how greedily the tissues absorb moisture and add to
+      weight. 12 o'clock M., have no appetite nor thirst, and no
+      fever. Retired at 9 o'clock, feeling comfortable but a little
+      feverish.
+
+      "_Thursday_, Jan. 25.--After having slept seven and one-half
+      hours took a sponge bath and brisk rubdown. Came to the city,
+      and at 8.25 A. M. weighed 195 pounds. Feeling good, with no
+      fever nor appetite. 4.45 P. M., weighed 193 pounds. At home
+      during the evening drank two and one-half glasses of water.
+
+      "_Friday_, Jan. 26.--Slept eight hours. No appetite and feeling
+      stronger. Examined by Professor Doremus and Dr. Carpenter.
+      Retired at 9 o'clock, feeling first class.
+
+      "_Saturday_, Jan. 27.--Came to the city on the 7.45 A. M. train.
+      Weighed 191 pounds. Feeling good. No fever and no appetite.
+
+      "_Sunday_, Jan. 28.--Drank one glass of water when I got up.
+      During the day and evening drank three more glasses of water.
+      Retired feeling first class.
+
+      "_Monday_, Jan. 29.--Slept eight hours last night, and came to
+      the city on the 7.45 A. M. train. At 8.25 weighed 189 pounds. 4
+      P. M., was examined by Dr. F. B. Carpenter, who found the
+      temperature 98-1/2° F., pulse regular, tongue clean.
+      Measurements were: waist, 41 inches; chest, 41 inches; hip, 45
+      inches; calf, 16 inches; biceps, 13-1/2 inches; forearm, 11-1/2
+      inches. 5.15 P. M., weighed 188 pounds.
+
+      "_Tuesday_, Jan. 30.--Slept eight hours; weighed 188 pounds,
+      same as the night before; feeling good. 5.30 P. M., weighed
+      185-1/2 pounds.
+
+      "_Wednesday_, Jan. 31.--Slept 7-1/2 hours, drank one and
+      one-half glasses of water; weighed at 8.25 A. M. 187 pounds; Dr.
+      Carpenter found temperature 98° F., and pulse 88; Professor
+      Doremus called a little later; weighed 184-1/2 pounds.
+
+      "_Thursday_, Feb. 1.--Rested quietly when not asleep; drank only
+      one and three-quarters glasses of water all day; weighed 184
+      pounds; retired feeling good.
+
+      "_Friday_, Feb. 2.--Not feeling any hunger; was examined by F.
+      B. Carpenter; temperature, 98° F.; pulse, 84; weighed 183
+      pounds; retired feeling well, but tired.
+
+      "_Saturday_, Feb. 3.--Somewhat wakeful during the night. 5.45 P. M.,
+      weighed 182 pounds.
+
+      "_Sunday_, Feb. 4.--Read all day and felt well.
+
+      "_Monday_, Feb. 5.--2 P. M., temperature, 98.4° F.; pulse, 82;
+      tongue clean. Measurements were: waist, 41 inches; chest, 41
+      inches; hip, 43 inches; calf, 14-1/2 inches; biceps, 13-1/2
+      inches; forearm, 11-1/2 inches; went to bed feeling a trifle
+      feverish.
+
+      "_Tuesday_, Feb. 6.--Wakeful during the night. 11 A. M., had my
+      eyes examined by Dr. L. H. Matthez, oculist, and found a marked
+      improvement in my sight over same tests of two months previous,
+      being 7 degrees stronger; felt a little weak, but no fever or
+      appetite; weighed 180 pounds; feeling somewhat exhausted from
+      the day's labor and in entertaining guests.
+
+      "_Wednesday_, Feb. 7.--Slept about seven hours during the night;
+      when I awoke felt rested; temperature, 98.2° F.; pulse, 80; have
+      felt well all day; went to bed at 9.30; some fever.
+
+      "_Thursday_, Feb. 8.--Woke up two or three times during the
+      night. Drank water during the night and first thing this morning
+      when I got up. Came to the city, and at 9 o'clock weighed 182
+      pounds, showing a gain of two pounds over last night. Not
+      feeling so well owing to the amount of water I drank last night,
+      which was induced by feverishness.
+
+      "_Friday_, Feb. 9.--Feeling first rate. At 8.25 A. M. weighed
+      180 pounds. Heart action normal. No enlargement of the spleen or
+      liver.
+
+      "_Saturday_, Feb. 10.--Lost nothing in weight during the day and
+      have felt well all the while.
+
+      "_Sunday_, Feb. 11.--Passed the day in reading and drank
+      frequently of water.
+
+      "_Monday_, Feb. 12.--This being a holiday, did not go to the
+      city. Passed the day in entertaining callers. Have not felt
+      quite so well owing to a slight cold settling in my left kidney.
+
+      "_Tuesday_, Feb. 13.--Measurements: waist, 38-1/2 inches; chest,
+      40 inches; hip, 43 inches; calf, 14-1/2 inches; biceps, 12-1/2
+      inches; forearm, 11 inches; weight, 177-1/2 pounds.
+
+      "_Wednesday_, Feb. 14.--I attribute the cause of loss of sleep
+      to a hard day's work and in reading too long last evening.
+
+      "_Thursday_, Feb. 15.--Somewhat wakeful during the night.
+      Retired at 7.30 o'clock, after a hard day's work.
+
+      "_Friday_, Feb. 16.--3.30 P. M., temperature, 98.5° F.; pulse,
+      74; tongue clean; weighed 172-1/2 pounds. During the evening
+      drank one cup of hot water.
+
+      "_Saturday_, Feb. 17.--After a restful night felt well all day.
+
+      "_Sunday_, Feb. 18.--Retired at 9 o'clock and have rested a good
+      deal during the day.
+
+      "_Monday_, Feb. 19.--Weighed 169-1/2 pounds, and retired feeling
+      well.
+
+      "_Tuesday_, Feb. 20.--Weighed 168-1/2 pounds; was examined by
+      Dr. Helmer, who found me in excellent condition; 4.30 P. M.,
+      weighed 169-1/2 pounds, a gain of one pound during the day, on
+      account of drinking a little more water than usual.
+
+      "_Wednesday_, Feb. 21.--Temperature, 98.5° F.; pulse, 69; 4 P. M.,
+      weighed 168-1/2 pounds; have not felt quite so well during
+      the day.
+
+      "_Thursday_, Feb. 22.--Occupied the day--holiday--in reading and
+      reclining, and went to bed feeling pretty well.
+
+      "_Friday_, Feb. 23.--At 8.30 A. M. weighed 166 pounds; 3.30 P. M.,
+      temperature, 99° F.; pulse, 98; lung expansion, 2-3/4
+      inches; went home and to bed, feeling considerably exhausted
+      owing to a hard day's work and too many callers.
+
+      "_Saturday_, Feb. 24.--Did not rest very well from overtaxing
+      the brain yesterday. Do not feel quite so well this morning
+      owing to that fact and from drinking too much water during the
+      past twenty-four hours. At 8.25 A. M. weighed 166 pounds; went
+      home not feeling well to-day on account of some stomach
+      disturbance, which probably comes from drinking too much water;
+      did not drink any water during the evening; feeling quite tired
+      at bedtime.
+
+      "_Sunday_, Feb. 25.--Slept nine hours and rested well, and did
+      not drink any water during the night. Kept quiet all day, lying
+      down most of the time, and felt the coming of hunger about 6
+      o'clock.
+
+      12 o'clock noon, pulse regular; tongue clean; temperature,
+      98.2°F.; weighed 164 pounds. Measurements were: waist, 36-1/2
+      inches; chest, 38 inches; hip, 40-1/2 inches; calf, 14 inches;
+      biceps, 11 inches; forearm, 10 inches.
+
+      Was in bed at 8 o'clock, still feeling hungry, and after a short
+      sleep woke up at 11 o'clock with a sharp appetite, and ate a
+      dozen raw oysters, two oranges, two-thirds cup of beef-tea, five
+      crackers, and part of a cup of Oolong tea.
+
+    I insert a photograph of Mr. Rathbun taken shortly after his
+    second fast. There had been five years' trial of the No-Breakfast
+    Plan before these fasting demonstrations."
+
+One of the hardest things on earth as a mental operation is to be fair
+to the opposition. Now lest I have beguiled my readers overmuch by the
+force of my convictions even to the point of danger, I will give an
+estimate of the danger of fasting by one of the most eminent physicians
+of New York City, Dr. George F. Shrady. I quote from an interview
+reported in the New York _Sun_:
+
+    "The strange case of Milton Rathbun, of Mt. Vernon, who, to
+    reduce his flesh and generally tone up his system, is said to
+    have gone without food of any sort for thirty-six days, still
+    continues to be the subject of more or less discussion among the
+    medical men of the city. Dr. George F. Shrady, in speaking last
+    evening of Mr. Rathbun's remarkable exploit, said:
+
+[Illustration: MR. MILTON RATHBUN,
+
+SHORTLY AFTER HIS FAST.]
+
+    "'There are three things to say about it. In the first place,
+    the fact, if it be a fact, as it seems to be, is astonishing;
+    secondly, it was very foolish; and thirdly, it would be a very
+    unfortunate and dangerous thing to popularize such experiments.
+    Now as to whether the gentleman in question actually did go
+    thirty-six days without taking nourishment of any sort is a
+    matter I will not discuss. If he were a professional faster, I
+    would hardly hesitate to say his claim was fraudulent, for I am
+    fully convinced that all the professional fasters are frauds.
+    They are simply adept sleight-of-hand men. They work out some
+    adroit trick by which they may get nourishment into their
+    systems in spite of the always more or less negligent or
+    suspicious watchers, and then advertise for a forty days' or
+    sixty days' 'fast.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "'Now, mind you, I do not say this Mt. Vernon case is anything
+    of this sort. I only say that if it is true it is most
+    astounding. It is in flat contradiction of all the authorities
+    on the subject of a human being's ability to do without food.
+    The extreme limit of all well-authenticated cases of total
+    abstinence from nourishment is from nine to ten days. Imprisoned
+    miners have been known to go that time and survive.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "'But at all events it was a very foolish thing for Mr. Rathbun
+    to do. About that there can be no manner of doubt. What will be
+    the future effect upon him--upon his heart action, upon his
+    impoverished blood, upon his nervous system, upon his organs of
+    nutrition, necessarily paralyzed for days? These are grave
+    questions, the answers to which may be unpleasant to Mr. Rathbun
+    as they reveal themselves to him in the future. You cannot fly
+    in the face of Nature and ignore all her laws in that way with
+    impunity. She exacts her penalties and there is no court of
+    appeals in her realm.
+
+    "'When I say that the extreme limits of abstinence from
+    nourishment in clearly authenticated cases is from nine to ten
+    days, you must not get the impression that all persons can last
+    that long.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "'It is a question of environment, of mental condition--whether
+    buoyed by hope or stimulated by ambition to do a great feat--and
+    above all, of course, of the physical condition of the faster.
+    Without food the body absorbs its own tissues. Mr. Rathbun, I am
+    told, was a very heavy man with a superabundance of tissue.
+    Naturally he could go longer without nourishment than a weak,
+    attenuated, thin-blooded man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "'Yet Mr. Rathbun was exercising daily and about his usual
+    avocations, and he abstained from food for thirty-six days!
+    Well, it's remarkable!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "'But I sincerely hope Mr. Rathbun will have no imitators. It
+    would be a very unfortunate thing, fraught with grave
+    possibilities, if the newspaper accounts of his reduction in
+    weight and general improvement in health were to move others to
+    follow his example. Many persons would be injured for life,
+    physically wrecked, and perhaps actually killed if they
+    conscientiously did the fifth part of what he is said to have
+    done.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "'And right here it may be said that there is a great deal of
+    exaggeration in the sweeping statements made about people eating
+    too much. If a man sleeps well, goes about his business in a
+    cheerful frame of mind, and does not get what is called
+    "out-of-sorts," he may be pretty sure he is not eating too much,
+    even though he eat a good deal. My observation is that the
+    average man who works and gets a proper amount of exercise does
+    not eat too much. If you want to get work done by the engine,
+    you have got to stoke up the furnace. If a man wants to keep his
+    vital energies up to par he has got to put in the fuel--that is,
+    the food.
+
+    "'Of course, there are those who lead sedentary lives who get
+    too much absorbed in the pleasures of the table and overfeed.
+    There are a sufficient number of these, to be sure, but I think
+    they are the exception. But it will be a sad mistake if even
+    they seek a road to health by Mr. Rathbun's starvation
+    methods.'"
+
+The doctor is astonished, and so am I that he is astonished. This would
+seem to imply that he has never had cases of acute sickness in which the
+amount of food taken during many days or even weeks was too small to
+play any part as a life-prolonging factor.
+
+"It was a foolish, even dangerous experiment." How foolish or dangerous?
+What vital organs suffered? Was there evidence of a loss of anything but
+fat? What organs were "necessarily paralyzed" during the fast? Evidently
+not the brain, else longer days of labor would not have been possible;
+and the grave future possibilities in heart action, impoverished blood,
+nervous system, upon organs of nutrition "necessarily paralyzed" for
+days; and the extreme limit of nine or ten days before death from
+starvation; and that without food the _body_ lives on its own tissues!
+
+One can easily see that the earnest doctor is full of strong impressions
+that have little of the flavor of science: truth that is not
+self-evident should have the instant logic in easy reach. I may here say
+that my hygienic scheme has from the first been subject to similar
+attacks by physicians from the standpoint of impressions, but no
+physician has ventured into print against it after becoming aware of its
+physiologic basis.
+
+I am happy to assure all readers that in all the involuntary fasts of my
+cases of acute sickness or in the voluntary fasts in chronic disease,
+has there been any other than improved general health as the result.
+Notably was this the case in a man who fasted ten years ago for forty
+days for an ulcer of the stomach, and who had been troubled with
+indigestion for more than forty years. He had become nearly a mental and
+physical wreck when he took to his bed with an abolished appetite. There
+have since been some ten years of nearly perfect health, and now in his
+seventy-seventh year he is the youngest-looking man for his age I have
+ever seen. He walks the streets with the gait of a youth of twenty. To
+do without food without hunger does not tax any vital power, as Dr.
+Shrady may yet become aware.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+
+The next fast to have a brief notoriety as the "most remarkable on
+record" occurred in Philadelphia, the medical center of America, and
+beneath the very shadow of its great medical schools; in Philadelphia, a
+city that surpasses all other cities for the wisest conservatism, for
+all-around level-headedness. Its journals are rarely equalled for their
+clean, winnowed columns; there is no "yellow" journalism in that great,
+fair city, known as the "Quaker City."
+
+Miss Estella Kuenzel, a lady of twenty-two years, of acutest, finest
+sensibilities, born to live in June and not in March, lost her mental
+health to a degree that death became the final object of desire.
+
+She had a friend in a bright young man of the name of Henry Ritter,
+chemist and photographer at the Drexel Institute, a born scientist, and
+who possesses the very genius of the pains and persistence of science.
+Well versed in the science of the morning fast, he believed that a fast
+which would merely end with hunger would result in all-around
+improvement. A fast was instituted which he thought would not last more
+than a few days, but went on until the days merged into weeks: it went
+on because only general improvement attended it.
+
+I first heard of it in a letter written by him on the thirty-eighth day
+of the fast, during which there had been a walk of seven miles. On the
+forty-second day of the fast I had a brief letter from Miss K., in which
+every line was radiant with cheer.
+
+At the Asylum five feedings per day were ordered, and at first were
+rejected; but finally she accepted them as a means to end her unhappy
+life; took them in bed, and in the last weeks seemed to be fleshing up,
+as there was a gain of seventeen pounds above the normal, of water--she
+had become dropsical. The last professional expert in her case advised a
+half-gallon of milk daily in addition to the three regular meals--making
+a five-meal plan.
+
+To carry out an unopposed fast it was necessary to take her to a home
+where the parents would be ignorant of this radical means to a cure.
+
+The following is from Mr. Ritter's letters:
+
+    "I had made my views known to the parents and daughter when the
+    case commenced, and after the failure of these methods they
+    decided to let me have charge of the case, which was on Sept.
+    30, 1899. I at once requested them to send her to the house of
+    some friends to whom I made my views known. We then discharged
+    the nurse who had gone with her. With doctor and nurse gone
+    there was free room for Nature's victory (the young lady being
+    as deeply interested as any). We put her upon the rest, which
+    was the only needed sign since her first signs of breakdown
+    appeared Oct. 2, at the supper table, being the last meal she
+    has taken up to to-day, Nov. 9, this being, as you will see, the
+    thirty-eighth day of her fast, with cheerfulness and strength
+    holding full sway. I put her to bed on the first day, to which
+    she kept, with an occasional day in the rocker, until the
+    eleventh day, when she took a walk of about one mile. Then she
+    rested indoors until the twentieth day, when we went to church,
+    walking a little over two miles, with no fatigue or tired
+    feelings. I forgot to mention that we had been out driving in
+    the bracing air for over three hours in the afternoon. On the
+    twenty-first and twenty-second days, indoors, walking and
+    working around the house, reading, etc. On the twenty-third day
+    walked through the country for three miles, stopping at friends
+    to enlighten them upon 'Nature's Laws;' twenty-fourth day, eight
+    miles, no fatigue; twenty-fifth day, between seven and eight
+    miles, no fatigue; twenty-sixth day, walked one and a half
+    hours; twenty-ninth day, rainy, no walks; thirtieth day, walked
+    in the evening for two and a half hours; thirty-first day,
+    walked seven miles, no fatigue; thirty-second day, rainy, no
+    walks; thirty-third day, went to the Exposition, walked all day
+    from 2 P. M. until 11.30 P. M. (with rest while at the
+    performance we attended of not over one and a quarter hours),
+    this being the only resting, possibly two hours, during the
+    whole time.
+
+    "Weight taken at the start, one hundred and forty pounds; at the
+    Exposition one hundred and twenty-five and three-quarters
+    pounds; no sense of tired feeling, but hunger started to assert
+    itself for a period of about three hours, after which it passed
+    over.
+
+    "On the thirty-fourth day went driving; thirty-fifth day, walked
+    one mile, then went to the asylum to show the results. The
+    physicians in charge were simply astounded, and would hardly
+    believe it possible for one to be so active while taking no
+    food. I believe we have done quite a little good there, as they
+    have expressed the desire to try the same on others. They
+    examined the tongue and took the pulse, finding both in good,
+    normal state; in the evening walked another mile, visiting the
+    other doctors whom her parents called in. On the thirty-sixth
+    day walked one and a half miles; thirty-seventh day, walked
+    seven miles, hunger sensation becoming decided.
+
+    "I have given you a sketch of this case because it seems to me
+    an unusual one owing to the great activity."
+
+
+                                                 "November 18, 1899.
+
+    "Miss Kuenzel's hunger arrived as per Nature's demand on the
+    forty-fifth day at noon. One poached egg and two slices of
+    toast (whole wheat). There was an intense relish for her simple
+    fare, but not the least sign or desire for haste in eating. She
+    was amply satisfied for the day, and relished the same bill of
+    fare and quantity for the forty-sixth day, with a very slight
+    luncheon in the evening. We had been to the Exposition the night
+    of the forty-fourth day, when the tongue again started cleaning
+    and a most distinct craving for food presented itself. It
+    persisted on retiring, and also on the next morning, when she
+    felt that Nature again was ready for her wonderful chemistry of
+    digestion. I had her weight taken after her first meal, which
+    revealed a loss of twenty pounds. We called to see the professor
+    under whom she was last placed, and he was surprised with the
+    clearness of her mental condition and good general appearance,
+    though he observed she had gotten a trifle thinner, but which he
+    had also in view to accomplish upon a five-meal plan per day. He
+    tried his best to confuse and trouble her with questions, etc.,
+    but found her too intensely awake, and she won the victory by
+    cornering him in his own set traps. We received his
+    congratulations and were made to promise to call again. I have
+    now been with her to seven physicians who were interested, and
+    have shown them Nature's own unhampered work.
+
+    "Miss Kuenzel has now an intense desire to help others. You are
+    at liberty to make use of Nature's work in her case for the
+    benefit of others, and I shall be only too glad to give you any
+    desired information that may be of use. The good work you have
+    started will, I am sure, never end; and it will prove a pleasure
+    to me indeed to work with added interest for the benefit of
+    those in need of the same in the future."
+
+The forty-fourth day of the fast was the busiest of all with her. She
+arose at 8.30 A. M. to attend to her affairs until the late afternoon,
+when she and her friend met a sister, by appointment from her home, at
+the Exposition. Several hours were spent there, and when they took the
+street car for return the only vacant seat was accepted by the sister,
+because she was tired, and not knowing that there were forty-four days
+without food with her sister, who was not tired. A striking feature of
+these daily walks was that they did not cause marked fatigue. Miss
+Kuenzel retired near midnight without unusual fatigue, and so ended the
+forty-fourth day of the fast.
+
+I quote from the _Chester County Times_ of Feb. 12, 1899:
+
+    "'Conclusive evidence is being multiplied as to the wonderful
+    power of fasting in the restoration of health, but it is only
+    more recently that its power in the case of insanity is even yet
+    more wonderful. A recent case is as near home as the city of
+    Philadelphia, and those interested are very willing that others
+    may know of it, so that its usefulness may be extended and its
+    value appreciated. The discovery was made by Dr. E. H. Dewey, of
+    Meadville, Pa., and tidings of the good work are being spread by
+    Charles C. Haskell & Son, of Norwich, Conn. The editor of this
+    paper knows somewhat the value of the discovery by an experience
+    of several years. We give a letter from the lady who was cured.
+
+
+                                 "'PHILADELPHIA, PA., Dec. 12, 1899.
+
+    "'_My Dear Mr. Haskell:_
+
+    "'I have received your letter of the 9th inst., and at last find
+    time to fulfil the request for a statement. In regard to my
+    _wonderful cure_ through "The New Gospel of Health," I would
+    state that the second week after Christmas, 1898, I first had a
+    paralyzing effect which affected the right side of face, body,
+    and limbs, also tongue, which nearly prevented my speaking. This
+    passed over and I again began working at my position as milliner
+    in a large establishment, and after a short while became so
+    dizzy and confused that I was compelled to ask my friends to
+    direct me home. (This was around Easter, 1899.) I was then taken
+    to a doctor, who at once requested me to stop working, and to
+    take a _complete rest_, but not for the stomach, as he
+    prescribed a severe and exacting master to stimulate the _tired
+    and overworked stomach_ to _renewed life_, and so give the
+    nerves plenty of pure food, as they were in need of same. I
+    then, after getting a ravenous hunger, weakened myself still
+    more and became worse. My stomach felt numb and paralyzed, as
+    did also my other internal organs, but this was put down against
+    me as an illusion. So a _professor of nervous diseases_ was
+    called in consultation, owing to my many desires to die (as life
+    had no sunshine, flowers, or music for me); I was simply living
+    a living death of torture which these professors would have were
+    illusions. My parents were then informed that I must be sent to
+    an asylum, where I was for ten long weeks. _They_ also told me
+    that my feelings were illusions, and proceeded to banish the
+    same by giving the _tired-out nerves a little rest_ and _plenty
+    of nourishment_ on a _five-meal_ plan per day. If refused (owing
+    to a loss of appetite), I was threatened to have nature helped
+    by the aid of a stomach or nasal tube. I lost none of my
+    illusions while there, as I could not feel any improvement in my
+    feelings. I left the institution June 28, 1899, feeling no
+    better; in fact, worse than when I arrived there. I was then
+    taken from one doctor to another, the one wishing to operate,
+    the other not; one advising me to go to the seashore, country,
+    etc., but _none_ to give my stomach the needed vacation.
+
+    "'It was then that my friend, Mr. Ritter, stepped in, as he saw
+    the failures of professors and specialists, and begged my
+    parents to let him have a chance to demonstrate what Dr. Dewey's
+    method would do for melancholy illusions and tired-out stomachs
+    and nerves. I then went to friends, and, in entire ignorance of
+    my parents, began under directions of Mr. Ritter the most
+    natural, sensible, and cheapest of all cures. I began my fast on
+    Oct. 3, and broke the same on Nov. 16. During the first week of
+    my fast I was in bed; during the second (excepting the eleventh
+    day, when I took my first walk of seven-eighths of a mile) I was
+    in bed, in rocker, reading, etc. On the twentieth day, after a
+    drive of three hours, went to church, walking two and
+    one-sixteenth miles. I then stayed indoors again on the
+    twenty-first and twenty-second days, and then started taking
+    daily walks (weather permitting). I went out walking
+    twenty-three out of the forty-five days of my fast, and during
+    that time walked one hundred and twelve miles. This was besides
+    the carriage-drives, Exposition, and evening gatherings (walking
+    to same included). I did not in the least feel tired or weak,
+    but happier and brighter each day of the fast, as I could feel
+    the effects of a new life throughout my whole body. My mind also
+    became clearer and dizziness became a thing of the past. This
+    was indeed _joy supreme to me_, and life became once more a joy
+    instead of a burden. Sunshine, trees, flowers, etc., again made
+    an impression, and my parents, sisters, and friends are rejoiced
+    to see me in my happy normal state of health.
+
+    "'I have gone through a year of unspeakable torture brought on
+    by overwork and _human-wise professors_; but at last, through
+    the wonderful teachings Dr. Dewey has given to mankind, and
+    through a friend, who was able to preach the "New Gospel of
+    Health," am now well, strong, and happy. May God only help and
+    bless the many sufferers throughout the world (especially in the
+    asylums) with the rays of this Gospel. I have been saved, no
+    doubt, from a gloomy future, and may such be the realization of
+    many more unfortunate souls is the sincere wish through
+    experience of
+
+        "'Yours very sincerely,
+
+            "'ESTELLA F. KUENZEL.'"
+
+This case was summed up in the Philadelphia _Public Ledger_ of Dec. 25,
+1899, whose columns are guarded with unsurpassed care, as follows:
+
+    "One of those cases which a judicious editor ponders in no
+    little perplexity is that of a young lady who was taken out of
+    an insane hospital and subjected to a protracted fast, without
+    medical supervision, and with results that appear to have been
+    quite successful. On the one hand, there is the benefit that may
+    be derived by having the attention of the profession called to
+    the subject, with possibly good results; on the other hand,
+    there is the danger of having a lot of ignorant or impulsive
+    people risking their lives by starving themselves for this or
+    that real or fancied disease, forgetting the adage that a little
+    knowledge is a dangerous thing, especially in therapeutics.
+
+    "The mind of the young lady referred to became affected about a
+    year ago, and after what was regarded by her parents as an
+    unprofitable period of treatment for two and a half months in a
+    hospital for the insane she has been apparently cured by
+    fasting--some would call it starvation. The case has been
+    attracting attention and discussion lately in a growing circle
+    that has included a few physicians.
+
+    "The subject is a Miss K., aged twenty-two years. Henry Ritter,
+    who has charge of the Photography Department of the Drexel
+    Institute, and who is better acquainted with the matter than any
+    one else, furnished a _Ledger_ reporter with the particulars as
+    they are here given, the name and address of the young lady, for
+    obvious reasons, being omitted. Mr. Ritter was at first loath to
+    have any publicity given the case, but felt upon reflection that
+    the results were properly a subject matter for inquiry by
+    physicians, at least, not to speak of others who may be
+    interested.
+
+    "Miss K., by the advice of specialists who had treated her at
+    home, was put under treatment for melancholy in an institution
+    for the insane. Mr. Ritter, being an intimate friend of the
+    family, visited her, and, he says, found her retrograding. She
+    was receiving three meals a day, with two luncheons between
+    them. Having built up his own digestive powers by following the
+    tenets laid down by Dr. Dewey, a Crawford county physician, he
+    had become a student and advocate of the latter's theory,
+    briefly stated, that no food should be given to a patient except
+    in response to a natural call or appetite for it. Believing that
+    no improvement could result from the course Miss K. was
+    receiving in the hospital, he prevailed upon her parents to
+    permit him to have her placed in the home of a friend, and
+    suggested the fasting process. This was the more readily done as
+    the physicians in whose care she had been advised her parents to
+    leave their daughter as much as possible among strangers.
+
+    "This young lady, according to Mr. Ritter, was absolutely
+    without food for forty-five days, beginning October 3 and ending
+    November 16. He says he did not fear, as others did, that she
+    would starve, as the authority he depended on had never fed a
+    sick patient during a practice covering twenty-two years, no
+    matter how protracted the case might have been, and claimed to
+    have had only the best results. 'This,' said Mr. Ritter, 'is on
+    the theory that, since all bodily energy is the result of the
+    brain, by abstaining from feeding in the absence of appetite
+    there is all the energy of cure undiverted by needless waste in
+    the stomach. Feeding the sick, this physician contends, is a tax
+    on their vital power, adding indigestion to whatever other
+    troubles exist: because the brain has the power in sickness to
+    absorb nourishment from the body, as predigested food, so that
+    it never loses weight, even in death from starvation.'
+
+    "The patient herself became interested, Mr. Ritter says, and
+    evidenced great relief from abstinence from enforced periodic
+    feeding. Gradually a numb feeling of which she had complained as
+    affecting her internal organs, and which had been ascribed to
+    her illusions, left her, and she appeared to gain daily in
+    strength and brightness. Mr. Ritter's narrative proceeds:
+
+    "'On the eleventh day of her fast a walk was suggested, and she
+    covered about seven-eighths of a mile; on the twentieth day she
+    was taken for a carriage drive of three hours in the afternoon,
+    and in the evening she walked to church and back, a distance of
+    something more than two miles. From the twenty-third day she
+    took walks daily, excepting on October 31 and November 3, when
+    rain prevented. She visited friends and the theatre and the
+    Exposition, went to church several times, to the hospital where
+    she had been a patient--this on the thirty-fifth day of her
+    fast--and to the Drexel Institute on the thirty-ninth and
+    forty-second days. A table of dates shows that she walked from
+    two or three to six and eight and as high as nine miles a day
+    during the period of forty-five days that she abstained from
+    food, with a general increase of strength and cheer and no sign
+    of fatigue. Hunger sensations were marked on the forty-fourth
+    day and night, and on the morning of the forty-fifth day Miss K.
+    broke the fast by eating a poached egg and two slices of
+    buttered whole wheat toasted bread.
+
+    "'During her fast she was seen by seven physicians and medical
+    professors, President MacAlister and professors of the Drexel
+    Institute, and many others.'
+
+    "The young lady's weight at the beginning of the fast, Mr.
+    Ritter says, was one hundred and forty pounds, and just after
+    the meal with which she broke the fast she weighed one hundred
+    and twenty pounds. By December 15 she had regained nine pounds,
+    meanwhile eating one meal daily and sometimes two, with an
+    occasional light luncheon.
+
+    "Dr. Chase, medical director of the institution above referred
+    to, was visited on Saturday by a _Ledger_ reporter in regard to
+    the case of Miss K. He had been informed of her long fast and
+    of its results, and had seen Miss K. herself when she called at
+    the asylum on the thirty-fifth day of the fast. He said that
+    when she was first brought to the asylum she was suffering from
+    melancholia, and was put under the treatment which all the
+    leading alienists had found most beneficial for persons
+    suffering from nervous disorders, viz., quiet, rest of mind and
+    body, and full, nourishing diet, carefully selected to produce
+    the best results. During the time she remained at the asylum she
+    improved both in bodily and mental health.
+
+    "Referring to the treatment she had received under Mr. Ritter's
+    supervision since leaving the asylum, Dr. Chase said he had
+    first heard of the system through a work published two years ago
+    by Dr. George S. Keith, of London, from which he first learned
+    of Dr. Dewey, who also uses the fasting cure. In all the cases
+    cited by Dr. Keith none had been afflicted with any mental
+    disorder. He looked upon the cases, however, as showing some
+    remarkable results, warranting a careful study. But it would not
+    do to adopt such a system without a most thorough examination.
+    As 'one swallow does not make a summer,' neither will one case
+    nor half a dozen cases cured by such a method prove anything. No
+    universal method can be adopted for treating disease. Hardly two
+    cases are alike. Cures also may be brought about in different
+    ways if the exact condition of the patient is understood.
+
+    "'Mr. Ritter says the patient lent herself very willingly to the
+    treatment, which was a great deal to start out with in her case.
+    But I am surprised that a young man with no medical knowledge
+    would do a thing like that. The treatment might easily have
+    resulted differently. If he had been a doctor, he would have had
+    that fact to sustain him in case he got into trouble. The case
+    might very well have resulted fatally, because the treatment was
+    so contrary to what would naturally be pursued by physicians in
+    nervous cases.
+
+    "'I do not ridicule the system. There have been cases which were
+    cured by ways not recognized by the general practitioner after
+    they had been given up. I am a firm believer that in selected
+    cases the fasting method would be efficacious, but I do not
+    believe in its general application.
+
+    "'Mr. Ritter is evidently an enthusiast, and apt to overstate
+    the points in favor of the method, neglecting those which tell
+    against it. It is too early yet to say what the outcome of Miss
+    K.'s case will be. I think the matter ought to be looked into
+    more fully. Mr. Ritter could not have been with the patient at
+    all times. It is a remarkable thing that she should have kept up
+    and had the strength reported, unless she had some food. He may
+    have been deceived in that.'"
+
+During several months since the fast there have been the best physical
+_health_ and mental condition, the weight having increased several
+pounds above the former average.
+
+Mr. Ritter conducted this case in a blaze of publicity. He showed it to
+no less than seven physicians, some of whom were college professors, and
+one of them at near the close of the fast suggested that if food were
+not soon taken a sudden collapse would be the result. There seemed to
+have been less danger of this calamity on the forty-fourth day than on
+any other.
+
+The reliability of the fast was so clearly evident that the leading
+papers of the city accepted it as authentic news and of the most
+startling kind. _The Times_ gave several columns of its first page to an
+illustrated article.[1]
+
+    The accompanying illustration shows Miss Kuenzel on the
+    forty-first day of her fast. She walked seven miles on this day
+    without any signs of fatigue.
+
+[Illustration: Copyrighted 1900, by Henry Ritter.
+
+MISS ESTELLA F. KUENZEL,
+
+FORTY-FIRST DAY OF FAST.]
+
+The following table of miles walked were measured from exact diary notes
+with bicycle and cyclometer after the fast was broken. The table gives
+the total sum of each day, walks being taken both afternoon and evenings
+of same day.
+
+       Date.          Miles.
+
+    October  3
+       "     4
+       "     5
+       "     6
+       "     7
+       "     8
+       "     9
+       "    10
+       "    11
+       "    12
+       "    13          7/8
+       "    14
+       "    15
+       "    16
+       "    17
+       "    18
+       "    19
+       "    20
+       "    21
+       "    22        2-1/16
+       "    23
+       "    24
+       "    25        3
+       "    26        6-5/8
+       "    27        5-7/8
+       "    28        4-1/2
+       "    29        4-1/8
+       "    30        5-5/8
+       "    31, rain
+    November 1        6-3/4
+       "     2        8
+       "     3 rain
+       "     4        9
+       "     5        6
+       "     6        3-3/4
+       "     7        1-1/2
+       "     8        7-1/4
+       "     9        7
+       "    10        4-1/4
+       "    11        2-5/8
+       "    12        7
+       "    13        2-1/4
+       "    14        3-1/4
+       "    15        5
+       "    16        5-3/4
+                    --------
+                    112-1/16
+
+The next fast, under the care of Mr. Ritter, still holds the record as
+being the most remarkable for its number of days and the miracle of
+results. The following account of it appeared in the _North American_,
+one of whose editors had personal knowledge of its history:
+
+    "Leonard Thress, of 2618 Frankford Avenue, has learned how to
+    live without eating. By physical experience he has proved not
+    only that food is not a daily necessity of the human system, but
+    that abstinence therefrom for protracted periods is beneficial.
+    Indeed, it saved his life. He has just finished a fifty days'
+    fast. When he began it he was on the brink of the grave and his
+    physicians had abandoned hope. When he ended it he was in better
+    health than he had enjoyed for years, although in the meantime
+    he had lost seventy-six pounds, falling away from two hundred
+    and nine to one hundred and thirty-three pounds.
+
+    "Thress, who is about fifty-seven years old, was attending the
+    Grand Army Encampment at Buffalo in the fall of 1898, when he
+    caught a violent cold, which settled in his bronchial tubes. It
+    proved so stubborn that his general health became affected, and
+    a year later dropsy developed. His condition grew steadily
+    worse, and at Christmas time, 1899, it was such that he could
+    neither walk nor lie prostrate, but was compelled to sit
+    constantly in an armchair. His doctors exhausted their skill in
+    the effort to bring relief, and eventually, in the early part of
+    last January, they told him that their medicines refused to act,
+    and that his death was a question of only a few days.
+
+    "Up to this time Thress had been subsisting on the meagre diet
+    permitted to a man in his condition, but his stomach rebelled
+    even at that. He had heard of the Dewey fasting cure and its
+    boasted efficacy against all human ills, and, though he had
+    little faith, death was already looming before him, and he knew
+    that he could lose nothing by the experiment.
+
+    "He began to fast on January 11 by taking in the morning a
+    portion of Henzel's preparation of salts in a glass of water and
+    the juice of two oranges, and in the evening a hot lemonade. For
+    twenty-five days he also drank a teaspoonful of a tonic
+    consisting chiefly of iron, but the rest of the diet he
+    continued until two weeks ago, when he discontinued the salts
+    and orange juice and confined himself to a hot lemonade at
+    morning and evening. This was his only sustenance until last
+    Thursday.
+
+    "According to Thress's own recital, the effects of this course
+    of treatment were amazing. He says that the natural craving for
+    food was gone after the first day. Three days later he had
+    regained so much strength that he was able to go upstairs to
+    bed and enjoyed a good night's sleep. From that time on,
+    although he steadily lost in weight, his vitality grew greater,
+    and on January 22 he left the house and took a half-mile walk.
+
+    "Before three weeks of his fast had elapsed his dropsy had
+    disappeared, and thereafter he took almost daily walks,
+    increasing the distance with his strength. Some days he covered
+    as many as five miles, and never less than two, even while he
+    was growing thinner and thinner, as the accompanying table
+    shows.
+
+    "For the first time since the beginning of his fast he became
+    hungry last Thursday, March 1, and he felt that he should like
+    some pigs' feet jelly. It is one of the prescriptions of the
+    fasting cure that when hunger finally comes the patient shall
+    eat whatever he craves, so Thress consumed two slices of the
+    jelly and one piece of gluten bread, with butter. He says he
+    enjoyed it and felt well afterward.
+
+    "He ate no more that day, but at noon yesterday he became hungry
+    again, and this time his appetite was for something more
+    substantial. He disposed of a dish of mashed potatoes, some red
+    cabbage, another portion of pigs' feet jelly, apple sauce, and a
+    cream puff for dessert. He even smoked a cigar after the meal,
+    enjoyed it, and felt still better. He says he will eat no
+    regular meals, but only when he becomes hungry.
+
+    "While he looks haggard and worn from the loss of flesh, Thress
+    declares that all his ailments have left him and that he never
+    felt healthier and heartier in his life."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "The following table shows how Thress grew stronger and walked
+    miles while he was constantly losing weight from a fifty-days'
+    fast:
+
+                     Weight.
+    January 11         209
+       "    12         207
+       "    13         205
+       "    14         202
+       "    15         201
+       "    16         200
+       "    17         199
+       "    18         196
+       "    19         192
+       "    20         190
+       "    21         188
+       "    22         186 Walked 1/2 mile.
+       "    23         180   "    2 miles.
+       "    24         177   "    2   "
+       "    25         172   "    3   "
+       "    26         167   "    3   "
+       "    27         165   "    3   "
+       "    28         162   "    2-1/2  "
+       "    29         160   "    3   "
+       "    30         157
+       "    31         155   "    3   "
+    February 1         154
+       "     2         153
+       "     3         152   "    3   "
+       "     4         151
+       "     5         149   "    3   "
+       "     6         147   "    3   "
+       "     7         146   "    3   "
+       "     8         145
+       "     9         145   "    4   "
+       "    10         145   "    4   "
+       "    11         145
+       "    12         145   "    4   "
+       "    13         145
+       "    14         145   "    3   "
+       "    15         144   "    2   "
+       "    16         142
+       "    17         140
+       "    18         140
+       "    19         140
+       "    20         138   "    2    "
+       "    21         137   "    4    "
+       "    22         135 Walked 3 miles.
+       "    23         135   "    3   "
+       "    24         135
+       "    25         135
+       "    26         135
+       "    27         133   "    2   "
+       "    28         133
+    March    1         133
+
+A. H. Potts, Editor of the _Chester County Times_, a man who has the
+largest faith in eating only to restore the wastes of the body, thus
+gives vent to his emotions after seeing the case by invitation of Mr.
+Ritter:
+
+    "On January 10 there sat in his home, at 2618 Frankford Avenue,
+    Philadelphia, Mr. Leonard Thress, with dropsy, hopelessly given
+    up to a speedy death by the many physicians he had vainly sought
+    and paid well for relief. His weight was two hundred and nine
+    pounds. His limbs were at the bursting point, and the water was
+    close up to the top of his chest. He could not lie down nor even
+    lay his head back without choking, and to walk across the room
+    completely exhausted him. At that critical moment a friend of
+    his heard of Miss Kuenzel's miraculous cure, and told him of it.
+    He at once sent for Mr. Ritter, who thought that a cure was in
+    his reach, and on January 11 Thress commenced a fast that has
+    been absolute up to yesterday, the only things passing his lips
+    being water, a little lemonade, and rarely the juice of an
+    orange. Learning through the _Chester County Times_ that we were
+    interested in Dr. Dewey's discovery, he invited us to come and
+    see the cases now under his care, and on Friday of last week we
+    gladly availed ourselves of the opportunity to see the living
+    proof of what we believed but had never seen. We were very
+    cordially received at Mr. Ritter's home, and instead of meeting
+    a pompous, egotistic, big man, as we might expect, we met a
+    young gentleman of small stature, like ourselves, modest,
+    retiring, and claiming no credit for his own part in these
+    remarkable cures; but insisting that he is only observing the
+    progress of cases, following in the line of truths discovered
+    only by Dr. Dewey, giving such advice as he is enabled to do
+    from his thorough knowledge of chemistry, anatomy, and hygiene.
+    He took us to the house of Mr. Thress, and the startling
+    impressions we received can never be effaced. We seemed to be in
+    the presence of one who had arisen from the dead, and could not
+    realize the truth of what we saw and heard from him and his
+    estimable wife, who shows the happiness she feels in receiving
+    her husband back to life. Impossible as it seems, yet on the
+    previous day, as well as many other days, that man had walked
+    three miles after six hours given to his business as a baker,
+    which he now attends to personally. All traces of dropsy have
+    disappeared, and his weight is now less than one hundred and
+    thirty-five pounds, having lost this nearly seventy-five pounds
+    of water through the natural channels at the rate of five or six
+    pounds per day at times. His eyesight has grown younger and his
+    hand is firm. He sleeps soundly several hours out of each
+    twenty-four, and is almost a cured man, although the curative
+    action is still going forward throughout his system, and his
+    many friends are now awaiting the arrival of his normal healthy
+    appetite, which in these cases does not arrive until the cure is
+    entire, and then it comes in such a way as not to be mistaken.
+    On Monday of this week we again visited him, taking a friend who
+    has long suffered similarly to what he did, that she might see
+    results for herself. We found him looking even better than on
+    Friday, and it is very interesting to hear him tell his
+    experience, which he will be glad to impart to those who are
+    seeking after the truth, and interested in the cure of disease
+    of themselves or their friends by this natural and without price
+    (but priceless) means. We also visited two other of the five
+    cases over which Mr. Ritter is at present keeping watch, and
+    every one bore evidences of the great truth. No one should
+    undertake the fast on their own responsibility, as certain
+    conditions may arise requiring the eye of one who has made the
+    matter a study, and no one should pass an opinion on the matter
+    until they read Dr. Dewey's _New Gospel of Health_, wherein the
+    reasons are made so plain that all can understand."
+
+[Illustration: Copyrighted 1900, by Henry Ritter.
+
+MR. LEONARD THRESS,
+
+FIFTIETH DAY OF FAST.]
+
+Mr. Thress has regained his normal weight and has been in the best of
+health in the several months since the fast.[2]
+
+The following case was deemed a miracle by all friends: Mrs. H. B., a
+woman of seventy-six, became exceedingly breathless, due, it was
+supposed, to defective heart action that had been chronic for many
+years. The final result was general dropsy. The eyelids had become so
+heavy that reading could be indulged only a short time because of their
+weight; the throat was also charged with water so as to make swallowing
+difficult. Beneath the eyes and jaws were pockets of water--in short,
+the skin of the entire body was distended, a condition that had deceived
+the friends as revealing only an increase of her natural stoutness. The
+real condition became known through a call to treat a bad cold.
+
+What had authorized medical art to promise in such a case? Absolutely
+nothing, as she had become too old and weak to be subjected to the
+ordinary means for such a general condition. As for a fast for one so
+old, that was the last thing that would have been thought of: her age
+and debility would only have seemed to invite more daily food than she
+had been taking.
+
+She was put on a fast, or rather the fast was continued, the cold
+having abolished her appetite. It went on until the fifteenth day, with
+increasing general strength and diminishing weight. The last days before
+hunger came she was able to go up a long flight of stairs without the
+aid of the railing and without marked loss of breath, the heart-murmur
+had nearly disappeared, and water by the gallon seemed to have been
+absorbed.
+
+On the fifteenth day there was a desire for food, that was taken with
+relish through the enlarged throat without difficulty; the water pockets
+had become emptied, and the lids so thin and light as to reveal no
+fatigue in reading. Thence on one meal a day became the rule; and since
+there have been five years without any recurrence of the
+conditions--five years of remarkable general health and girl-time relish
+for her daily food.
+
+How often has the cutting down of the daily food by the old and weak
+been condemned as too severe an ordeal to be safe! For this woman there
+have been these acquired years of nearly perfect health, and the end
+will be in the natural, easier death of old age.
+
+The following is inserted as additional evidence of Nature's power over
+disease, and that brain-workers may go on with their labors with
+increasing power while waiting for natural hunger in cases in which
+hunger is possible:
+
+    Rev. C. H. Dalrymple, of Hampden, Mass., has just completed a
+    fast, of which he says, February 5, 1900: "My fast continued
+    thirty-nine and one-half days. My appetite came on me about 9
+    o'clock at night, and I thought I would wait until the next
+    day; but two boiled eggs and some dry toast would not retire
+    before my presence. I have never had such an assault upon my
+    will power as that imagined egg and toast made on me. I was
+    finally compelled to surrender. My tongue had been clearing up
+    that day, and the next day I was hungry at noon. I have not
+    missed a first-class appetite at noon since. My tongue has kept
+    clear and my taste has remained sweet. I have had no chills nor
+    fevers this winter, nor cold in any form. I have made no
+    allowance for my sickness and have never worked harder. My flesh
+    came back rapidly, and now I think I must weigh about fifteen
+    pounds more than last summer. _I gained strength beyond all
+    question about three weeks before my appetite returned. I would
+    work all day long finally._ It was good to get well."
+
+Mr. Ritter conducted over twenty cases, some being able to carry on
+their usual avocations. I give the most important ones: Mr. A. H.,
+forty-five days; Miss B. H., forty-two days; Mrs. L., thirty-eight days;
+Mr. L. W., thirty-six days; Miss L. J., thirty-five days; Mrs. M.,
+thirty-one days; Miss E. S., twenty-six days; Mr. G. R., twenty-five
+days; Mr. P. R., twenty-four days; and Miss E. Westing, forty-two days,
+who, on the fortieth day, was able to sing with unusual clearness and
+power, and ended her fast without losing a day from her duties as a
+teacher of music.[3]
+
+Wonderful are these fasts? Not in the physiological sense. These fasts
+went on with only increasing comfort by day and more refreshing sleep
+at night. It is quite another thing to endure the fasts of acute
+sickness, for such they all are. That life is maintained for days and
+weeks, even months, under pain, discomfort--under all the torturing
+conditions of such diseases as pneumonia, typhoid fever, or inflammatory
+rheumatism, is far more a matter to wonder over.
+
+I may well wonder that Nature is powerful enough to cure the sick at all
+even under the wisest aid; but with me the abiding wonder is that
+physicians do not see that acute sickness is a loss of all the natural
+conditions of digestion, with the wasting bodies the clearest evidence
+that food is neither digested nor assimilated. I wonder with only
+increasing impatience that the stomach is not understood as a machine
+that Nature wills shall not be run to tax her resources when life is in
+the throes of disease.
+
+[Illustration: Copyrighted 1900, by Henry Ritter.
+
+MISS ELIZABETH W. A. WESTING,
+
+FORTIETH DAY OF FAST.]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] The fasts conducted by Mr. Ritter constitute performances of the
+most impressive kind as demonstrative evidence of the practical
+physiology I have been teaching for many years. For the copyrighted
+photographs he has kindly furnished I am very thankful, and to all who
+have been willing to enhance the value and interest of this volume by
+such eyesight illustrations.
+
+[2] The accompanying illustration shows Mr. Thress on the fiftieth day
+of his fast; weight loss, seventy-six pounds. Does the picture reveal
+any skeleton condition?
+
+[3] The accompanying illustration is a reproduced copyrighted picture of
+Miss E. Westing. This picture was taken on the return home from her
+duties at church on the fortieth day during the cold of winter; the
+weight at the start being one hundred and ten pounds, at the close on
+the forty-second day ninety-three pounds--loss, seventeen pounds.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+
+I had not been long engaged in observing the evolution of cure through
+Nature when I began to suspect strongly, as before intimated, that
+fasting is the true "medicine for the mind diseased." Not less evident
+than the cure of various ailings would be the emergence of the soul into
+higher life, and in some instances from the depth of despair. As the
+scope of my vision constantly enlarged through multiplying experiences,
+I began to see great hopes of the cure of the gravest of all
+diseases--insanity--through a rigid application of this method in
+Nature. I gave the matter so much thought and study that I wrote a
+monograph on the subject with the idea of publishing it, but gave it up
+to the idea of telling my impressions in "The No-breakfast Plan."
+
+There are the same structural changes in the evolution of insanity as in
+that of catarrh. There is a morbid structural basis in minds diseased,
+the abnormal mentality or morality being merely symptoms of a physical
+disease. Of all human legacies, structural weakness of the mental or
+moral sense is the most unfortunate.
+
+I shall say no more about the forms of mental disease than that there is
+distinctively both intellectual and moral insanity as a direct result
+of disease of the intellectual and moral centres. This will be more
+clearly seen when I recall the fact that moral insanity in its worse
+form--the suicidal--often exists with such intellectual clearness that
+there is the greatest ingenuity displayed in carrying out
+self-destruction. These mind and soul centres are often gravely diseased
+without impairment of muscle energy: the furious strength of the insane
+is an abiding fear with all.
+
+It is clear that weakness of structure so soft as brain, a substance
+which is on the dividing-line between liquids and solids, must be of the
+gravest form from the first: grave because so fragile, grave because the
+sick centres cannot rest as the broken arm, the sick body: these
+centres, regardless how sick, must continue to serve, even in abnormal
+ways.
+
+The possibility of insanity must always be a matter of the degree of the
+primary structural weakness and the energy and persistence of the
+operative forces; on these must depend the mere gentle, persistent
+illusion, or that fury of mania which transforms man, the "image of the
+Creator," into a wild beast. That insanity, no matter what its form or
+degree, is an evolution from an ancestral structural legacy, not
+essentially different from the structural conditions evolved from those
+of any other chronic disease, I cannot have the slightest doubt, any
+more than I can have for the structural means for the cure.
+
+There is nothing that so illustrates the civilization, the benevolence
+of the age and of the nations as these palaces we call hospitals for the
+insane. Whatever there is that can add comfort to the body, or charm to
+the tastes, or new life to the soul has its culmination in these palaces
+of wood and stone, with one great exception: the structural condition of
+the diseased centres indicating rest, even as the ulcer, wound, or
+fracture, has no part in the methods of cure.
+
+The feeding is all done not at the time of hunger, but at the time of
+day. All patients are expected to eat no less than three meals a day,
+regardless of any desire for food and whether the patient spends all his
+time in bed in mindless apathy, whether pacing his room with meaningless
+tread, whether active in light service in the building or in heavy labor
+without. When there is refusal to eat it seems to be taken for granted
+that suicide by starvation is the design, and the pumping of food into
+the stomach through the nose is the common resort. There seems to be no
+thought that there may be no hunger in such cases, and no apprehension
+of any danger from not eating; that in this they follow the instincts of
+brutes. Would the desire for food not come and with a saner condition of
+mind if they were permitted their own ways of eating?
+
+A physically strong woman, whom I knew well, was sent to a hospital for
+the insane in a generally bad state of mind, with destructive
+propensities marked. With no desire for food, and certainly with no mind
+to realize the need to eat without hunger, she naturally refused to
+eat. But for a time her meals were forced down her throat, a proceeding
+that taxed the strength of several strong arms.
+
+Why were the meals not omitted long enough to cause such a reduction of
+strength as to make feeding less expensive in the outlay of others'
+muscle? The persistent refusal to eat resulted in a cessation of all
+efforts to enforce food; left to the gentler hands of Nature for a time,
+the mental hurricane subsided in great degree on the return of hunger,
+and long before there was an appreciable loss of weight or strength. In
+a few months this woman was able to return to her home, and with
+restored mind to tell me of the violent feedings she had endured.
+
+Now let us look again to the structural conditions involved in diseases
+of the mind. There are those soft, pulpy centres from which emanate the
+highest powers of life: power to think, to admire, to rejoice, or to
+suffer; and we know how digestive power varies along the scale between
+ecstacy and despair. In mental disease there is the same abnormal
+structural change as in other local diseases; but for these sick
+mind-centres there is no rest. There must be still thinking and feeling,
+no matter how chaotic, to tax them, and there is no cheer to electrify
+the stomach into easy display of power. We may well marvel that powers
+so wonderful as the power to think, love, admire, see, hear, and feel
+are located in structures so fragile as the brain; and we may well
+marvel at the provision of the turret of flinty hardness to protect it
+from violence.
+
+Now we are to consider these centres of energy as abnormally weak in all
+their structures at birth in those who become insane: these are the
+luckless legacies from the fathers and the mothers, and for how far back
+in the ancestral line we do not know. We are to consider that there is
+the same abnormal condition of the cerebral bloodvessels and of the
+softer inter-vascular structures as in other local diseases; and when
+you recall the fact that everything that worries, that adds discomfort
+to either mind or muscles, is a force that tends to develop weakness and
+disease, you will see how it applies in the evolution of insanity.
+
+Shall these fragile centres be permitted to rest when overwork has made
+them sick, or is there any other rational means for their recovery?
+Shall they not be permitted to rest when abundantly able to keep
+physically nourished in a way that does not cause even the slightest
+shade of discomfort?
+
+Again, let it be borne in mind that recovery from acute disease is
+attended with a revival of strength in every power that makes life worth
+living, and that every person not acutely sick who has fasted under my
+care or who has cut down the waste of brain power by less daily food has
+found the same revival of power. To this there have been no exceptions.
+
+What do we fear in sickness? Is it disease or the wasting pounds? Since
+they will disappear when Nature would have the food-gate closed, since
+they reappear when there is the highest possible reach of mere relish,
+and when all the other senses have become more acute, and also when
+existence has become almost ecstatic, why ever oppress the weak or sick
+centres when Nature wills a rest?
+
+The literature on the disease of the mind has become so massive in mere
+bulk, in its physiological refinements, that it would require time with
+a long reach into eternity to go through it; but it has not come to my
+knowledge that it contains any reference to the brain as a
+self-nourishing, self-charging dynamo; that therefore the stomach is
+only a machine whose use can well be omitted for long periods when these
+centres of moral and intellectual energy have become worried into
+disease, with rest the only means, the only need for all the recovery
+possible.
+
+"Oh, you giants of the medical profession!" You who have been elected to
+preside over these great homes of the mentally wrecked because of your
+eminence in character, ability, experience, and professional
+attainments, do you deny the soundness of the physiology involved in
+this method of reaching health through Nature? Then let me array against
+you Alexander Haig, M. A., M. D. Oxon., F. R. C. P., Physician to the
+Metropolitan Hospital, and the Royal Hospital, and for Children and
+Women; late Casualty Physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. I quote
+from his exhaustive work, _Uric Acid in the Causation of Disease_:
+
+"And now I come to the causes which led me to take too much albumen and
+to suffer severely; in _Fads of an Old Physician_, Dr. Keith refers to
+another work on diet, by Dr. Dewey, of Meadville, Pa., _The True Science
+of Living_, and the chief point in this book is that temporary, complete
+starvation till there is once more a healthy appetite is the best cure
+for a host of dyspepsia, debilities, depression, mental and bodily, and
+numerous other troubles, and that for similar less severe disturbances
+of nutrition the great remedy is to leave out the breakfast, so as to
+give the stomach a long rest of sixteen hours or more, with the object
+of allowing it to recuperate and accumulate secretions after the last
+meal of the previous day.
+
+"It seems from internal evidence in Dr. Dewey's book, a copy of which I
+owe to Dr. Keith, that his plans have been completely successful in a
+large number of cases, _and it seems to me that his logic is
+unanswerable_, and that in his main contentions he is perfectly right.
+
+"Having arrived at this conclusion, I proceeded forthwith to put the
+matter to the test of experience by placing myself on two meals a
+day--that is, I left out my breakfast--and the result was I ate such a
+good lunch at 1 P. M. that it was impossible to take anything more till
+dinner-time, 7.30 or 8 P. M.; so that I reduced myself at once from four
+meals a day to two. The result was exactly what Dr. Dewey describes. I
+felt extremely bright and well in the morning, and capable of very good
+work, both mental and bodily. At 1 P. M. I had keen hunger, even for dry
+bread; such hunger as I had not experienced for years. After lunch
+(breakfast) I felt a little bit dull and occasionally sleepy, and the
+mental work for the first hour or two after it was not as good as usual.
+About 5 P. M. I was very thirsty and had to have a drink of water, but
+there was not the least desire for food until several hours later;
+though by 7.30 or 8 P. M. I was able to manage another fairly good meal;
+and thus my meals automatically, so to speak, reduced themselves to
+two."
+
+I also quote from his work on _Diet and Food_, page 10:
+
+"It is also possible, by introducing more food than can possibly be
+digested, to overpower digestion so that nothing is digested and
+absorbed, and starvation results, a fact that has been brought to the
+front in the most interesting manner in the writings of Dr. Dewey."
+
+And who is Dr. Keith? You know that he is one of the youngest physicians
+in all Scotland, even if he does possess eighty years that are no burden
+to him. I quote him from his _Fads of an Old Physician_:
+
+"Dr. Dewey's grand means of cure now is abstinence for the time from all
+food, and this he carries out to a degree which must astonish most
+physicians of the present day, as well as their patients. During times
+of sickness, when there is no desire for food, he gives none till the
+desire comes, and then only if the state of the tongue and general
+condition show that the power of digestion has returned. This may be in
+a few days, or in severe cases, as of rheumatic fever, it may not be for
+forty days or even longer. He points out very forcibly that we have all
+a store of material laid up in the body which supplies what is required
+for keeping necessary functions of the system going, while no food can
+be usefully taken in the stomach. I had mentioned this provision in my
+_Plea_, and had stated that so long as it lasts it is sufficient to
+preserve life. I also suggested that it might be found that the waste of
+the body was less when this internal supply was alone trusted to, than
+when it was supplemented by food from without which the organs of
+nutrition were not in a condition to utilize. This, to my mind, Dr.
+Dewey has proved to be the fact, and no one can read his case without
+being convinced that it is so. He gives a most interesting table from
+Dr. Yeo, showing what textures of the body waste most rapidly in
+disease. Fat is at one end of the scale, and at the other the brain,
+which does not waste till all the other textures and organs are depleted
+to the utmost.
+
+"In cases of slighter disease where the patient is able to be about or
+to carry on his business, but with discomfort, the same abstinence from
+all food is recommended. It is usually found that work can be done more
+easily, and that strength actually increases, although the starving may
+have to be kept up for several days. But the great _coup_ in Dr.
+Dewey's practice is, that to improve or to preserve health he advises
+all to give up breakfast, and to fast till the mid-day meal. In this he
+has had a very large number of followers, very much to their advantage.
+It may be that the omission of breakfast is more needed and has greater
+effect in America than it would have on this side of the Atlantic. In
+America the meal is generally a very full one, made up in a large
+measure of a variety of hot cakes, also flesh food and tea or coffee.
+The other two meals of the day are full, 'square' meals likewise. I have
+seen much overfeeding in this country, but never to such a degree, and
+so generally, as I have seen in America and on American steamers. In one
+of the latter the cooking was the worst I ever met with, but the hard
+meat was swallowed all the same, and the consequences must have been
+grievous."
+
+Are you still without any questioning of your authorized, established
+methods of treating the mentally sick? Then let me quote against you
+another man across the ocean, whose ability, learning, and professional
+attainments are of the highest order. I quote from _Air, Food, and
+Exercise_, by A. Rabagliati, M. A., M. D., F. R. C. S., Edin., a man
+with whom patient, exhaustive investigation is only a recreation:
+
+"It has been shown by physiologists that certain tissues are absorbed
+and used before others. Dr. Dewey, of Pennsylvania, with whose views I
+am glad to find myself in general accord, and who seems to have made
+the same attempt as the writer to view the facts of medical practice
+from an independent--and may I say, original?--standpoint, quotes a
+table of great significance from Dr. Yeo. Besides quoting it in the text
+of his book, _The True Science of Living_, Dr. Dewey places it in
+capital letters in the frontispiece of his book. He calls it Nature's
+Bill of Fare for the Sick; and he shows that in illness, when we are
+using up the materials accumulated in our bodies, we may use as much as
+99 per cent. of our fat (practically all of it), that of muscle we may
+use as much as 30 per cent., that the spleen may waste to the extent of
+63 per cent., the liver as much as 56 per cent., and the blood itself be
+absorbed to the extent of 17 per cent. of its total amount. But even
+when wasting to this extent has occurred the curious and significant
+fact is emphasized that the _brain and nerve-centres may not have wasted
+at all_. The controlling nervous system thus does not lose its powers
+till the very last. Generally, however, the wasting process does not
+require to be carried to the very last, the chronic inflammatory deposit
+(and in rare cases even a cancerous infiltration) being absorbed and got
+rid of before this point is reached.
+
+"As most, if not all, of the chronic diseases depend upon the deposition
+of waste, unassimilated materials in various situations; or, in other
+words, depend upon a blocking of the local circulation in this way, a
+little wholesome starvation is generally of vast benefit by inducing
+the economy to use up some of its waste stuff. Nature herself points the
+way to us in this matter, because when things have gone as far as she
+can bear, and when, were things to go on in the same way, death must
+ensue, she generally throws the patient into bed with a digestive system
+entirely disorganized, taking away all appetite for food and all power
+of assimilation for the time being. We may, in such circumstances, do
+much harm by efforts too persistently made to feed our patients; but
+generally they refuse all sustenance for some time. After a while (Dr.
+Dewey does not seem to be afraid if his patients refuse all food even
+for as long on some occasions as thirty days continuously, or even
+longer) they right themselves, the tongue cleans, appetite returns, the
+power of assimilation is reëstablished, and recovery takes place. It
+strikes me as somewhat curious (and yet, if we both look at the facts of
+life candidly and impartially, perhaps it is not curious) that observers
+so wide apart, and in circumstances so very different as the conditions
+of human life must be in Yorkshire from what they are in Pennsylvania,
+should come to conclusions so practically similar as Dr. Dewey and the
+writer have reached."
+
+Gentlemen, masters in the medical profession, to what good end are you
+pumping food into human stomach, where there is no hunger and no mind
+left to know the need? Is it to maintain that strength which costs you
+so much muscle at every feeding. Or is it that it would be a danger to
+lose a few pounds of body while Nature gets ready to ask for food in
+the gentlest and most persuasive way? Whatever there is in appeal to the
+best in any human life to uplift it from the deepest depths, you have at
+the readiest command. You seem amply equipped to reach everything but
+those sick, afflicted, oppressed brain-centres. You treat everything but
+these, but to these you are worse than the Egyptian task-masters in that
+you force needless labor where rest alone is the need. It is not bricks
+without straw, but labor with exhausted power; and for all your efforts
+you simply maintain weight at a tremendous cost to the energy of cure.
+In no class of patients is rest for the brain more indicated than in
+yours; in none are the means so at command and the results for good so
+promising. With your patients the importance of time for business or
+social use is no more a concern; the abnormal is all due to disease.
+
+Let us consider those rooms of bedlam you call the "excitable wards."
+They who enter leave all hope (of the friends) behind. Is there special
+need in these regions of despair and mental chaos that the mere pounds
+and strength shall be kept up? What will be lost by protracted fasts?
+Nothing in the kitchen. As for the brain and those sick centres, they
+will feed themselves until the last heart-beat sends the last available
+nourishment to the remotest cell. Will the functions of the brain grow
+more abnormal by a suspension of digestive drafts upon it? Does rest to
+anything that is tired tend to the abnormal?
+
+Again I ask, What will be lost by protracted fasts in such cases?
+Nothing but weight, of which the fat will be by far the larger part.
+Would there be worry about starvation? With most of the cases there is
+not mind enough to worry over anything from the standpoint of reason.
+The very fact of the absence of the sense of the importance of daily
+food would render fasts in the highest degree practical and successful.
+
+The fasts could be instituted with the certainty of a calmer condition
+of mind as soon as the digestive tract would cease to call upon the
+brain for power, and with the probability that a surprising degree of
+improvement would be manifest in all, and long before the available
+body-food for the brain would be exhausted.
+
+Gentlemen, you have treated acute sickness in all its forms, and you
+have had many cases in which, because of irritable stomachs, neither
+food nor medicine could be given. Day after day you have seen the
+wasting of the bodies, and you have also seen mental aberration or
+stupor lessen day by day as the disease lessened its grasp upon the
+brain-centres, and finally when the point of natural hunger was reached,
+you never found the lost pounds a matter of physical discomfort or
+mental abnormality or weakness; rather you have always found at this
+point a mental condition in every way the most highly satisfactory. I
+never saw brighter eyes, a happier expression on every line, than
+revealed by a woman after a fast of forty-four days, in which acute
+disease had reduced the weight forty pounds.
+
+All overweight not due to dropsy or other disease is due to eating more
+food than the waste demands. As an abnormal condition overweight has
+received a great deal of attention in the way of misguided effort to
+both prevention and cure. These efforts are such conspicuous failures
+that even the patent medicine man has not found his "anti-fat nostrums"
+the happy means to fortune. There have been all kinds of limits built
+around bills of fare, but sooner or later Nature revolts and they are
+given up.
+
+The reason that certain people take on weight easily and become "stout,"
+is because of constitutional tendency, good digestion, and excess of
+food. As a general fact, the overweights are "large feeders," and they
+not only look well but feel well, for they have much less stomach
+trouble than the average mortal, and in cheerful endowment of soul they
+rank the highest among all the people.
+
+In spite of my philosophy, I, who am one of the leanest of the kind,
+look upon the stoutness of those in the early prime of life with
+something of both envy and admiration; they seem so ideally conditioned
+to enjoy the best of all things on earth. But it is quite a serious
+matter when the muscles and brain have to deal with pounds in excess by
+the score, even as if the victim were doomed to wear clothes padded with
+so many pounds of shot.
+
+Why some people take on fat easily even with the smallest of meals, why
+some of the largest eaters are of the leanest, are matters to talk about
+but not to know about. For my purpose it is sufficient that I assert
+that overweight can be prevented by an habitual limitation of the daily
+food to the daily need; that it can be cut down to any desired degree by
+stopping the supply, a method that is not attended with any violence to
+the constitution, nor even to comfort or power. This plan has the great
+advantage of adding to the curative energy of disease as well; and more
+than this, there is a change attending the loss that seems at first
+phenomenal, as involving a physiological contradiction--there is an
+actual increase in muscle-weight as the bloat and fat weight go down.
+
+How is this, you ask? Here is the explanation: As the fat weight
+increases by surplus food, so decrease the disposition and ability for
+general exercise. As it declines, so do muscle and all the other
+energies increase, and the use of muscle within physiological limit
+tends to restore the normal weight and strength.
+
+There are no overweights who would not receive the greatest benefit by a
+fast that would diminish the pounds to that of the ripest maturity of
+life, a fast that would be determined by the time required to reach the
+desired number of pounds. As a means this method is available to all,
+and practical where due physiological light will enable it to be carried
+out with no starving concern to disable vital power.
+
+As a general fact, the No-breakfast Plan has been attended by a highly
+satisfactory reduction of surplus pounds; where there has been a failure
+it has been due to such an increase of digestive power as really to add
+to both an increase of the average amount of daily food and of power to
+digest it. For instance, one of my fellow citizens, weighing not less
+than three hundred and thirty pounds some years ago, gave up his morning
+meals. This was attended with entire relief from frequent bilious
+spells; but the average of daily food was increased and the business of
+a barber did not add anything to muscle development. Finally from mere
+excess of weight he became a prisoner to his house and yard, unable to
+walk a square without the greatest difficulty; and yet there were two
+enormous meals put into a stomach daily that did not complain, and the
+weight increased until the three hundred and seventy-five pound notch
+was nearly reached. He heard about the Rathbun fast, and I was able to
+persuade him to come down to one light meal daily, and day after day
+bonds were loosened. After a year there have been nearly seventy-five
+pounds lost, and there is ability to labor and to walk several miles
+daily.
+
+Very many thin persons have gained as high as forty pounds by reason of
+the larger degree of muscle exercise. Since last writing, this word has
+come from Miss K., who one year ago was at the asylum eating several
+meals a day in bed with suicidal intent. She left that bed with a weight
+of one hundred and forty pounds, and, as I have mentioned before, lost
+twenty pounds of it by her fast. My last news is from a letter written
+the day after a twenty-five-mile ride among the mountains with a soul as
+free and joyous as there are freedom and joy with the birds whose songs
+greeted her rapt ears from every treetop. She writes of a gain of
+twenty-four pounds since the fast, and states that the glasses she has
+worn for thirteen years are wanted no longer!
+
+I feel that I need not multiply words as to the ability and utility of
+bringing all overweight down to the physiological normal and of keeping
+it there. I could fill hundreds of pages with the joyous testimonies of
+those who have been relieved of many surplus pounds, with numerous
+accompanying ailings; they all tell the same story, and I will only add
+this, that there is no physiological excuse for any mortal to carry
+around weight that disables.
+
+Not very many months ago ex-Governor Flower, of New York, a statesman of
+national fame, a man of largest public spirit, a most valuable citizen,
+and Colonel Robert Ingersoll, an orator of world-wide fame and of great
+nobility of soul, dropped as beeves beneath the stroke of an ax because
+of a fracture of brittle bloodvessels. In both of these cases not many
+less pounds than a hundred had needlessly accumulated.
+
+Could I have had the Colonel's ear when I last saw him as a listener to
+almost matchless oratory, whose rotundity of belt was to be measured by
+the yard, I would have addressed him as follows: "My dear Colonel, when
+I last saw you you were just filled out enough to be the joy of your
+tailor, and as a picture of health in form and looks you were ideal. You
+were then eating the meals of a woodchopper; and merely because food
+tastes good and does not seem to hurt you, you have been doing the same
+during the nearly score and a half of years since I have seen you. You
+have been eating more food every day in proportion to general muscle
+exercise than the hardest toiler does in a week, and your vast bulk
+evidences against you."
+
+After explaining to him the structural possibilities of apoplexy as a
+legacy, as I have to you in the cases of insanity, I would continue:
+"Now by virtue of a possible ancestral weakness of your brain arteries
+this may happen: the arterial walls, because of habitual food in excess,
+may undergo a fatty, limy degeneration that will make a rupture
+possible, with death or paralysis of one-half or more of the body as the
+direct result; or the small arteries may have their walls so thickened
+as not to permit enough blood to circulate in order duly to nourish
+parts of the brain they supply; hence softening of the structure and
+more or less imbecility.
+
+"The history of all overweights is that of a decline of muscle energy,
+and very generally of the amount of muscle activity as the pounds and
+years increase; but no cut in the amount of daily food so long as it can
+be taken with relish and disposed of without any special protesting from
+the stomach. This is the history of by far the largest majority of
+those sudden deaths due to cerebral hemorrhage, and also the history of
+most of the cases of imbecility with the overweights.
+
+"Now, Colonel, you should make a radical parting with those surplus
+pounds by a fast that may extend into months, or take one of the
+lightest of meals once a day. Follow this out rigidly until you have
+lost a hundred pounds, and then by as much will you be not only free
+from disease, but free also from the danger of disease."
+
+My experience with cases of epilepsy, or "fits," is confined to a half
+dozen cases, in which permanent relief seems to be assured. There is an
+acquired structural abnormality behind the spasms, acquired from surplus
+food, with a cure to be reached ultimately in most cases along these
+physiological lines.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+
+I shall not take time in telling the evils of alcoholics. It would not
+be more enlightening were I to spend hours in telling of wrecked lives,
+of wrecked homes, of prisons filled with their victims, of the immense
+loss to states and nations from the loss to sufferers and the loss they
+inflict. Alcoholism has no sense for frowning, ominous statistics, for
+it is a disease to be rationally treated, a disease to be rationally
+avoided.
+
+In the light of later science the word "stimulants" has become a
+misnomer as applied to alcoholics; the term, no doubt, came into use
+from the fact that under their use there is more endurance to both
+physical and mental ills, an endurance or indifference ascribed to
+stimulation.
+
+If power is stimulated by their use, then there should be a rise in
+temperature whereby severe cold is better endured; but this is not the
+fact any more than that temperature is lowered whereby extreme heat is
+endured; in either case the endurance is due to benumbed brain-centres.
+The alcoholic simply lessens the power to suffer mentally or physically;
+hence in degree it is an anæsthetic, and as such it also affects the
+moral sense and lessens the power of reason and judgment. They are
+habitually taken for no other reason than for the temporary relief they
+give to some ill of life.
+
+It seems the very depths of total depravity when there is no bread for
+the hungry family, that the price of a loaf will rather be spent for a
+drink; but it is not so much moral depravity as depravity of
+brain-substance. The lethal drink is taken because without it there is
+more acute suffering than from the want of a loaf of bread by the entire
+family. In my practice an ordinarily sober father would always get drunk
+and stay drunk while any member of his family was sick, and for the sole
+reason that he could not endure the worry of apprehension. This was not
+so much depravity as an acute sense of the suffering and danger
+involved, a painful rousing of the best instincts of the soul, those
+instincts that raise man above the brute and make him the noblest work
+of the divine hand. That is not a bad man at heart who has such a sense
+of affection for his wife or child when they seem dangerously sick that
+he must have artificial aid to endurance; and if you shall detect the
+alcoholic odor in his breath at the funeral you may know that there is
+heart agony under repression.
+
+The fact that alcoholics are anæsthetics, and not stimulants, has become
+known to a few of the scientists in the medical profession; but it can
+scarcely be said to have become known to the profession generally. That
+the habitual drinker partakes for any other reason than to drown his
+woes that will not stay drowned, and that the drowning is not
+stimulation, do not need argument.
+
+The alcoholic in proportion to its strength is mental chaos and
+paralysis to power, and it has not the virtue to contain an atom that
+can be converted into a living atom. In not the least sense is it a
+tissue-builder, and its use by the medical profession is without the
+shadow of a reason, and is all the more reprehensible in cases of shock.
+
+Let us see: shock in degree is brain paralysis; alcoholics in degree are
+brain paralyzers; shock is simply a state of exhaustion with rest the
+supreme need. All the rousement that is necessary and that can avail
+will be called into action by the need of oxygen. There are cases of
+disease in which breathing goes on hour after hour, when the soul seems
+to have departed and with it every life sense. The patient has become
+dead beyond reviving, and yet breathes hour after hour. Now can one for
+one moment think that an alcoholic can add to the power of the
+respiratory centres of the brain to respond to the calls for oxygen and
+so prolong life? Shock in its gravest degree is to be considered the
+extreme of the tired-out condition, with rest the only restorative
+means; and rest may be permitted with the certainty that for mere
+breathing purposes alcoholics are dangerous in proportion to the gravity
+of the shock.
+
+In health the alcoholic only adds discomfort, because there are no
+complaints to soothe; hence it is the duty of every mother so to train
+her sons in health-habits that those first drinks will be discouraging
+because they bring no cheer of contrast, but rather sensations that are
+not suggestive of a better physical condition.
+
+Alcoholics have a corroding effect upon the mucous membrane of the
+stomach, a congestive effect by which the glands are subjected to
+starving pressure; hence their use always disables the mere mechanics
+and the chemistry involved in digestion, and so prolongs disease, and
+this applies to all medicines that corrode. This corroding power of the
+alcoholics upon the walls of the stomach and its paralyzing effect upon
+the brain-centres, with the additional fact that there is nothing in it
+that adds force to any life power or that can be converted into living
+atoms, should make its use in the stomach of the sick a crime scarcely
+to be excused by ignorance.
+
+The evolution of the drunkard is a process of culture, and involves
+something of a constitutional tendency as in other diseases. I conceive
+that there is an alcoholic temperament, or a temperament in which the
+inability to bear with patience the various mental and physical woes of
+life is marked even from childhood. Indigestion and every cause that
+lowers vital power only add to the importance of such a nervous system.
+
+The first step in the evolution of the drunkard is the first untimely
+meal drawn from the breast of the mother. By irregular nursings and the
+nursings merely to stop crying the nervous system is continually
+overtaxed. There are the untimely meals to prevent gluttony; there are
+the between-meal lunches to incite nervousness, irritability, a feeling
+of unrest that nothing seems to satisfy.
+
+This goes on year after year until the time comes when that first drink
+has power to soothe many discordant voices, and the die is cast. Other
+drinks follow, with each to lessen the power of the dynamo and to
+disable the machine. At first, drink is indulged not without a sense of
+wrongdoing, but with that feeling of power in reserve to keep within the
+limits of safety.
+
+The gradual corrosion of the stomach adding to the labors of the brain
+in the matter of food mass decomposition as well as digestion marks the
+decline of power to abstain and the degradation of every sense that
+makes life worth living. Now add to the corrosion of the membrane and
+the paralysis of the brain-centres from alcoholics the other inciting
+causes in the culture of disease, and you have the evolution of the
+drunkard.
+
+How is he to be cured? Only through a fast that shall let that diseased
+stomach become new from regeneration, that will let the brain accumulate
+rest in reserve. For a time you will need to have him under bonds, for
+his will power is abolished. Put him where there will be deaf ears to
+the cries of morbid nature, for there is to be a conflict at first; but
+long before hunger will come the storm will subside; and finally, when
+food will be really desired, there will be a new stomach and a new brain
+to which an alcoholic will be no temptation.
+
+This is no figure of speech, because there is such a continual change of
+life and death going on in the soft tissues of the body that in a month
+or more of fasting it may be assumed that much of the tissues which is
+left has undergone reconstruction, and both brain and stomach act as if
+they are new when the time comes to restore the lost pounds.
+
+The ways of the kitchen and dining-room are the ways of disease and
+death, ways whose ends are prisons, asylums, scaffolds, to a far larger
+extent than is dreamed of by the fathers and mothers of the land. A new
+crusade against intemperance, the intemperance of the dining-room, is
+the only one that will ever settle this so-called liquor question. The
+rum-seller will only pull down his sign through the starvation of his
+business.
+
+With brains and stomachs kept in the highest order, the alcoholic has
+only the least power of the beguiling kind; it is rather a dose whose
+effects do not invite repetition. But for all who have the drink disease
+seemingly beyond hope a fast of a month, or two months if necessary,
+will cure any stomach or brain, no matter how pickled they are with
+alcoholic soaking, and with only the least disturbance in the habit
+breaking; even within a week the hardest of the fighting should be over
+when the fast is made absolute.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+
+I have now to consider briefly a most distressing disease, one that
+perhaps was never cured by the power of doses, and that most happily
+illustrates the structural changes in the cure of disease.
+
+Asthmatic distress is caused by congestion of the terminals of the
+bronchial tubes, by which entrance of air into the cells is made
+difficult, even in some cases to the point of suffocation. This
+condition as a disease may be called bronchial catarrh, as in most cases
+there is such a condition of the larger tubes as to cause the habitual
+raising of a discharge. As to the disease itself, you have only to
+recall what has been said about nasal catarrh in order to understand its
+origin and development. It would be as trivial a disease were it not for
+the fact that those smaller and ultimate tubes, because of flabby walls
+and weak vessels, become congested, with resulting narrowing of the
+air-ways of life.
+
+For this most distressing disease local treatments are as futile and
+void of intelligence as the physiology and anatomy involved in cause and
+cure of other local diseases. Is it not a great thing that those too
+narrow ways of life may be reached through a fast which shall so charge
+the brain with power that the flabby walls will be condensed; that most
+cases of asthma may be cured, with marked relief for every case? This
+is as certain as a result, as that rest restores strength. With the
+toning of the brain through rest, a catarrh of the bronchial tubes is
+certainly curable in most cases. With a large opportunity to know I am
+able to say this with intense conviction.
+
+Only a few months ago, just before the break of day, a freight train
+took a side track; in a few moments, with nearly a mile-a-minute speed,
+a limited passenger train took the same track, and in the time of a
+second five men were hurled into eternity. Why? How? The conductor and
+his brakeman were in such heavy sleep when the switch was opened that
+they were not awakened to close it.
+
+Why? How? There was the torpor of indigestion holding the tired brains
+of those two men in its fatal grasp; their stomachs were full of food
+when they were already tired out by their long trip that was nearly at
+its close, and for them those untimely meals were the last.
+
+Of all men who ought to work with empty stomachs for the sake of the
+best possible reach of the memory it is the railroad engineer and
+conductor; so also every man who is in any way responsible for the
+safety of the trains. If we had the history of all the derailments,
+collisions, of cars with human freight converted into funeral pyres, a
+frightful percentage of them could be traced to where "some one had
+blundered" because of the torpor from handling meals when the brain was
+compelled to higher services. Digestive, indigestive torpor is also
+torpor of the sense of _responsibility_.
+
+In the city where I live is the point between two divisions of the Erie
+Railroad, each somewhat more than a hundred miles long. Before I began
+the agitation of the No-breakfast Plan all trainmen felt that filling
+their stomachs was the last duty before entering upon their taxing
+trips, and tired wives would have to get up at all times of the night to
+prepare general meals. In this city a mighty revolution for the good of
+wives, for the good of men themselves, and for the safety of the trains
+and the hapless passengers has been going on for some years.
+
+In former times when these men came home from their rounds generally
+tired out, and with a feeling that in proportion to the sense of
+exhaustion was the need to eat, general meals had to be prepared at any
+time of night. All this is changed in a large measure. Trainmen have
+been finding out that the less food in their stomachs they take into bed
+with them and on to their trains, the better it is for them in every
+way.
+
+More and more they are getting into the way of having a general meal
+when they can eat it with leisure and leisurely digest it; and I predict
+that a time will come when all who are in any way responsible for the
+running of trains will have to know how to take care of their stomachs,
+in order that they shall attain and maintain the highest efficiency for
+services where human lives so much depend on the best there is in
+memory, reason, and judgment. This will be a part of their preparatory
+education.
+
+The "block system" has wonderfully added to the safety of the trains,
+but there should be a block system added to the stomachs of the
+dispatchers and all whose duties are so grave as the handling of human
+freight. There is no division so long that it cannot be doubled with
+less fatigue and better mental condition if the stomach be not on duty
+at the same time. In this I speak with the authority that comes from the
+study of the experiences of trainmen during many years: with one accord
+they speak of their trips as taken with clearer heads and stronger
+muscles than when large meals were thought a necessity while on duty.
+
+With an empty stomach it takes a very long time to get into such
+torpor--drowsiness--as compels the after-dinner sleep. That engineer who
+once told me of such sleepiness as made him nod while on duty was not
+suffering from either lack of sleep or overwork of his body: it was
+simply a case of the torpor of indigestion, and this was when there was
+no block system to lessen the danger of such services.
+
+There is a great deal of imperfection in what man does for man that
+comes from the indifference arising from the torpor of untimely food,
+and far more than there is any conception in what man does against man
+from the destruction of power in this way.
+
+There is now one of the Erie conductors who five years ago was losing
+at least half of his time from asthma; there is another who was equally
+disabled from sudden head symptoms that would immediately disable. These
+men have lost no trips since they began to run their stomachs with the
+same care as their trains. And there is an engineer whose trips to the
+physician and to the drug-store for many years were as frequent as those
+to his engine. There has since been a half dozen years of wiser care of
+his stomach, and his wife says that the change for the better in his
+disposition is beyond description. These men have rendered far more
+service, and who cannot see that these services have been of far higher
+character for the company, and that they have been infinitely better
+husbands, fathers, and citizens?
+
+The following case will interest trainmen: D. S., a brakeman, reached
+the burden of two hundred and forty-six pounds, with resulting
+breathlessness and other ailings that taxed all his resources to perform
+his duties. He was induced to cut down his daily food as the only means
+for relief, and to add to his strength. It took him a long time to
+master the fact that his strength was not kept up by food, but the
+gradual loss of weight with the general improvement made this more and
+more evident. He finally reached a time when he was able to make his
+round trip of one hundred and ninety-six miles without a morsel of food
+the while, and with much less fatigue than when there was a midnight
+meal from a lunch-pail. Within a year the weight has gone down to one
+hundred and eighty-eight pounds. To my professional eye there is beauty
+in the bright eyes, in the condensed, smooth face, in the body enfolded
+with clothes that flap in the breeze like the sails of a ship. No
+accident will happen to precious human freight through his brain kept
+free from digestive torpor while on duty.
+
+Ever since my book has been out I have been in more or less trouble with
+cases that badly needed my personal care, and not few in which death was
+inevitable. For instance, there is a woman in Illinois who has been
+ailing for years, and in spite of the No-breakfast Plan has had to take
+to her bed with acute aversion to food. Medical art had utterly failed
+before she changed her dietary methods.
+
+Her dietary views are known, and so she is held in severe censure
+because the sick stomach is not compelled to a futile service; and
+though I am informed of an enlargement in the region of the bowels that
+has been perceptible and tender for years, her death will be considered
+suicidal from _starvation_.
+
+A Warrensburg, Ill., editor began his fast by throwing up his food and
+continued it to the end; yet because he had talked about a fast it was
+supposed to be a case of suicide of the stupid kind; and though the
+post-mortem revealed a diseased gall-bladder, the doctors who made it
+did nothing to lessen the suicidal impression, and the death from
+"starvation" appeared under large headlines in the public prints.
+
+When men as learned, able, and eminent as Dr. Shrady, of New York, go
+into print to inform the public that people may starve to death in ten
+days, and when such men as Prof. Wood, of the University of
+Pennsylvania, do not see any starvation in the wasting pounds of acute
+disease, the care of acute sickness as Nature would have it is a grave
+matter for the physician.
+
+In five fatal cases under my care in which there was no possibility of
+feeding, there was such agitation over the question of starvation as
+would have subjected me to violence had my city been nearer the equator.
+In all these cases I was compelled to have a post-mortem to silence
+heathen raging. In one case in which a young man had died after weeks of
+inability to take food, even one of my medical brethren carried the
+conviction with him for years, and without seeking to inform himself,
+that there was a death from starvation. In this case there were spells
+of hunger in a fury, when meals would be taken, only to be soon thrown
+up, and he finally took to his bed to starve slowly to death. There was
+mind enough left to make a will, though the body had lost apparently
+more than half the normal weight; the post-mortem revealed a stomach
+seared, thickened, and not more than a third of the normal size.
+
+The physiology of fasting in time of sickness is so entirely new to the
+medical world that every death that occurs with those who practise it is
+certain to be attributed to starving.
+
+Early in this year (1900) a woman of seventy, in high circles, died from
+an obscure stomach trouble. For thirty-eight days there averaged nearly
+a half-dozen spells of vomiting; and yet it was generally believed that
+it was clearly a case of death from starvation, believed by those whose
+power to receive impressions is far stronger than their power to
+consider.
+
+Fasting, because it is Nature's plan, will win the victory in all cases
+in which victory is possible; and yet wherever it is adopted, to become
+known about, there will be the same confusion of tongues as would be
+were violent hands laid upon gods of wood and stone in heathen temples.
+"Starved to death" is the verdict.
+
+Fasting during sickness, because of the vast utility and from the
+impetus arising from the cases in Philadelphia, is bound to spread as by
+contagion; but when death occurs, all friends involved will be charged
+as abettors of homicide. To be fair to the opposition, and to let all
+readers know what chances for public censure will be theirs, whenever
+they see fit to let their friends recover on Nature's plan or die
+natural deaths, the following case is given. I quote from the
+Philadelphia _Press_ of May 7, 1900:
+
+    "In the death notices of April 26 appeared the name of Mrs.
+    Hermina Meyer, fifty years of age, of 1233 North Howard Street.
+    At the time this short and simple record of the passing away of
+    an ordinary, obscure woman attracted no more attention than the
+    hundred similar names that constituted the necrological annals
+    of April 25. But there is a startling aftermath that at once
+    gives significance to this brief record, and rude and bitter
+    awakening to the followers of the so-called 'Starvation Cult,'
+    that has gained a considerable acceptance in the northeast
+    section of the city.
+
+    "Mrs. Meyer was a believer in the fasting treatment. She was
+    apparently a victim of this strange and heretical therapeutical
+    faith. Kensington is buzzing with gossip concerning the
+    deplorable death of the unfortunate woman. C. F. Meyer, the
+    husband of the victim, accepts the death of his wife as due to
+    heart-failure, and apparently is not disposed to complain.
+
+    "Mr. Meyer talked freely with a _Press_ reporter yesterday
+    concerning the sickness and death of his wife. He said that Mrs.
+    Meyer had been ill for about a year, her malady having been
+    diagnosed as chronic rheumatism. She had been treated by the
+    family physician for this disease, but without relief. In
+    despair she turned to the fasting treatment.
+
+    "From time to time she had read of the remarkable cures claimed
+    to have been effected by complete abstention from food. Through
+    a friend she met and talked with the family of Leonard Thress,
+    of 2618 Frankford Avenue, whose case is proclaimed as one of the
+    most remarkable that had been successfully treated by the
+    fasting system. Thress was widely advertised as a victim of
+    dropsy, who, after a complete fast of more than a month, was
+    restored to sound health.
+
+    "Mrs. Meyer believed, and sent for Henry Ritter, the chief
+    advocate and adviser of the fasting cult in Philadelphia. His
+    belief in the weird treatment of disease he has adopted is
+    seemingly unshakable.
+
+    "Ritter has superintended many cases of starvation treatment,
+    wherein, according to his own statements, the patients have
+    totally abstained from actual food for periods of from four to
+    six weeks. He claims that in every case the afflicted person has
+    completely recovered health--with the single exception of Mrs.
+    Meyer.
+
+    "In response to her request, Ritter called upon Mrs. Meyer. She
+    at once began her fast. Nothing was allowed to pass her lips but
+    a small quantity of tonicum and some physiological salts,
+    dissolved in water. Of each of these she was permitted to take
+    sparingly every day. It is claimed by Ritter, a fact well-known
+    to physiologists, that there is no actual food in either of
+    these thin condiments. They are simply stimulants. These
+    liquids, according to Ritter, are the only things given to any
+    of the patients whose cases he has supervised.
+
+    "For twenty-five days, so says Mr. Meyer, his wife fasted and
+    improved. At the expiration of that time, he says, her health
+    was very much improved. She was able to walk about her room, a
+    thing she had not been able to do for many weeks. Then there was
+    a sudden and violent change for the worse. The patient was
+    seized with convulsive vomiting.
+
+    "For sixteen days she suffered the excruciating pains of these
+    convulsions. But, under Ritter's advice, Mrs. Meyer continued
+    her fast. Till the thirty-fifth day she tasted no food. The
+    vomiting continued unabated. On the thirty-sixth day she felt a
+    craving for food for the first time since her long fast began.
+    She was given oatmeal porridge. But the vomiting continued
+    unabated.
+
+    "She grew weaker and weaker. From one hundred and fifty pounds
+    weight she was reduced to a gaunt skeleton. When, upon the
+    resumption of a food diet, the vomiting did not cease, the
+    family was alarmed. The family physician was sent for in dismay.
+    But he could do nothing. Flesh-building foods were prescribed,
+    but they accomplished nothing. The vomiting continued, and three
+    weeks following the breaking of the fast Mrs. Meyer died.
+
+    "The death was put down to a depleted blood-supply, or
+    heart-failure. Ritter claimed that this unexpected turn could
+    not have been anticipated, as the fact that the patient was
+    subject to heart disease was previously unknown.
+
+    "He had treated her for rheumatism, and the cure was apparently
+    in sight when heart-failure carried the patient to her grave.
+
+    "These facts were detailed by Mr. Meyer. He added that Mr.
+    Ritter was not a physician; that he charged no fees; that he did
+    not claim to prescribe remedies, but only advised.
+
+    "So ends the case of Mrs. Hermina Meyers, first victim of the
+    starvation cult."
+
+The following is from the _Press_ of May 8:
+
+    "The death of Mrs. Hermina Meyer, after undergoing the fasting
+    treatment for thirty-five days, has not at all shaken the faith
+    of the adviser responsible for the ordeal, Henry Ritter, who
+    claims to have restored tireless persons to health. He affirmed
+    that the ravages of chronic disease had progressed too far for
+    his treatment to conquer them, and that his attendance was
+    advised by the family physician.
+
+    "Against this comforting declaration, however, stands the fact
+    that the certificate of death, signed by Dr. James Chestnut,
+    Jr., gave as the cause prolonged abstinence from food; in other
+    words, _starvation_. Dr. Chestnut also has stated that the case
+    was taken out of his hands, and Ritter installed as medical
+    adviser, by what was virtually a dismissal. Dr. Chestnut was
+    summoned again when the condition of the woman became critical,
+    after twenty-five days of fasting, but she became rapidly weaker
+    with violent convulsions and vomiting, and was beyond medical
+    aid.
+
+    "She had never been treated for cancer of the stomach, which
+    Ritter says he thinks she may have had, although she had a
+    valvular affection of the heart which had existed for some time.
+    But the fact that the cause of her death was officially attested
+    by the family physician as due to her long fast contradicts
+    flatly the position taken by the self-constituted healer, who
+    made the following statement last night:
+
+    "'I have seen all the members of Mrs. Meyer's family to-day, and
+    they are entirely satisfied that my treatment was in no way
+    responsible for her death. I was called in at their urgent
+    request, as their own relatives were numbered among the cures to
+    the credit of the fasting treatment, as well as Mr. Thress. I
+    accept no money for my work; they knew it was a labor of love,
+    and the family physician, Dr. Chestnut, agreed with them as to
+    the advisability of this system which they had seen tested.
+
+    "'Mrs. Meyer improved rapidly for a time, her chronic rheumatism
+    causing her less trouble than in years, after the first three
+    weeks of fasting. She had been treated previously for catarrh of
+    the stomach, and it is probable that a cancer afflicted her. I
+    am using no new system. The method has been used with very
+    notable success by Dr. Edward H. Dewey, of Meadville, whose
+    reputation and standing are distinguished. This is the first
+    case I have lost out of twelve patients who had been given up as
+    hopeless by regular physicians. It is Nature's cure, nothing
+    more; but it was applied too late in the case of Mrs. Meyer.'
+
+    "Dr. Chestnut would not allow himself to be quoted because of
+    the rigid rules of medical ethics. It may be stated, however, in
+    addition to what has been said, that he does not wish to be
+    considered as having encouraged the experiment, and that the
+    death certificate defined his view of the responsibility."
+
+A verdict on the part of the doctor _without a post-mortem_.
+
+Against the doctor is the following, from the daughter, Miss Kate Meyer.
+I quote from an article in the _North American_ of May 8, 1900:
+
+    "Mrs. Hermina Meyer, devotee of an odd cult, that regards
+    starvation as a sure cure for all bodily ills, fasted for nearly
+    forty days because she was suffering from rheumatism.
+
+    "The rheumatism disappeared.
+
+    "But after twenty-five days of total abstinence from food she
+    sickened. Violent nausea came to her. She died.
+
+    "Nevertheless, Miss Kate Meyer, daughter of the dead woman,
+    says:
+
+    "'My mother did not die because she fasted. The fasting did her
+    good. When she began it she had been ill with rheumatism for
+    more than a year. She could hardly walk. Her left arm was
+    powerless. She could not lift it from her side. After two weeks
+    of fasting she was active. She could walk. The power came back
+    to her arm. She suffered little pain. She looked well. Then came
+    the attacks of nausea.
+
+    "'But Dr. Chestnut, who is our family physician, was attending
+    mother all the time. He called once a week. He said himself that
+    the fast cure seemed to be doing mother good. When she got
+    nausea he did not lay it to her fasting. He said it was heart
+    trouble. That's what mother died of. Dr. Chestnut said so.
+
+    "'Do you remember the case of Leonard Thress? He cured himself
+    of dropsy by fasting. Mother heard of it. She was introduced to
+    Mr. Thress. He told her that all he knew of the fast cure he had
+    learned from Henry Ritter. Mother sent and asked Mr. Ritter
+    about the cure. Then she began it. Mr. Ritter never charged
+    mother for anything. Dr. Chestnut consented that mother should
+    try the Ritter cure.'
+
+    "Mrs. Meyer was the wife of Charles F. Meyer, of 1233 North
+    Howard Street. Meyer, like his daughter, has only friendliness
+    for Ritter, and also favors the fast cure. Mrs. Meyer, past
+    middle age, had been sorely tried by her ailment. For more than
+    a year Dr. Chestnut attended her, but her condition did not
+    improve. Prescription after prescription was tested, only to
+    fail.
+
+    "'There is little hope for me,' said the woman to her daughter.
+    'I'm tired of taking medicines. They do me no good.'
+
+    "She became more melancholy as the days passed. She regarded her
+    case as hopeless. Dr. Chestnut acknowledged defeat. He had only
+    a change of climate--a long stay in Colorado--to recommend. A
+    very domestic woman was Mrs. Meyer. She looked with horror upon
+    a journey. She said she would remain at home and die.
+
+    "But one day last March there gathered at a banquet in the home
+    of Leonard Thress about a dozen persons, very happy, very
+    healthy (or believing themselves to be so), all members of the
+    'starvation cure' cult.
+
+    "Each had to tell the story of a long fast that brought a
+    remarkable cure. Newspapers gave publicity to the dinner of the
+    little band with the odd faith in fasting. Mrs. Meyer heard of
+    it. Here was a chance--a gleam of hope! She came to know Leonard
+    Thress, and, through him, Henry Ritter, the apostle of the fast
+    cure. He told her of remarkable recoveries. She caught his
+    enthusiasm.
+
+    "But, according to Mr. Meyer, the young man was careful first
+    that the family physician should consent. He never hinted at
+    compensation for his services; never got it. Aside from advising
+    total abstinence from food, he supplied small quantities of
+    tonicum and salts dissolved in water. These contained no food
+    matter; they were merely stimulative.
+
+    "In two weeks hope was strong with Mrs. Meyer; with all the
+    family. Certainly, she was improving. She could walk; her arm
+    that had been stiff and painful moved with ease--hurt no more.
+    She still suffered occasional twinges, and decided to continue
+    her self-imposed starvation until every rheumatic germ in her
+    body was eradicated.
+
+    "She regarded herself as almost cured, when, after twenty-five
+    days, she was attacked with nausea. She was very ill. It lasted
+    sixteen days. After the first few days of fasting all desire for
+    food had vanished. But on the thirty-sixth day she was hungry.
+
+    "Oatmeal porridge was given her sparingly. The nausea, however,
+    did not cease. She began to grow alarmingly emaciated. She had
+    weighed one hundred and fifty pounds. Her weight had fallen to
+    one hundred.
+
+    "The family physician prescribed light food, but her stomach
+    repulsed it. She grew very weak.
+
+    "On April 26 she died. Dr. Chestnut unhesitatingly issued a
+    death certificate, ascribing her death to heart-failure. He also
+    suspected a cancer of the stomach, but was not sure.
+
+    "Mrs. Herman Reinhardt, a cousin of the deceased woman, is
+    firmly convinced that fasting had nothing to do with her death.
+
+    "'For more than fifteen years Mrs. Meyer suffered from some
+    acute stomach trouble,' Mrs. Reinhardt said yesterday, 'and it
+    is my belief that it caused her death. Her general health had
+    been greatly benefited by abstaining from all food, but the
+    disorder from which she suffered most could not be cured. My
+    husband fasted for twenty-five days and was completely cured of
+    stomach trouble, and there were no ill effects in his case.'"
+
+The impression of this death and of these fasts upon the minds of the
+medical profession was perhaps fairly summed up by the eminent Horatio
+C. Wood, M. D., LL. D., Clinical Professor of Nervous Diseases in the
+University of Pennsylvania. He disregarded the legal phase of the
+question, the question of the legality of a layman dealing out words of
+cheer and comfort in cases in which the medical profession had retired
+in total defeat. The question had been seriously raised as to whether
+Mr. Ritter had not committed a crime against the laws of Pennsylvania,
+and for what? For simply advising these people to stop all eating until
+there would come a natural desire for food!
+
+Professor Wood thus gave utterance in the _Press_ of May 10:
+
+    "'These people are falsifying,' he said, 'There have been liars,
+    you know, and they are not all dead. I don't believe for an
+    instant such stories as fasting totally for forty or fifty days
+    and keeping up energy and activity. It is contrary to common
+    sense as well as to all we know about the human body. I don't
+    know the object of deception, but somebody must be making money
+    out of it, or having a craving for notoriety. It is
+    preposterous. I understand that one of these fasters walked ten
+    miles a day, after doing altogether without nourishment for a
+    month or so. If these persons did what they claim to have
+    undergone, more than one death would have been charged against
+    the treatment, you may be sure.
+
+    "'You will remember that the professional forty-day fasters,
+    Tanner and Suci, were reduced to mere skin and bone, were almost
+    helpless, carefully husbanded every bit of their vital energy,
+    and took no exercise. They were _watched_ and studied
+    scientifically. And here is a woman, weighing only one hundred
+    pounds when she started fasting, claims she began to eat after
+    thirty-eight days of starvation, and had more energy and took
+    more exercise than in years. It is all amazingly absurd,
+    whatever the motive may be.'"
+
+Tanner and Suci, "skin and bones?" Cowen weighed one hundred and
+seventy-five pounds when he began his forty-two day fast, and lost only
+thirty pounds. My case of acute rheumatism revealed a loss of only
+forty pounds after a forty-six days' fast; and the woman of fifty-seven
+who began eating on the forty-third day was so well padded with muscle
+and fat as not to reveal the slightest suggestion of starvation as she
+sat down to the first meal. "Skin and bones?" This is a matter for
+months, and not for days.
+
+"Falsifiers, these fasters?" Science settles important questions by
+investigation, not by epithet.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+
+As I write the closing pages of this book, the most taxing case of
+fasting that ever came under my care has ended in hunger, and I insert
+it that all may know what tribulations will be theirs if they have any
+part in letting their sick get well or die in that peace God and Nature
+clearly design for all.
+
+A man of large mould came to me, unknown, unbidden, from a distant city
+on the seventeenth day of his fast. His appetite had been abolished by a
+severe throat and bronchial attack, both of which had been relieved
+before reaching me. Well posted in the theory of fasting, he came with
+the declared intention of fasting until hunger or death would come.
+
+For two or three weeks he was able to be about the city with his nearly
+two hundred pounds of flesh; but there was an unknown, unknowable
+disease of the bowels and stomach in slow development. There were a
+dryness of the mouth and such aversion to food as to forbid all eating,
+and he was deaf to my suggestion that he should at least taste some of
+the liquid foods from time to time, to save me in the eyes of his
+friends from a verdict of homicide, were we to fail to win a victory.
+After more than fifty days without even a taste of food nausea and
+vomiting were added to his woes, and when his friends became aware of
+the many days without food no words I could utter saved me from the
+severest condemnation. The anxiety that involved the sick bed only
+depressed the patient, and when another physician had to be called to
+relieve the pressure the last hope with him nearly departed.
+
+The adviser was a man of high character and of unusual general and
+professional acquirements. Behind him was the entire medical profession
+and all its literature: behind me were only Nature, many-voiced--and the
+patient. With us there was no lack of mutual respect, except in matters
+of faith and practice; but he no more tolerated my "crankiness,"
+lunacy--perhaps imbecility--in withholding food from the sick than I his
+paganism in enforcing it. For the sake of the agony of friends my noble
+patient accepted one severe dose of medicine and one ration of
+predigested food. The instant response of the digestive powers was, "We
+have stopped business down here for repairs: when we are ready we will
+let you know."
+
+Next a ration of food was sent into the sick bowels, only to cause hours
+of pain. The enemy having been expelled with disaster from all points of
+attack, there simply had to be a waiting on Nature, and in one day after
+the last vomiting spell there was a natural call for food--and this on
+the _sixtieth day of the fast!_
+
+Had this man died--such was his prominence--I should have been paraded
+as a criminal of the stupid kind in the entire press of America, except
+in the papers of my own city. For this man of sixty-five, who with
+marvellous faith in Nature patiently waited upon her time, there
+promises to be many years of the days of his youth restored to him. As
+for me, with authorized medicine driven from the field, I see only new
+life unfolding in him daily, and my reward is exceeding.
+
+Men and brethren of the medical profession: This man read his favorite
+_Sun_ during every one of those sixty long days, and not one day was
+there revealed a hint of mental loss in clearness of apprehension. He
+lived because he knew that starving to death was his remotest danger; he
+lived also because he was made to see evidences that a cure was evolving
+in many ways. There was at no time apprehension, except when he felt
+unable to resist his friends with a _No_ in thunder tones when it was
+proposed to torture him with drugs and foods.
+
+Brethren, are you going into print to denounce the physiology or the
+practicality of this old method in Nature, this new method in humanity,
+to the sick and afflicted? Not one of you can advance arguments that
+will convince those who reason.
+
+To what good end are you now enforcing your _predigested_ foods? Are
+they relished better than other foods? Can they be taken with less
+aversion in cases of nausea and vomiting? Do they really nourish the
+brain so as to add clearness and strength to the mind? Do they ever
+prevent the uncovering of bones that makes the ways of acute sickness?
+If food actually can be so digested out of the body as to be ready for
+instant absorption, we should be able to abolish our kitchens, and at
+once enter upon that golden age in which there would be no dyspepsia
+hydraheaded; no disease of any kind, not even drunkenness, and where
+death would be only as the last flicker of the burned-up candle.
+
+In this case, as in all other cases, the desire for water was abolished
+before hunger became marked. In this connection I will suggest to the
+reader that thirst is a morbid condition to be avoided as far as
+possible; that water is its only need, and no mortal ever needs a drop
+for health's sake except when thirsty. Making water-tanks of human
+stomachs is without the shade of physiological reason, and the alleged
+results for good are not based on a shade of scientific evidence: these
+are based wholly in the minds of the credulous enthusiasts who prescribe
+them. Taking large quantities of water without thirst only entails added
+work upon the kidneys, and thus it becomes a factor in the development
+of Bright's disease and other forms where the tendency exists. The
+actual need of water is always made clear in every case; the need always
+disappears before hunger can become possible.
+
+As to the use of water on the body, this physiology has to be taken into
+account. The skin is covered with scales that are constantly dropping
+off as they mature, each to uncover a bright, clean one. As the skin is
+not an absorbent membrane, and as old scales are constantly dropping
+off, the need of frequent baths is more a need to satisfy the personal
+sense of cleanliness than a physiological need. These scales should not
+be either soaked off or brushed off in a wholesale way; the oil in the
+skin is a protection against weather-changes, and is also a necessity to
+its functional integrity, and therefore should not be dissolved and
+washed off by soaps that are strongly alkaline.
+
+The body itself is very sensitive to contact with water below the
+natural temperature of the skin. The plunge bath is specially depressing
+to every human energy, and should never be indulged by the debilitated.
+The daily bathings of nursing children are cruel and life-depressing.
+Their little bodies are always clean in the physiological sense when
+their clothes are kept clean; hence once a week ought to satisfy all
+mothers.
+
+The question of how often to bathe must be considered along these
+physiological lines. They whose employments soil their clothes and
+bodies spend the least time in cleansing their bodies; and yet in no
+medical work that treats of diseases and their causes is there to be
+found a hint that any special disease has its origin in uncleansed skin
+as a chronic condition. That will be a small-minded reader who draws
+conclusions from these statements that the author is not highly in favor
+of having bodies and clothes kept so habitually clean as not to be an
+offence to the finest fibred olfactory nerve at close range. In the
+use, then, of water on the body be physiologically sensible, and not the
+slaves of the bath-tub or "medicated" waters.
+
+Lay readers, I draw my message to a close. I have addressed it to you
+because your minds are open and free. Draw near and listen while I talk
+rather than write. Let me look into your eyes, see the play on all the
+lines of expression, as I would were you in my consulting-room. Mine has
+reached your ears as a lone voice from the depths of some wilderness; I
+have tried so to speak with my pen that you could catch an echo as if
+from between the lines of every page.
+
+You will not banish your medical adviser, for you still need his
+knowledge of the workings of disease, if you do not need the drugs you
+formerly believed necessary; but you will now be able in a more
+intelligent way to diminish the possibilities of the future need of him.
+
+Since these wonderful fasts in Philadelphia others are occurring over
+the country from the contagion of example. Many are certain to be
+undertaken as a last resort where hope has departed; and death will
+come; and then there will be the confusion of tongues, as in the case of
+Mrs. Meyer. Her case has been the third one that I know of where the
+press has spread the news of death from starvation.
+
+I have given you the case of Mrs. Meyer that you may know that no matter
+how hopeless any case may be considered, no matter how given up by
+venders of drugs, if a fast be advised and death come, death from
+starvation will be the general verdict. Hence on as fasts multiply, so
+will the press continue to make special note of all who chance to die
+because they had ceased to add distress to their bodies by foods that
+were only taken as the medicinal dose. All this you need to take into
+account in those cases you would advise where the medical faculty has
+retired in defeat.
+
+Never in my entire professional life have I been so depressed by
+discordant voices as during this sixty-day fast just ended. All the air
+has been charged, darkened with frownings--even threats of what would
+happen in case of death; and as never before has this question come to
+me, "Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine vain things?"
+
+Again I must tell you that the No-breakfast Plan, the plan not to eat in
+time of health until there are a normal need and desire for food, that
+are only developed after several hours of morning labor, and not to eat
+at all during acute sickness, is the easiest of all means to maintain
+health, and to regain it when lost. In my message I have had the
+greatest good for the greatest number of the world's busy people, who
+have no time to indulge abnormal, artificial ways in the recovery and
+maintenance of health--ways that are a real tax on time and taxing in
+the means involved. Passing few are they of the world's workers who
+have the time for all this, and especially they who are the slaves of
+the kitchen.
+
+Again I must suggest to you that the actual need of daily food as a
+matter to meet the actual daily need is a new question in practical
+physiology. It may be very much less than is supposed, a matter to be
+determined by the scales. There are none who can eat at all with relish
+who are not more governed by relish than the hunger sense, as to the
+amount of food eaten. The real amount of daily food needed may be so
+small that enough of nourishment can be extracted from almost any of the
+easiest available foods, the main question being one of slow eating,
+restful eating, and with the most thorough mastication. For those who
+have the leisure and tastes for study over what to eat there are the
+works of Haig, Hoy, Hensel, Sir Henry Thompson, and others, that may be
+read with both interest and profit.
+
+And now I address my last words to the mothers of the land. For you the
+No-breakfast Plan means the highest possible health, the greatest
+possible relief from the slavery of toil. On no other plan are there
+such promises of relief and prevention of all your sex ailings. On this
+plan only can you become man's equal in the hours of leisure that are
+his by a feeling of divine right; you also should consider the
+possibilities of a day of eight or ten hours as needing the reduction
+all the more because of your weaker bodies.
+
+The No-breakfast Plan means for your children the best possibilities
+for the conservation of all the higher instincts and powers that will
+tend to save them from the saloon, the prison, the electric chair. If
+the Garden of Eden was abolished because you enticed man to eat the
+wrong food, it is for you to restore a new race of Adams in all the ways
+of health, of such health as will make the entire earth a "Paradise
+regained."
+
+Readers, lay and professional, let me reiterate in my parting words,
+words at white heat with conviction as to their soundness and utility.
+Enforced food is a danger always to be measured by the gravity of the
+local or general disease; a danger always to be measured also by the
+feebleness of old age--by feebleness no matter how caused.
+
+This physiological righteousness will remain unquestioned, its
+practicality unsurpassed, while man remains on the earth to violate the
+laws of his Creator manifest in his own body. The penalties of
+disobedience are as certain as that every cause is followed by a
+definite effect. There are no remissions in the various antitoxins;
+there is no hope for you through hollow needles. Nature is exacting, but
+she is merciful. Obey her laws that your ways may be toward Paradise,
+and not away from it.
+
+[Transcriber's Note: The following words were spelled/hyphenated
+inconsistently in the original text and have not been changed:
+over-eating, overeating; centre, center; Cowan, Cowen; Suci, Succi.
+
+The following corrections have been made to the original text.
+
+Page 64:
+  insistance changed to insistence
+
+Page 65:
+  abandaned changed to abandoned -- 'had been abandoned'
+
+Page 67:
+  opprobium changed to opprobrium
+
+Page 74:
+  constrast changed to contrast -- 'sluggishness by contrast'
+
+Page 122:
+  satifsying changed to satisfying -- 'about satisfying it'
+
+Page 160:
+  now changed to no -- 'no matter'
+
+Page 186:
+  frieght changed to freight -- 'human freight'
+
+Page 191:
+  wierd changed to weird -- 'weird treatment']
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The No Breakfast Plan and the
+Fasting-Cure, by Edward Hooker Dewey
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The No-Breakfast Plan, by Edward Hooker Dewey.
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure, by 
+Edward Hooker Dewey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure
+
+Author: Edward Hooker Dewey
+
+Release Date: November 2, 2008 [EBook #27128]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NO BREAKFAST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Susan Skinner, Bryan Ness and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="transnote">
+<p><b>Transcriber's Note:</b> The following words were spelled/hyphenated
+inconsistently in the original text and have not been changed:
+over-eating, overeating; centre, center; Cowan, Cowen; Suci, Succi.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>DR. DEWEY'S BOOKS.</h2>
+
+<p><b>The True Science of Living; or, The New Gospel of
+Health.</b> $2.25, sent postpaid.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Dewey's logic seems unanswerable."&mdash;<i>Alexander Haig, M.A.,
+M.D. Oxon., F.R.C.P.</i>, London, Eng. author of "Uric Acid as a
+Factor in the Causation of Disease," "Diet and Food."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad to find myself in general accord with the views of Dr.
+Dewey."&mdash;<i>A. Rabagliati, M.A., F.R.C.P.</i>, Edinburgh, Scotland,
+author of "Air, Food, and Exercises."</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Dewey has written an epoch-making book."&mdash;<i>Emmett Densmore,
+M.D.</i>, New York.</p>
+
+<p>"'The True Science of Living,' in its adaptation to the needs of
+humanity, ranks, in my estimation, with the writing of the Egyptian
+prince, the Jewish law-giver, the inspired Moses."&mdash;<i>Amos R. Collins,
+M.D.</i>, Westerly, R. I.</p>
+
+<p>"To live according to the teaching of either of these books would
+soon make a new race."&mdash;<i>J. W. Dill, M.D., D.D.</i></p>
+
+<p>"I have just finished 'The True Science of Living,' and would
+recommend every person to read it and follow its direction."&mdash;<i>D. M.
+Sheedy, M.D.</i></p>
+
+<p>"A book written by a man with a burning conviction, and bearing
+an introduction by an eminent preacher who has tested the treatment
+recommended in it and found therein a great reinforcement of intellectual
+and spiritual power, which he attributes directly to having followed
+its teachings, is sure to have more than a kernel of truth in it,
+and, written in a lively, conversational style, will not be 'heavy' or a
+bore to those who read it."&mdash;<i>The Independent, New York.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The book is given in the form of plain lectures; it holds the interest
+from the first chapter, and its logical reasoning cannot be gainsaid."&mdash;<i>Chautauquan.</i></p>
+
+<p>"It consists of twenty-seven lectures, written in a style at once interesting,
+practical, logical, forcible."&mdash;<i>Philadelphia Educational
+News.</i></p>
+
+
+<p><b>A New Era for Women.</b> $1.25, postpaid.</p>
+
+<p>"The last line of 'A New Era for Women' has been read, and I
+wish, with all my heart and soul, that every woman in the world could
+read Dr. Dewey's words with that burning conviction which is mine."&mdash;<i>Alice
+McClellan Birney</i>, President of Woman's Congress.</p>
+
+<p>"Taken altogether, 'The New Era for Women' will be found worthy
+of a place in every household, and should be read by every woman in
+the world."&mdash;<i>Chester County Times.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Plain, common sense, devoid of puzzling, technical terms. Every
+woman who cares for ideal health should purchase this book, and help
+to inaugurate the 'new era' for her sex."&mdash;<i>The Search Light.</i></p>
+
+<p><b>Chronic Alcoholism.</b> Price, 50 cents.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 364px;"><a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a>
+<img src="images/frontis.jpg" width="364" height="600" alt="(signed) E. H. Dewey." title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h1>
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">THE<br /></span>
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">No-Breakfast Plan</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 50%;">AND<br /></span>
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Fasting-Cure</span>.
+</h1>
+
+<p style="font-size: x-large; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 50%;">BY</span>
+<br />
+EDWARD HOOKER DEWEY, M. D.</p>
+
+<p class='center'>MEADVILLE, <span class="smcap">Pa.</span>, U. S. A.:<br />
+PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR.<br />
+1900.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p class='center'>
+<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1900,<br />
+By EDWARD HOOKER DEWEY.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Registered at Stationers' Hall, London, England.</span></p>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<p class='center'>
+<i>All Rights Reserved.</i>
+</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p class='center'>
+TO<br />
+<br />
+GEORGE S. KEITH, M.D., LL.D., F.R.C.P.E., <span class="smcap">Scotland</span>,<br />
+<br />
+A. RABAGLIATI, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., <span class="smcap">Edinburgh</span>,<br />
+<br />
+AND<br />
+<br />
+ALEXANDER HAIG, M.A., M.D., <span class="smcap">Oxon</span>., F.R.C.P., <span class="smcap">London,<br />
+England</span>,<br />
+<br />
+WHO HAVE COMMENDED THE WRITINGS OF THE AUTHOR<br />
+IN THEIR OWN PUBLISHED WORKS,<br />
+<br />
+THIS BOOK IS<br />
+<br />
+GRATEFULLY DEDICATED.<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">{7}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>This volume is a history, or a story, of an evolution
+in the professional care of the sick. It begins
+in inexperience and in a haze of medical superstition,
+and ends with a faith that Nature is the all in all
+in the cure of disease. The hygiene unfolded is
+both original and revolutionary: its practicality is
+of the largest, and its physiology beyond any possible
+question. The reader is assured in advance
+that every line of this volume has been written
+with conviction at white heat, that enforced food in
+sickness and the drug that corrodes are professional
+barbarisms unworthy of the times in which we live.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right; margin-right: 4em;"><span class="smcap">E. H. DEWEY.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Meadville, Pa., U. S. A.</span>,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>November, 1900</i>.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">{9}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a href="#THE_NO-BREAKFAST_PLAN">THE NO-BREAKFAST PLAN.</a></h3>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td></td><td align='right'>PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#I">I.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Introduction&mdash;Army experiences in the Civil War&mdash;Early years in
+general practice&mdash;Difficulties encountered&mdash;Medicinal treatment
+found wanting as a means to superior professional success</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#II">II.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A case of typhoid fever that revolutionized the Author's faith and
+practice&mdash;A cure without drugs, without food&mdash;Resulting studies
+of Nature in disease&mdash;Illustrative cases&mdash;A crucial experience in a
+case of diphtheria in the Author's family</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#III">III.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A study of the brain from a new point of view&mdash;Some new physiology
+evolved illustrated by severe cases of acute disease</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#IV">IV.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The error of enforced food in cases of severe injuries and diseases
+illustrated by several striking examples</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#V">V.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>An apostrophe to physicians</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_56">56</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">{10}</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#VI">VI.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The origin of the No-breakfast Plan&mdash;Personal experience of the
+Author as a dyspeptic&mdash;His first experience without a breakfast&mdash;Physiological
+questions considered&mdash;A new theory of the origin and development of disease and its
+cure&mdash;The spread of the No-breakfast Plan&mdash;Interesting cases</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#VII">VII.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Digestive conditions&mdash;Taste relish&mdash;Hunger relish&mdash;The moral science
+involved in digestion as a new study&mdash;Cheer as a digestive power&mdash;Its
+contagiousness&mdash;The need of higher life in the home as a matter of better health&mdash;Cheer as a duty</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_81">81</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#VIII">VIII.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The No-breakfast Plan among farmers and other laborers&mdash;A series of
+voluntary letters to an eminent divine, and the writer put down as a
+crank&mdash;The origin of the Author's first book&mdash;How the eminent Rev.
+Dr. George N. Pentecost was secured to write the introduction&mdash;His
+no-breakfast experience&mdash;The publisher converts a prominent
+editor&mdash;The case of Rev. W. E. Rambo, a returned missionary&mdash;The
+publishers' missionary work among missionaries&mdash;The utility of
+the morning fast&mdash;Its unquestionable physiology&mdash;Why the hardest
+labor is more easily performed and for more hours without a breakfast</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#IX">IX.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The utility of slow eating and thorough mastication unusually illustrated
+by Mr. Horace Fletcher, the author&mdash;What should we eat?&mdash;The
+use of fruit from a physiological standpoint</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#X">X.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Landscape-gardening upon the human face&mdash;A pen-picture&mdash;Unrecognized
+suicide&mdash;Absurdity of the use of drugs to cure diseases&mdash;A
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">{11}</a></span>case of blood-letting&mdash;Mission of hom&oelig;opathy&mdash;Predigested foods</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_110">110</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<h3><a href="#THE_FASTING-CURE">THE FASTING-CURE.</a></h3>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#XI">XI.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The forty-two day fast of Mr. W. W. C. Cowen, of Warrensburg, Ill.,
+and its successful end&mdash;Press account&mdash;The twenty-eight day fast of
+Mr. Milton Rathbun, of New York, and its successful end&mdash;Press
+account&mdash;A second fast of Mr. Milton Rathbun, of thirty-five days,
+in the interest of science, and its successful end&mdash;Press account&mdash;Adverse
+comments of Dr. George N. Shrady, an eminent New York
+physician</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_117">117</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#XII">XII.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The remarkable fast of forty-five days of Miss Estella Kuenzel, of
+Philadelphia, resulting in a complete cure of a case of melancholia&mdash;Press
+accounts&mdash;A still more remarkable fast, of fifty days, of Mr.
+Leonard Thress, of Philadelphia, resulting in a complete cure of
+a bad case of general dropsy&mdash;Press accounts&mdash;General dropsy in
+a woman of seventy-six relieved by a fifteen-day fast, with the cure
+permanent&mdash;Rev. Dalrymple's fast of thirty-nine and one-half days
+without interruption of pastoral duties</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#XIII">XIII.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Insanity&mdash;A study from a new point of view&mdash;Its radical cure deemed
+probable in most cases by protracted fasts&mdash;Feeding the insane as
+practised in the hospitals sharply criticised&mdash;Some direct words to
+physicians in charge</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#XIV">XIV.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The evolution of obesity, and its easy relief by fasting&mdash;Overweight
+prevented by a limitation of the daily food and without lessening
+any of the powers or energies&mdash;The evolution and prevention of
+apoplexy</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_177">177</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">{12}</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#XV">XV.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Chronic alcoholism&mdash;The evolution of the drunkard&mdash;His complete,
+easy, rational cure by fasting&mdash;No case so grave as to be beyond
+cure by this means&mdash;Asthma; Its cure through dietary means&mdash;A
+railroad tragedy&mdash;The need of railroad men to save their brains
+from needless waste of energy in their stomachs&mdash;An illustrative
+case&mdash;Some of the Author's troubles from the ignorance of the
+people&mdash;The death of Mrs. Myers, of Philadelphia, on the thirty-fifth
+day of her fast&mdash;Adverse press accounts and comments&mdash;Adverse
+comments of Prof. H. C. Wood, M. D., L. L. D., on fasting
+and fasters</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_183">183</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#XVI">XVI.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>A successful sixty-day fast under the Author's care&mdash;More about predigested
+foods&mdash;Bathing from a physiological standpoint&mdash;The
+error of drinking water without thirst&mdash;Some earnest words to the
+mothers of this land&mdash;What the No-breakfast Plan means for them
+and their children&mdash;Concluding words</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_199">199</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS" id="ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Portrait of the Author</span></td><td align='right' colspan='2'><i><a href="#frontis">Frontispiece.</a></i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Mrs. A. M. Lichtenhahn, Thirty-sixth Day
+without Food</span></td><td align='right'>Opposite p.</td><td align='right'><a href="#illus001">54</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Rev. George Sherman Richards</span></td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#illus002">94</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Mrs. E. A. Quiggle</span></td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#illus003">104</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Mr. Milton Rathbun shortly after his Fast</span></td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#illus004">132</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Miss E. F. Kuenzel, Forty-first Day of Fast</span></td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#illus005">146</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Mr. Leonard Thress, Fiftieth Day of Fast</span></td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#illus006">152</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Miss E. W. A. Westing, Fortieth Day of Fast</span></td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#illus007">154</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">{13}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1><a name="THE_NO-BREAKFAST_PLAN" id="THE_NO-BREAKFAST_PLAN"></a>THE NO-BREAKFAST PLAN.</h1>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>A hygiene that claims to be new and of the greatest
+practicality, and certainly revolutionary in its application,
+would seem to require something of its origin and
+development to excite the interest of the intelligent
+reader. Methods in health culture are about as numerous
+as the individuals who find some method necessary
+for the health: taking something, doing something for
+the health is the burden of lives almost innumerable.
+Very few people are so well that some improvement is
+not desirable.</p>
+
+<p>The literature on what to eat and not to eat, what to
+do and not to do, on medicines that convert human
+stomachs into drug-stores, is simply boundless. If
+we believe all we read, we must consider the location
+we are in before we can safely draw the breath of
+life; we must not cool our parched throats without
+the certificate of the microscope. We must not eat
+without an ultimate analysis of each item of the bill of
+fare, as we would take an account of stock before
+ordering fresh goods; and this without ever knowing
+how much lime we need for the bones, iron for the
+blood, phosphorus for the brain, or nitrogen for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">{14}</a></span>
+muscles. In short, there is death in the air we breathe,
+death in the food we eat, death in the water we drink,
+until, verily, we seem to walk our ways of life in the
+very valley and shadow of death, ever subject to the
+attack of hobgoblins of disease.</p>
+
+<p>How many lives would go down in despair but for
+the miracles of cure promised in the public prints, even
+in our best journals and monthlies, we cannot know. It
+is the hope for better things that sustains our lives;
+suicide never occurs until all hope has departed. Even
+our medical journals are heavily padded with pages of
+new remedies whose use involves the most amazing
+credulity. Perhaps it is well, in the absence of a sound
+physiological hygiene, that the people who are sick
+and afflicted shall be buoyed up by fresh, printed
+promises. Perhaps it is also well for the physician to
+be able to go into the rooms of the sick inspired from
+the advertising pages of his favorite medical journals.</p>
+
+<p>Are they not new stars of hope to both physician
+and the people? Why should we not hope when new
+remedies are multiplying in such infinite excess over
+newly discovered diseases? <i>New diseases?</i> What
+is there essentially new that can be treated with remedies,
+in the coated tongues, foul mouths, high temperature
+and pulse, pain, discomfort, and acute aversion to
+food, that is to be found in the rooms of the sick? Are
+there really specifics for these conditions?</p>
+
+<p>The hygiene to be unfolded in these pages is so new,
+so revolutionary, that its first impress has never failed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">{15}</a></span>
+to excite every form of opposition known to language,
+and yet its practicality is so great that it is rarely
+questioned by those who fairly test it. It has not been
+found wanting in its physiology, nor has it failed to
+grow wherever it has found lodgement.</p>
+
+<p>The origin and development of this new way in
+health culture seem to require something of professional
+autobiography, that it may be seen that it is a
+matter of evolution and not of chance, not a fad that
+has only its passing hour.</p>
+
+<p>After receiving my medical degree from the University
+of Michigan, and serving a term as house
+physician to the U. S. Marine Hospital at Detroit,
+Michigan, I entered one of the large army hospitals at
+Chattanooga, Tenn., at the beginning of the Sherman
+campaign in Georgia, where I found a ward of eighty
+sick and wounded soldiers fresh from the battle of
+Resacea. My professional fitness for duties so grave
+and so large in extent was of a very questionable order,
+and I did not in the least overestimate it.</p>
+
+<p>It had not escaped my notice, even before I began
+the study of medicine, that whether disease were coaxed
+with doses too small for mathematical estimate, or
+whether blown out with solid shot or blown up with
+shells, the percentage of recoveries seemed to be about
+the same regardless of the form of treatment.</p>
+
+<p>I was reared in a large family in a country home,
+several miles from a physician, where all but the
+severest sicknesses were treated with herb-tea dosage,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">{16}</a></span>
+and this was true of all other country homes. With
+all this in mind I had begun the study of medicine with
+a good deal less than the average faith in the utility of
+dosage, and it was not enlarged by my professor of
+materia medica.</p>
+
+<p>I entered upon my serious duties as did good, rare, old
+Bunyan into his pulpit, with a feeling fairly oppressive
+that I was "the least of all the saints." My materia
+medica was in my vest pocket; my small library in
+my head, with its contents in a very hazy condition.
+With a weak memory for details, and marked inability
+to possess truth except by the slow process of digestion
+and assimilation, my brain was more a machine-shop
+than a wareroom; hence capacity of retail dealing was
+of the smallest. I was not in the least conscious at
+this time that a large wareroom amply stored by virtue
+of a retentive memory was not the most needed as an
+equipment for all the practical affairs of life. I have
+ever found it necessary to dodge some memories,
+when there was lack of time to endure a hailstorm of
+details.</p>
+
+<p>That I did not become a danger to the hapless sick
+and wounded only less than their diseases and wounds,
+was wholly due to my small materia medica, to utter
+lack of pride in knowledge that had not become a power
+with me, and to that lofty ambition for professional
+success which moved me to seize aid from no matter
+where or whom, as the drowning man a straw.</p>
+
+<p>It was my great professional fortune that the medical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">{17}</a></span>
+staff of this hospital of more than a thousand cots was
+of a very high order of ability and experience, and that
+I entered at the beginning of a campaign in which for
+more than three months there was a fitful roar of
+artillery and rattle of musketry every day; hence a
+continuous influx to cots vacated by deaths or recoveries.</p>
+
+<p>In all respects it was the best equipped hospital for
+professional experience of any that I knew anything
+about. There was one rigid rule that I believe was
+not carried out in any other hospital: post-mortems in
+all cases, numbering from one to a dozen daily, and all
+made with a thoroughness I have never seen in private
+practice.</p>
+
+<p>The features of my hospital service that impressed
+me most were the post-mortem revelations and the
+diverse treatments for the same disease. I soon found
+that, no matter what the disease, every surgeon was a
+law to himself as to the quality, quantity, and times of
+his doses, with the mortality in the wards apparently
+about the same.</p>
+
+<p>Post-mortem examinations often revealed chronic
+diseases whose existence could not have been suspected
+during life, and yet had made death inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>Another advantage in army hospital practice was
+the stability of the position and the absence of the
+harassing anxiety of friends, thus affording the highest
+possibilities of the judgment and reason. And still
+another advantage was the high social relations exist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">{18}</a></span>ing
+between the medical officers, due to the absence of
+all causes for jealousy, neither the position nor salary
+depending on superior endowments or professional
+success.</p>
+
+<p>I was aware that, in spite of my lack of experience
+and the presence of a most painful sense of general
+insufficiency, my sick and wounded were about
+as safe in my hands from professional harm, even from
+the first, as the patients of the most experienced medical
+officer in the hospital.</p>
+
+<p>With high professional ideals, with no ability to
+make use of hazy conceptions or ideas, having no
+pride in knowledge that had not become my own, I
+began at once to reinforce myself from the experience
+and wisdom of my brother officers, whose advisory
+services were always readily and kindly rendered.</p>
+
+<p>From the first and all through my military service
+my severely sick had the advantage of all the borrowed
+skill and experience I could command. As for surgical
+operations, they were all performed in the presence
+of most of the medical staff, some of whom were of
+great experience.</p>
+
+<p>The surgery of the army hospitals of 1864 was of
+the highest character in skill and in careful attention
+to all the details involved, and the fatalities were generally
+due to the gravity of the wounds requiring operations
+and lack of constitutional power for recovery,
+rather than to the absence of the germ-killer. At that
+time the microbe was not a factor in the probabilities<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">{19}</a></span>
+of life or death. In all else the care of the wounds
+could hardly be surpassed.</p>
+
+<p>As for the medicinal treatment of my sick, it was
+unsatisfactory from first to last. After all the years
+since I cannot believe that, except for the relief of
+pain, any patient was made better by my dosage; and
+in all fatalities the post-mortem revealed the fact that
+the wisest dosage would have been without avail.</p>
+
+<p>But in the study of the history of disease as revealed
+by symptoms my hospital experience was invaluable.
+I have since found that my greatest service
+at the beds of the sick is as an interpreter of symptoms
+rather than a vender of drugs. The friends of the
+sick read indications for good or bad with wonderful
+acuteness, as a rule; and I have rarely found myself
+mistaken in my ability to read the condition of patients
+in the faces of the friends, even before I enter the
+rooms of the sick.</p>
+
+<p>As my experience enlarged so did my faith in
+Nature; and, since there was no similarity in the
+quality, sizes, and times of the doses for like diseases,
+my faith in mere remedies gradually declined.</p>
+
+<p>After a year and a half of large opportunities to
+study the diseases of men in the early prime of life,
+in the care of the simple surgery of shot and shell,
+I left the army with such familiarity with grave diseases
+and death in various forms as to enable me ever
+after to retain complete self-possession in the presence
+of dying beds in private practice.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">{20}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I began the general practice of medicine in Meadville
+in the autumn of 1866. Among the many physicians
+located in the city at that time were men of
+ability and large experience. There were those who
+administered with sublime faith doses too small for
+mathematical estimate; those who with equal faith administered
+boluses to the throat's capacity for deglutition;
+those who fully believed in whiskey as nourishment,
+that milk is liquid food, and who with tremendous
+faith and forceful hands administered both until
+human stomachs were reduced to barren wastes and
+death would result from starvation aggravated by
+disease.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the cases of disease that fall to the care of
+the physician are trivial, self-limited, and rapidly recover
+under even the most crucifying dosages; Nature
+really winning the victories, the physician carrying off
+the honors.</p>
+
+<p>This is so nearly true that it may be stated that,
+aside from the domain of surgery, professional success
+in the general sense depends upon the personal qualities
+and character of the physician rather than the
+achievements of the materia medica.</p>
+
+<p>People have a confidence in the power of medicine
+to cure disease scarcely less than the dusky warrior has
+in the Indian medicine-lodge of the Western wilderness,
+and a confidence about as void of reason.</p>
+
+<p>The physician goes into the rooms of the sick held
+to the severest accountability in the matter of dosage;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">{21}</a></span>
+and the larger his own faith in medicines the greater
+his task; and, if he is of my own, the so-called "old
+school," or Allopathic, the more dangerous he is to the
+curing efforts of Nature.</p>
+
+<p>With the people the disease is simply an attack, and
+not the summing up of the results of violated laws
+going on perhaps from birth. With the people the
+symptoms are merely evidences of destruction, and not
+the visible efforts to restore the normal condition.
+Hence the failures to relieve always raise more or less
+questioning, among friends in painful concern, as to
+the ability of the physician to discharge his grave
+duties.</p>
+
+<p>This unreasoning, unreasonable "blind faith" in
+remedial means is as strong in the most intelligent as
+in the most ignorant, and it has ever given me more
+trouble than the care of the sick. Another serious
+complication of the sick-room arises from near-by
+friends who are very certain that their own physicians
+are better fitted by far for the serious work of prescribing
+for the sick.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to the serious work of attacking the
+symptoms of disease as so many foes to life, there is
+also a care as to what unbidden food shall go into unbidden
+stomachs, that the system shall be supported
+while life seems to be in the hands of its greatest
+enemy.</p>
+
+<p>The universal conception of disease as a foe to life,
+and not as a rational process of cure; the boundless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">{22}</a></span>
+faith in remedies as means to resist the attack, revealed
+by symptoms, makes the professional care of the sick
+the gravest of all human occupations, and the most
+trying to both head and heart.</p>
+
+<p>With all these taxing conditions confronting me, I
+opened an office in a field which seemed to be more
+than occupied by men of large experience.</p>
+
+<p>With all my army experience I still had a hazy conception
+as to Nature in disease. That the vital forces
+needed the support of all the food the stomach of the
+sick could dispose of, was not a question of the remotest
+consideration. That medicine did in some way
+act to cure disease I could not fully question.</p>
+
+<p>I was now to enter a service in which, from the care
+of infancy in its first breathings to old age in its last,
+every resource of the materia medica, of the reason,
+judgment, and of the soul itself, was to be called in
+in every grave case, and to be held to a responsibility
+measured by preposterous faith in medicines.</p>
+
+<p>I entered upon my duties with a determination to
+win professional success by the most thorough attention
+to all the details of service upon the sick and their
+friends, and I confined my efforts almost wholly to
+acute cases. None of my professional colleagues were
+winning laurels by the treatment of chronic diseases,
+and not having faith in drugs for such I had my
+scruples about fees for failures that seemed inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>And yet with the most painstaking service fortune
+would play with me at times in the most heartless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">{23}</a></span>
+manner. At one time four of my adult patients were
+awaiting burial within the radius of a half mile. As
+they were all physical wrecks, and died after short illnesses,
+there could be no question raised in any just
+sense as to the character of my services, but the fatalities
+were scored against me. Such fortune would be
+annihilating but for the fatalities inevitable with all
+practitioners.</p>
+
+<p>For full ten years I visited the sick and dosed them
+according to the books, but with far less force of hands
+and faith than any of my brethren, and all were enjoined
+to take nourishment to keep up the strength for
+the combat with disease.</p>
+
+<p>My doses were confined to only a few Sampsons of
+the materia medica, and these were administered with
+a watching for favorable results that could hardly be
+surpassed, and yet always with disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>I was innocent enough to believe that a large practice
+could only be built up by the most painstaking and
+persistent effort; later on I found that a large practice
+was but little dependent upon the skill and learning
+displayed in the sick-room. One physician could immediately
+secure a large patronage because she was a
+woman; another, because he belonged to this or that
+nationality, or there was something in the personal outfit
+rather than in the professional that incited large hopes
+for the ailing.</p>
+
+<p>In all my cases of acute sickness there was always
+a wasting of the body no matter how much they were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">{24}</a></span>
+fed; a like increase of general strength when a normal
+desire for food occurred no matter how little they were
+fed. I saw this with eyesight only; but I saw with insight
+that a large practice could be carried on by doctors
+too ignorant to know that there was an alphabet
+in medical science.</p>
+
+<p>I was not then so fully aware of the depths of ignorance
+among the people as to what cures disease,
+did not know that faith in doses was so large, as child-like
+even with the most cultured as with the ignorant.
+I was not so well aware, as I became later, that the
+physician himself must have such energy of faith in
+the materia medica as to reveal it in every line of his
+countenance when in the rooms of the sick.</p>
+
+<p>As the years went on, my faith in remedies did not
+increase; but I had to dose to meet the superstitious
+needs of the people. My practice, though far short of
+what it seemed to merit from the pains bestowed upon
+it, was large enough for all the needs of profitable
+study had I been in a condition for thought and reflection.
+It was not to my encouragement that there were
+those doing a far larger business with doses simply
+crucifying, and because crucifying, a far larger attendance
+was the direct result.</p>
+
+<p>I now see, as I did not then so clearly, that Nature's
+victories are often won against the desperate odds of
+treatments that are simply barbarous; and yet Nature
+is so powerful, so persistent in the attempts to right all
+her wrongs, that she wins the victory in the great ma<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">{25}</a></span>jority
+of cases no matter how severely she may be
+taxed with means that hinder. The great majority of
+the severely sick of a hundred years ago recovered in
+spite of the bloody lancet and treatments that are the
+barbarism of to-day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">{26}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>I was called one day to one of the families of the
+poorest of the poor, where I found a sick case that for
+once in my life set me to thinking. The patient was a
+sallow, overgrown girl in early maturity, with a history
+of several months of digestive and other troubles. I
+found a very sick patient, so sick that for a period of
+three weeks not even one drink of water was retained,
+not one dose of medicine, and it was not until several
+more days that water could be borne. When finally
+water could be retained my patient seemed brighter in
+mind, the complexion was clearer, and she seemed actually
+stronger. As for the tongue, which at first was
+heavily coated, the improvement was striking; while
+the breath, utterly foul at first, was strikingly less
+offensive. In every way the patient was very much
+better.</p>
+
+<p>I was so surprised at this that I determined at once
+to let the good work go on on Nature's own terms,
+and so it did until about the thirty-fifth day, when
+there was a call, not for the undertaker, but for food, a
+call that marked the close of the disease. The pulse
+and temperature had become normal, and there was a
+tongue as clean as the tongue of a nursing infant.</p>
+
+<p>Up to this time this was the most severely sick case<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">{27}</a></span>
+I ever had that recovered, and yet with not apparently
+more wasting of the body than with other cases of as
+protracted sickness in which more or less food was
+given and retained. And all this with only water for
+thirst until hunger came and a <i>complete cure</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Such ignoring of medical faith and practice, of the
+accumulated wisdom and experience of all medical
+history, I had never seen before. Had the patient
+been able to take both food and medicine, and I had
+prohibited, and by chance death had occurred, I would
+have been held guilty of actually putting the patient to
+death&mdash;death from starvation. Feed, feed the sick
+whether or not, say all the doctors, say all the books,
+to support strength or to keep life in the body, and
+yet Nature was absurd enough to ignore all human
+practice evolved from experience, and in her own way
+to support vital power while curing the disease.</p>
+
+<p>I could recall a great many cases in which because
+of intense aversion to food patients had been sick for
+many days, and even weeks, with not enough nourishment
+taken to account for the support of vital power;
+but the fact did not raise a question with me.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of this case upon my mind was so profound
+that I began to apply the same methods in
+Nature to other patients, and with the same general
+results. The body, of course, would waste during the
+time of sickness; but so did the bodies of sick that
+were fed. As for medicines, they were utterly ignored
+except where pain was to be relieved, though unmedi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">{28}</a></span>cated
+doses were alike a necessity with all. Not a
+single medicine was given except for pain, and occasionally
+in cases in which I had reason to think the entire
+digestive tract needed a general clearing of foul
+sewage. Thence on, that supreme work, the cure
+of disease, in my hands became the work of Nature
+only.</p>
+
+<p>In a general practice I was able to carry out the
+non-feeding plan by permitting the various meat teas
+or the cereal broths, none of which can be taken by
+the severely sick in quantities to do harm. By withholding
+milk I was enabled to secure all the fasting
+Nature required, while satisfying the ever-anxious
+friends with tea and broth diversions.</p>
+
+<p>This was a line of investigation that I felt ought to
+be of the deepest interest to every thinking, high-minded
+physician, to every intelligent layman; and
+very early the evidences of the utility of withholding
+food from the sick during the entire time of absence of
+desire for it, its absolute safety, were beyond any questioning.</p>
+
+<p>I had no fatalities that were apparently in any way
+due to the enforced lack of food. In cases of chronic
+disease in which death was inevitable, such as cancer,
+consumption, etc., patients were permitted to take what
+they could with the least offence to the sense of relish.
+In every case of recovery there was a history of increasing
+general strength as the disease declined, of
+an actual increase of vital power without the support<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">{29}</a></span>
+of food that had no more relish than the dose that
+crucified the nerves of taste.</p>
+
+<p>In all America milk is the chief reliance to support
+vital power when no other food can be taken. Milk in
+one stage of normal digestion gets into the form of
+tough curds ready for the press, and curds should
+always be thoroughly masticated before swallowing.</p>
+
+<p>Sir William Roberts, of England, in his exhaustive
+work on <i>Digestion and Diet</i>, asserts that milk-curds
+are not digested in the stomach during sickness, but
+are forced into the duodenum, where, he asserts, they
+are digested, but he gives no reason for his faith
+that there is power to digest in the duodenum where
+there is none in the stomach.</p>
+
+<p>It was not difficult to make the mothers in the
+homes understand that taking milk by the drink was
+equivalent to swallowing green cheese-curds without
+due mastication.</p>
+
+<p>With these hygienic conceptions and methods I
+continued to visit the sick as a mere witness of Nature's
+power in disease rather than as an investigator, yet
+without being able to understand the secret of the
+support of vital power without food. But whatever
+risk there might be, or how strong my faith when my
+patrons were the subjects of what might be called foolhardy
+experiments, there came a time when this faith
+was to have the severest of all tests.</p>
+
+<p>An epidemic of diphtheria broke out among my
+nearest neighbors, and after four deaths in as many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">{30}</a></span>
+families within a stone's throw of my residence a son
+of mine aged three years was taken. I had never given
+him in all his life even a cross look, and whatever sin
+there was in making idols of children in this I was the
+worst of all sinners, and I did not quite believe, as
+some Christian folks would have me, that my happiness
+through him was not the very incense of gratitude to
+the great Author for the gift of such a treasure of the
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>In my hour of trial two of my ablest and most experienced
+medical friends came to me. Quinine and
+iron in solution were their verdict&mdash;and the little throat
+was not copper-lined; and, in addition, all the strong
+whiskey possible to force into the stomach: all this
+would have required manacled wrists and the prying
+apart of set jaws. He had never received anything
+from me more violent than caresses, and this abomination
+of dosage was to be sent down a bleeding, ulcerated
+way, over raw surfaces that would writhe and quiver
+under the added torture. This would not be rational
+treatment for ulcerations on the body, and the loss of
+strength through resistance and structural injury to
+the throat had no promise of redemption except in the
+minds of my medical friends.</p>
+
+<p>It happened that I left home without getting the
+prescription filled, and, not getting back as soon as
+expected, the anxious wife procured the medicines and
+succeeded in getting one dose into the stomach, and
+also in raising a nervous hurricane that took an hour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">{31}</a></span>
+to allay. She was then informed that such a dose
+would be cruel even to a horse. Thence on he took
+nothing into his stomach but the water that thirst
+compelled, and a little dosage with it to meet the
+mother's need; and so I stood beside the suffering
+idol of my heart, with the entire medical world against
+me&mdash;strong enough, only rejoicing in my strength to
+defend him against the barbarism of authorized treatment.
+My only comfort was that in his time of supreme
+need I could give him supreme kindness, and if
+death must come there would not be the additional
+laceration of avoidable cruelty inflicted; and Nature,
+with every possible aid that could add comfort to the
+suffering body, won the victory.</p>
+
+<p>Since then the medical world has advanced to antitoxin
+as a specific, leaving me nearly alone to plodding
+ways that are by sight and not by faith. That the
+treatment of my sick son in the absence of the only
+supposed specific was in advance of my time, the medical
+world cannot now question.</p>
+
+<p>As the months and years went on, it so happened
+that all my fatalities were of a character as not to involve
+in the least suggestions of starvation, while the
+recoveries were a series of demonstrations as clear as
+anything in mathematics, of evolving strength of all
+the muscles, of all the senses and faculties, as the
+disease declined. No physician whose practice has
+been extensive has failed to have had cases in which
+the same changes occurred, and in which the amount<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">{32}</a></span>
+of food taken did not explain this general increase of
+strength.</p>
+
+<p>Believing I had made a most important discovery in
+physiology, one that would revolutionize the dietetic
+treatment of the sick, if not ultimately abolish it, my
+visits to the sick became of unsurpassed interest, I
+watched every possible change as an unfolding of new
+life, seeing the physical changes only as I would see
+the swelling buds evolve into the leaves or flowers,
+reading the soul- and mind-changes in the more radiant
+lines of expression.</p>
+
+<p>I saw all these things with the naked eye, and more
+and more marvelled at the bulk of our materia medicas,
+the size of our drug-stores, and the space given to
+healing powers in all public and medical prints.</p>
+
+<p>For years I saw my patients grow into the strength
+of health without the slightest clue to the mystery,
+until I chanced to open a new edition of Yeo's <i>Physiology</i>
+at the page where I found this table of the estimated
+losses that occur in death after starvation:</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>Fat</td><td align='left'>97</td><td align='left'>per cent.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Muscle</td><td align='left'>30</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Liver</td><td align='left'>56</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Spleen</td><td align='left'>63</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Blood</td><td align='left'>17</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Nerve-centres</td><td align='right'>&nbsp;0</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>And light came as if the sun had suddenly appeared
+in the zenith at midnight. Instantly I saw in human
+bodies a vast reserve of predigested food, with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">{33}</a></span>
+brain in possession of power so to absorb as to maintain
+structural integrity in the absence of food or
+power to digest it. This eliminated the brain entirely
+as an organ that needs to be fed or that can be fed
+from light-diet kitchens in times of acute sickness.
+Only in this self-feeding power of the brain is found
+the explanation of its functional clearness where bodies
+have become skeletons.</p>
+
+<p>I could now go into the rooms of the sick with a
+formula that explained all the mysteries of the maintenance
+and support of vital power and cure of disease,
+and that was of practical avail. I now knew that
+there could be no death from starvation until the body
+was reduced to the skeleton condition; that therefore
+for structural integrity, for functional clearness, the
+brain has no need of food when disease has abolished
+the desire for it. Is there any other way to explain
+the power to make wills with whispering lips in the
+very hour of death, even in the last moments of life,
+that the law recognizes as valid?</p>
+
+<p>I could now know that to die of starvation is a
+matter not of days, but of weeks and months; certainly
+a period far beyond the average time of recovery from
+acute disease.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">{34}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>There fell to my care a very much worn-out mother,
+who took to her bed with an attack of inflammatory
+rheumatism, with the joints so involved as to require
+the handling of a trained nurse. The agony was such
+that the hypodermic needle was required to make existence
+endurable, and it was used with the idea that the
+brain would be less injured by the remedy than by
+the agony with its inevitable loss of sleep.</p>
+
+<p>I know of no disease in which treatment has been
+more savage than in this. The remedies in common use
+at that time were mainly new and of supposed specific
+powers; but they were so violent, and proved to be so
+futile, that they have all been given up since by the
+majority of the profession.</p>
+
+<p>As the days went on the disease declined in spite of
+the enforced comfort through the needle; there were
+easier movements, a clearing of the skin from sallow
+to a tint of redness, and finally, after a month, the armchair
+could be used for a change.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of the forty-sixth day there was
+revealed in the face the perfect color of health, and
+happiness marked every line of the expression. There
+was ability to walk through several rooms of her
+home. But it was not until the afternoon that the first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">{35}</a></span>
+food was desired and taken, and never before was plain
+bread and butter, the supreme objects of desire, so
+relished. In the following few months there was an
+actual gain of forty pounds.</p>
+
+<p>My next marked case is a wonderful illustration of
+the self-feeding power of the brain to meet an emergency,
+and a revelation, also, of the possible limitations
+of the starvation period. This was the case of a
+frail, spare boy of four years, whose stomach was so disorganized
+by a drink of solution of caustic potash that
+not even a swallow of water could be retained. He
+died on the seventy-fifth day of his fast, with the mind
+clear to the last hour, and with apparently nothing of
+the body left but bones, ligaments, and a thin skin;
+and yet the brain had lost neither weight nor functional
+clearness.</p>
+
+<p>In another city a similar accident happened to a
+child of about the same age, in whom it took three
+months for the brain to exhaust entirely the available
+body-food.</p>
+
+<p>I will now enter upon a study of the brain and its
+powers along these lines, to be enlivened by illustrative
+evidence. What reason and physiology had I with me
+that I should use methods in the sick-room wherein
+the entire medical world was against me, and with
+severest condemnation?</p>
+
+<p>The head is the power-house of the human plant,
+with the brain the dynamo as the source of every possible
+human energy. We think, love, hate, admire,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">{36}</a></span>
+labor with our hands, taste, hear, smell, see, and feel
+through the brain. Broken bones and wounds heal,
+diseases are cured through energy evolved in the brain
+or the brain system as a whole. The other so-called
+vital organs and the muscles are only as so many machines
+that are run by the brain power, with the stomach
+an exceedingly important machine. That powers
+so rare do not originate in the bones, ligaments, muscles,
+or fats, does not need argument; that when the nerve-trunks
+that supply the arm or leg are severed power
+of movement and feeling is lost, is known to all; and
+equally would the power of the stomach be abolished
+were the nerve-trunks cut off. In a general way, then,
+it may be stated that the strength of the body is directly
+as the strength of the brain.</p>
+
+<p>With this physiology, who in or out of the medical
+profession can fail to see clearly that the digestion of
+even an atom of food is a tax upon the strength of the
+brain for whatever of power needed by the stomach, the
+machine, for this purpose? Unless it can be proved
+that the stomach has powers not derived from the brain
+system, this will have to be admitted.</p>
+
+<p>How is the strength kept up in the light of this
+physiology? The universal belief is that it is kept up
+by the daily food. In proportion to the prostration of
+sickness, so are physicians anxious to conserve the
+energies by working the stomach to the limit of its
+powers.</p>
+
+<p>The impression that there must be something di<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">{37}</a></span>gested
+to support the vitality of the system is a belief,
+a conviction that has always been too self-evident to
+suggest a doubt.</p>
+
+<p>If the well need food to keep up the strength, the
+sick need it all the more; this is the logic that has
+been displayed upon this question. Let us keep it clear
+in mind that, if the nerves going to the stomach are
+severed, paralysis will result as in the case of the arm,
+in order more definitely to conceive the stomach as a
+<i>machine</i> that requires power to run it even to a tiringout
+degree. This is strikingly illustrated by the exhausted
+feeling that invites the after-dinner nap for rest, which,
+however, does not rest overfilled stomachs, overfilled
+brains. The brain gets no rest while getting rid of food-masses
+with more of decomposition than of digestion.</p>
+
+<p>If food really has power to keep up the strength,
+there should not be so much strength lost by the general
+activities&mdash;indeed, it would seem that fatigue should
+be impossible. But the fact remains that from the first
+wink in the morning to the last at night there is a
+gradual decline of strength no matter how much food
+is taken, nor how ample the powers of digestion; and
+that there comes a time with all when they must go
+to bed, and not to the dining-room, to recover lost
+strength. The loss of a night of sleep is never made
+up by any kind of care in eating on the following day,
+and none are so stupid as not to know that rest is the
+only means to recover from the exhaustion of excessive
+physical activity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">{38}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The brain is not only a self-feeding organ when
+necessary, but it is also a self-charging dynamo, regaining
+its exhausted energies entirely through rest
+and sleep. There is no movement so light, no thought
+or motion so trivial, that it does not cost brain power
+in its action&mdash;and this is true of even the slightest
+exercise of energy evolved in digestion.</p>
+
+<p>Why, then, do we eat?</p>
+
+<p>For two reasons, or perhaps three: we eat because
+we are hungry. We rarely fail to eat excessively to
+satisfy the sense of relish after the normal hunger
+sense has been dissipated; we may eat to satisfy relish
+as we eat ice cream, fruits, and the enticing extras that
+beguile us to put more food into the stomach after it
+is already overfilled for its working capacity. But our
+actual need of food, the best reason for taking it, is to
+make up for the wastes from the general activities;
+and this is a process in the order of Nature that actually
+tires the entire brain system, or, in the common
+phrase, the whole body, unless the stomach has powers
+not derived from the brain system.</p>
+
+<p>Now as we need not, cannot feed the brain in time
+of sickness, what can we feed? In all diseases in which
+there are a high pulse and temperature, pain or discomfort,
+aversion to food, a foul, dry mouth and tongue,
+thirst, etc., wasting of the body goes on, no matter
+what the feeding, until a clean, moist tongue and mouth
+and hunger mark the close of the disease, when food
+can be taken with relish and digested. This makes it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">{39}</a></span>
+clearly evident that we cannot save the muscles and
+fat by feeding under these adverse conditions.</p>
+
+<p>Another very important, unquestioned fact is that
+disease in proportion to its severity means a loss of digestive
+conditions and of digestive power.</p>
+
+<p>Cheer is to digestion what the breeze is to the fire.
+It may well be conceived that there are electric nerve
+wires extending from the depths of the soul itself to
+each individual gland of the stomach, with the highest
+cheer or ecstacy to stimulate the highest functional activity,
+or the shock of bad news to paralyze. From
+cheer to despair, from the slightest sense of discomfort
+to the agony of lacerated nerves, digestive power goes
+down. Affected thus, digestive power wanes or increases,
+goes down or up, as mercury in a barometer
+from weather conditions.</p>
+
+<p>Digestive conditions in their maximum are revealed
+in the school-yard during recess, when Nature seems
+busy recovering lost time.</p>
+
+<p>How compares the ramble of a June morning, with
+the blue and sunshine all above, the matchless green
+of the trees, and all the air fragrant with the perfume
+of flowers and alive with music from the winged singer,
+in digestive conditions, with those in the rooms of the
+sick, where there is only distress felt in the body and
+seen in the faces of the friends?</p>
+
+<p>In time of health, if we eat when we are not hungry,
+or when very tired, or in any mental worriment,
+we find that we suffer a loss of vital power, of both<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">{40}</a></span>
+physical and mental energy. How, then, can food be
+a support to vital power when the brain is more gravely
+depressed by disease? Yet from the morning of medical
+history the question of how vital power is supported
+in time of sickness has never been considered,
+because there has never been any doubt as to the support
+coming from food. I assume this to be a fact,
+since all works on the practice of medicine of to-day
+enjoin the need to feed the sick to sustain their depressed
+energies&mdash;all this without a question as to
+whether there is not a possibility of adding indigestion
+to disease when food is enforced against Nature's fiat.</p>
+
+<p>Since vital power is centred in the brain, do we need
+to feed, can we feed, for other than brain reasons?
+This physiology admitted, there is no other conclusion
+possible than that feeding the sick is a tax on vital
+power when we need all that power to cure disease.</p>
+
+<p>With all this physiology behind me, for more than a
+score of years I have been going into the rooms of
+the sick to see the evolutions of health from disease,
+as I see the evolutions from the dead wastes of March
+to the affluence of June, and from the first I had the
+exceeding advantage of being able to study the natural
+history of disease, a history in which none of the
+symptoms were aggravated by digestive disturbances.</p>
+
+<p>As there was no wasting of vital power in the hopeless
+effort to save the body from wasting, I had a clear
+right to presume that my patients recovered more rapidly
+and with less suffering. With no perplexing study<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">{41}</a></span>
+over what foods and what medicines to give, I could
+devote my entire attention to the study of symptoms
+as evidences of progress toward recovery or death;
+and in addition to all this there was the great satisfaction
+of being strictly in line with Nature as to when
+and what to eat.</p>
+
+<p>As to the danger of death from mere starvation, the
+following remarkable case reveals how remote it is in
+the ordinary history of acute diseases. The late Rev.
+Dr. Merchant, of Meadville, Pa., a short time before
+his death, which occurred some months ago, informed
+me that a brother entered the army during the War of
+the Rebellion with a weight of one hundred and fifty-nine
+pounds. He was sent home so wasted from ulceration
+of stomach and bowels that he actually spanned
+his thigh with thumb and finger. He lived ten days
+only, to astonish all by the clearness of his mind even
+on the last day of his life, when he could think on
+abstruse questions as he had never been known to do
+in health. At death his body weighed only sixty
+pounds.</p>
+
+<p>It was Dr. Merchant's opinion, from a history of the
+case, that no food was digested during the last four
+months of his life; but it is my opinion that it took a
+much longer time than this for the brain to absorb
+more than ninety pounds of the body. That life was
+shortened by the more rapid loss of the tissues from
+the disease is to be taken into account in estimating
+time in starvation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">{42}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Feeding the sick! Who that rule in kitchens and
+feed the well do not realize with weariness of brain the
+demands of the stomach that at each meal there shall
+be some change in the bill of fare?</p>
+
+<p>The chief reliance of physicians for the maintenance
+of strength while sick bodies are being cured is milk.
+As a food, milk was mainly destined for the calf, and
+not for man&mdash;certainly not after the coming of the
+molars. It is not a food that will start the saliva in
+case of hunger, as the odors from the frying-pan or
+from roasting fowl, yet because it plays such an important
+part as a complete food for some months in the
+life of the calf, and because it can be taken without
+especial aversion when the odors of the cooking-stove
+are an offence to the nostrils; it is given by the hour,
+day after day, and in some cases week after week; and
+there are physicians by the thousands who reinforce
+this inflexible bill of fare by the strongest alcoholics,
+whiskey being generally selected.</p>
+
+<p>In this connection I shall say of alcoholics that they
+contain not an atom that can be converted into living
+atoms; they congest and irritate the stomach, and
+hence lessen digestive power; and benumb all the
+brain powers and faculties.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">{43}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As a daily ration without change, this combination,
+strictly adhered to, would prostrate the energies of a
+giant, and he would find himself mustered out of all
+active service in less time than the hapless sick are
+often compelled to endure such feeding. Does Nature
+so conveniently reverse herself to meet an emergency
+that the sick can be built up and sustained by such
+feeding as would debilitate the well?</p>
+
+<p>In the city where I live the physicians average well
+in learning, ability, character, and experience. Among
+them are the extremists in dosage: those with a hundred
+remedies for a hundred symptoms; others with
+such boluses as would writhe the face of an ox. There
+are some with extraordinary force of command in the
+rooms of the sick, who believe that whiskey is nourishing
+and that milk is liquid food; that doses go into
+human stomachs to travel the rounds of the circulation,
+and finally drop off at the right place for either
+patchwork or original work.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever there is in drugs to cure disease, whatever
+in milk and the strongest alcoholics to sustain the
+strength, every protracted case has been made to
+reveal in their forceful hands. I have no reason to
+believe they exceeded authorized treatments. I have
+no reason to doubt that in all countries, in all lands,
+where there are educated physicians, the same appliances
+are in common use, appliances that will make
+the next short step from the lancet and bolus of a
+darker age the estimate of the time to come.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">{44}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The treatments of the sick are always changing,
+while the process of cure remains the same. Only in
+the case of broken bones are we compelled to let
+Nature do all the curing, while we may take pride in
+some progress in the mechanical appliances.</p>
+
+<p>As milk and stimulants are a common, authorized
+means to sustain the sick, and as they are poured into
+human stomachs with all the faith with which lancets
+were once forced into congested veins, their efficiency
+for good or evil must be studied by comparison.</p>
+
+<p>Treatments must lessen both the severity and the
+duration of disease to be of permanent benefit. For a
+study by comparison, this opportunity came to me.
+There was a call to attend a case of typhoid fever in a
+young girl. In the same vicinity there had been under
+the care of one of my forceful brethren a woman in
+middle life, whose stomach was habitually rejecting all
+the milk and alcoholics poured into it, the doctor
+having a theory that good would result no matter how
+brief the time they were retained.</p>
+
+<p>For a month my patient swallowed only the desired
+water and doses which did not corrode, a desire for
+food coming at the end of the month. The only day
+and night nurse was an overwrought mother, who got
+into bed with the same disease as soon as the daughter
+got out of it. There was another month of severer
+sickness, when without food and without the horror of
+dosage, as before, the call for food marked the close
+of the disease. My services ended here some days<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">{45}</a></span>
+before the undertaker took charge of the doctor's
+case.</p>
+
+<p>A girl in her later teens, with a mild, so-called malarial
+fever, fell into the same forceful care. There was
+a true history in this case of nearly two gallons of
+whiskey, and daily milk from the quart at first down to
+inability to take the least nourishment at last. Then
+there were more than a month of days when vital power
+sustained itself without the ways of violence, death
+occurring during the <i>nineteenth week</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The ravenous brain had absorbed the lips to such
+thinness that the depressions between the teeth were
+clearly revealed. From the first dose to the last breath
+this was a case of dying, and the most persistent fight
+for life against immense odds I have ever become
+aware of in an acute case. In this case the stomach
+had become so seared by the alcoholic that digestion
+was impossible, as would have been the case in a body
+that was not sick.</p>
+
+<p>Near this home there was a more delicate girl of
+about the same age taken with the same fever; but
+with mild dosage and no food&mdash;in Nature's care&mdash;hunger
+came at the close of the fourth week.</p>
+
+<p>Later on in the same family there was a case of la
+grippe, in which for several years there had been
+chronic, ulcerative bronchitis that bid defiance to blisters
+and inhalations, the various specifics of another
+forceful predecessor, who also was a believer in large
+doses and full rations of alcoholized milk.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">{46}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The coughing was so persistent, so continuous, that
+only the hypodermic needle met the need. To prevent
+the tearing of a raw surface in the bronchial
+tubes by the cough was as necessary as to apply
+splints to a broken bone. There was no food for six
+weeks, and Nature made most of her opportunity, not
+only to cure the acute disease, but also the chronic
+disease, which for nearly ten years since has remained
+cured.</p>
+
+<p>I was summoned to Asheville, N. C., to see a young
+man in the last stage of consumption. I found him
+nearly a skeleton, though he had been eating six times
+daily for several months by the decree of a really
+learned physician. The belchings from gas were loud
+and frequent; the sputa by actual measure was about
+six ounces during every twenty-four hours.</p>
+
+<p>A fast was ordered, and on the third day a mass of
+undigested food was thrown up. As soon as the stomach
+and bowels became empty there was comfort all
+along the line, and the cough was so diminished, that
+less than an ounce of sputa was raised in twenty-four
+hours.</p>
+
+<p>After a week of fasting there came a natural desire
+for food, and thence on he enjoyed without distress of
+stomach all he wished to take. Thence on he lived
+with only the least discomfort, and with whispering
+lips he dictated to me his will, conveying large property.
+He could look with meaning when the power to whisper
+was gone, and life ended as the going out of a candle.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">{47}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>For months his sufferings had nearly all been due to
+food masses in a state of decomposition. He saw
+clearly and mentioned often that his had been a case
+of starvation from overfeeding. Nature finally had to
+succumb because she was not also able to deal with a
+clearly avoidable disease, indigestion; but she kept up
+a brave fight until the body was nearly absorbed.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the stomach and bowels became empty
+the friends noticed that nervousness largely disappeared.
+His sleeps were much longer, because not
+broken by coughing as before; and as the brain was
+not taxed with food masses there was an accumulation
+of power that was clearly revealed in the cheer of expression
+and a calmness as if heavenly rest had come
+at last.</p>
+
+<p>A few years ago an attorney in this city had to
+endure a course of fever to which was added all the
+known barbarism of the times. Under enforced food
+and stimulants his mind at last became so weak that
+the dosings were forced down his throat. There were
+many weeks of life at lowest ebb before the man of
+torture (the doctor) was compelled to discontinue his
+evil work, and there were then months, extending to
+years, during which there appeared a colorless ghost
+of his former self on the streets&mdash;and this in spite of a
+wood-chopper's daily eatings, which were far in excess
+of power to digest.</p>
+
+<p>At last he was brought to his couch with a mild
+fever complicated with a variety of other ailings. Not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">{48}</a></span>
+one of his friends who knew him intimately expected
+his recovery, as it was believed by them that there were
+chronic conditions that were beyond cure, and this because
+there had been death in manner, movements, and
+looks for months. And yet he had been able to take
+a stomach to his office every morning for many weeks
+filled with pancakes, sausage, fried potatoes, etc., only
+to shiver before the stove between his stomach-fillings.</p>
+
+<p>To this possibly hopeless case I was called, and
+from that time he was to suffer only from the disease.
+For nearly three weeks no food was called for; and yet
+power so increased that he became able to dress himself;
+and on the morning before hunger finally called
+for food he came down from his bedroom with a son
+on his back who weighed not less than seventy-five
+pounds. Thence on, life, color, mind, muscle, rapidly
+came until there was such regeneration as to reveal a
+new body and a new soul.</p>
+
+<p>Some years before this event an only son was taken
+sick with a mild fever. A young physician and friend
+of the patient was called whose faith in drugs, milk,
+and whiskey was boundless. He was fresh from his
+university, and therefore Nature had no part, through
+experience at the sick-bed, in the cure of disease. For
+many weeks these remedies of torture were vigorously
+and persistently enforced. But the time came when
+Nature would bear no longer. The father, a personal
+friend, came to see me simply to unburden himself, and
+as he was not able to give me the case I was unpro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">{49}</a></span>fessional
+enough to advise that the attendance should
+go on, but that there should be a complete rest the
+physician should not know of. This was done, and in
+a few days there was a call for food, the first call in
+more than two months. Of course, there was a recovery,
+which was an exceeding victory for Nature against
+extraordinarily adverse conditions, but it required many
+months to restore the wrecked balance.</p>
+
+<p>As I write this experience the following comes to
+me as a still stronger indictment against authorized
+medical method. A. B., when in the early maturity
+of his physical manhood, was stricken with a partial
+paralysis that sent him to his bed. It was simply the
+case of a wound of the brain requiring rest as the chief
+condition for cure. But milk, whiskey, and drugs
+were used with the greatest persistence, and after three
+months he became able to be about, no less feeble
+in mind than in body, and with teeth utterly ruined by
+the dosage. For fully five years he went about his
+home and along the streets as one in a dream. For
+ten years there was inability to attend to his ordinary
+business. Life came at last through the no-breakfast
+plan.</p>
+
+<p>The most remarkable fight for life on the part of
+Nature against the adverse conditions of drugs, alcoholics,
+and milk I have ever known was in the following
+case: A spare woman, of perhaps forty years,
+came to her bed the victim of habitual bromidia and
+chloral, invited by severe headaches. The treatment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">{50}</a></span>
+of this case was as follows: whiskey every hour, milk
+every other hour; corrosive medication and powerful
+brain sedative every night, which would have paralyzed
+digestive energy for many days. There was not an
+hour during the twenty-four in which there was not
+dosing either to cure the disease or to sustain the system.
+The average quantity of whiskey was six ounces
+daily, and of milk nearly a quart. This treatment
+was borne for weeks, merging into months. There
+was no disease not caused by the treatments, and the
+battle went on until there was only the shadow of a
+woman left when Nature rebelled against further violence.
+A few days of peace were granted because hope
+had departed; but it took Nature more than a year to
+recover from the damage.</p>
+
+<p>A man of iron and steel, in the early prime of life,
+was the victim of a severe injury. With the agony of
+lacerated nerves and the hypodermic needle to make
+the digestion of food impossible, milk and whiskey
+were poured into an unwilling stomach from the first,
+and both were used until neither could be retained;
+and then the lower bowel was extemporized into a stomach.
+For one hundred and forty-six days, from three
+to seven doses of morphine were put into the arm
+daily; and morphine dries both mouth and stomach
+and lessens all energies of the brain. The body itself
+was not sick; there was no hint of disease in it; yet
+there were drugs prescribed that cost dollars
+by the score, and there were alcoholics by the gallon. For<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">{51}</a></span>
+months the pain, alcoholics, and morphine kept the
+mind in such a daze that there were only the imbecilic
+mutterings of a dreamer in trouble.</p>
+
+<p>The only treatment indicated in this case was the
+best of surgery for the injury, and some easing doses
+for a short while at first, to relieve pain. No food would
+be desired or digested; so the fast would go on until
+there would be a natural hunger, which would only
+manifest itself when there would be marked relief from
+pain. The meals, thence on, would be so far apart that
+all would be keenly relished; and there could be no
+loss of weight when meals would be so taken.</p>
+
+<p>It is not surprising when I say that a seared stomach
+and a brain converted into a whiskey pickle had no
+part in the digestion of milk: else why did the weight
+of one hundred and sixty pounds at the time of the
+accident fall to eighty-five at the time of hunger? And
+all this drugging and alcoholics for a man who was not
+really sick! and the bill of fare that was not changed
+during one hundred and sixty days! and the time lost,
+and the expense entailed, and the anxious, aching
+hearts that were nearest the bed of horrors&mdash;of horrors,
+torments clearly invited.</p>
+
+<p>By way of contrast the following case is given.
+During vacation a lad of twelve years of one of my
+families took to his bed with appendicitis in severe
+form. A learned physician was called, and there were
+many days of morphine, with other medication and
+all the food that could be coaxed into an unwilling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">{52}</a></span>
+stomach. Enough morphine was given daily to paralyze
+digestive energy for at least two or three days in
+one in ordinary health. There was a month of this
+war against Nature, when the violence of the acute
+attack subsided and a partial victory was gained
+against great odds.</p>
+
+<p>On my return I found him under heavy dosage for
+the recovery of strength and lost appetite. Colorless,
+an&aelig;mic, languid&mdash;he was barely able to walk. He
+was immediately put under my care, and therefore
+under a fast that ended in a few days in such hunger
+as had not been felt in several months; and color,
+cheer, energy, weight evolved in a month. But there
+was also a developing abscess deep in the groin, and
+the time came when a grave operation was necessary
+to save life. He was made ready for the surgeon's
+knife that cut its way down, down many inches to relieve
+walls ready to burst from the tension. The
+wound remained in the care of the surgeon, but the
+life in my care. Who deny that the an&aelig;sthetic, the
+shock of the operation, and the subsequent pain will
+not abolish all power to digest as well as all the desire
+for food? Here was a patient waiting for Nature to
+rally, which she did on the third day in a call for food;
+and thence on one daily meal was keenly relished, and
+the wound was healed&mdash;a wound that was three inches
+long on the surface and six inches deep. On the fifteenth
+day the lad was able to be dressed and able to
+walk about his room, and with a freshness of color<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">{53}</a></span>
+that was never observed in him before. What law of
+body was violated in the preliminary treatment intended
+to prepare Nature for the ordeal and to enable
+her to rally from it?</p>
+
+<p>This fresh tragedy in one human life has become
+known to me while I write. A man, a giant, in his
+eighty-eighth year, lost his appetite, and was put to
+death by the following means: A pint of whiskey and
+from one to two quarts of milk daily to keep him
+nourished. Five months passed without any change
+in the bill of fare&mdash;five months of delirium, of imbecilic
+muttering before the last breath was drawn. These
+tragedies are common the world over. Do I cry
+against them with too loud a voice? Would that I
+had a voice of thunder!</p>
+
+<p>I have given a few examples of the crucifixions of
+the sick and the afflicted, whereof I have many, and
+they are the real history of cases known, and are constantly
+occurring in every community.</p>
+
+<p>The cure of disease and injury by fasting&mdash;the mode
+of Nature&mdash;made the greatest impression in families
+in which there was intelligence enough to comprehend
+it; but the victories of Nature were complicated by
+cases in which death was inevitable. With a feeling
+that I must give the new hygiene to the world in
+printed form, I did not enlarge in public over a method
+that would be certain to be suggestive of starvation,
+where food was supposed to be of the greatest importance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">{54}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>My sick-room success failed to enable me to draw
+larger checks; but the satisfaction of going into the
+rooms of the sick and not having to rack my mind
+over what medicine to give, what food to be taken,
+was a great compensation for the absence of a large
+bank account. Professional attainments and abilities
+play only a small part in the mere business side of
+the medical profession. An innocent public believes
+with intense convictions in the efficacy of dosage; and
+with distorted vision, as the famous knight of La
+Mancha, sees giants in professional healers who are
+really only windmills, with whom personal contact in
+the sick-room is only too often a danger measured by
+its closeness.</p>
+
+<p>Think of the wasting of the body during sickness;
+of the brain system, which is life itself, that does not
+waste: think of the cases of recovery in which for
+weeks no food is possible for stomach reasons; of the
+more frequent cases in which recoveries take place after
+weeks of such scant food as not to be taken into account
+as a support to vital power by minds governed
+by reason. Think how disease, in proportion to its
+severity, is a loss of digestive power, and with cure
+energy entirely of the brain, how serious a matter it is
+to lessen it by waste of energy in forcing decomposing
+food masses through a digestive channel nearly two
+rods long, food masses that the brain will have none
+of, and that do not save the fat and muscles; think of
+all this physiology, and raise this question: "Is this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">{55}</a></span>
+man alone in his faith and practice, or is Nature so in
+line with him that the entire medical profession is
+wrong in their dosings and feedings?"</p>
+
+<p>I conclude these cases with an illustration. Think
+of all this enforced feeding, of the doses to relieve, of
+the wasting of brain power, and compare with the
+following illustration, in which case no food was taken
+for thirty-six days, and yet it was possible for the
+patient to be about during the greater part of the
+time.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Note.</span>&mdash;In this case severe indigestion and nervous troubles and
+almost daily headaches had been a torture for years. On the morning
+of the thirty-sixth day, on which the photograph was taken, a visit to
+the dentist for the extraction of a tooth revealed no fear, as had formerly
+been the case. Eating was resumed on the thirty-eighth day with no
+inconvenience. Since then (over six months ago) no trace of the
+former troubles has reappeared. Loss of weight about twenty pounds.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 291px;"><a name="illus001" id="illus001"></a>
+<img src="images/illus_001.jpg" width="291" height="500" alt="MRS. A. M. LICHTENHAHN" title="" />
+<span class="caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photograph, by Henry Ritter.</span>
+<br /><br />
+MRS. A. M. LICHTENHAHN,
+<br />
+THIRTY-SIXTH DAY WITHOUT FOOD.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">{56}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Physician, heal thyself!" There is a world of
+sarcasm in these three words; for about the only advantage
+the physician has over the laity is that he can
+do his own dosing. As a general fact, he does no
+more to prevent bodily ailings than other people, and
+is just as liable to become the victim of bad habits.</p>
+
+<p>It is my impression that, in proportion, as many
+physicians become the slaves of tobacco, opium in
+some form, and alcoholics as are to be found in any
+other class of people; they are quite as likely to be
+the victims of various chronic ailings as other people,
+and with equal impotency to relieve. Every day I see
+physicians going to the homes of the sick with cigars
+on fire, signals of the brain system in distress undergoing
+the lullaby of nicotine; going into rooms where
+the purest air of heaven ought to prevail, as animated
+tobacco-signs.</p>
+
+<p>Where is there virtue in this world that is of any
+practical good whose vital force is not to be found in
+example rather than in precept? Who has more need
+to go into the room of the sick with the purest breath,
+the cleanest tongue, the brightest eyes, the purest complexion,
+the most radiant countenance, and with a soul
+free from the bonds of ailings or habits that offend and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">{57}</a></span>
+disable, than the physician? Where is the logic of
+employing the sick to feed the sick? Is not that a
+sick doctor whose nerves are so full of plaints as to
+need the frequent soothings only found in a cigar, that
+also sears the nerves of taste? Is he not very sick
+when those nerves require the stronger alcoholic?</p>
+
+<p>There is contagion in good health and sound morals,
+when daily illustrated, no less than in courage and
+fear. No physician can be at his best in the rooms of
+the sick if he be under any bondage from disease or
+habit.</p>
+
+<p>"Physician, heal thyself!" Physician, how does it
+happen that you have need to be healed, and of what
+worth are you if you can neither prevent disease nor
+cure yourself with your dosings? What availeth it to
+a man to talk righteously when virtue is not in him?</p>
+
+<p>Ailings, habits blunt all the special senses and the
+finer instincts and tastes, and impair the power to
+reason clearly, to infer correctly, to conclude wisely.
+Only the well have that hopefulness that comes from
+power in reserve, power that is not wasted through
+acquired disease and acquired habits. The contagion
+of health is a power no less than courage or fear.</p>
+
+<p>That man, self-poised, void of fear, General Grant,
+crushed the Rebellion with a single sentence, "I will
+fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." That
+sentence made every man in his army a Grant in courage
+and confidence. Grant in his prime could puff his
+cigar while commanding all the armies of his country;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">{58}</a></span>
+but the cigar ultimately destroyed his life, and there
+was no physician to interpose to prevent one of the
+most torturing of deaths.</p>
+
+<p>Where is the logic of the sick trying to heal the
+sick? This question will be more frequently asked in
+that time to come when the drug-store annex to the
+sick-room will be much smaller than is now thought
+necessary.</p>
+
+<p>Human expression is studied in the rooms of the
+sick as nowhere else; and if the lines are not obscured
+by the fogs and clouds of disease the signs can be
+much more clearly distinguished.</p>
+
+<p>A man is now under my care whose soul is of the
+largest mould, and who is so supremely endowed by
+reason of intellect, varied tastes and acquirements, as
+to make life on earth well worth living. His long
+chronic local ailment has not impaired his power to
+read me for signs of hope as it seems to me I have
+never been read before; and never before have I so
+felt the need to enter a room of the sick with a larger
+stock of general health. For the time I seem to him
+to be holding before his eyes the keys of life or
+death.</p>
+
+<p>The physician should be able to go into the room of
+the sick to see with clearest vision whatever is revealed
+to the natural eye; and no less to see with eyes of understanding
+that he may be an interpreter of conditions
+that indicate recovery or death. He is the historian of
+disease, and therefore before he can write he must see<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">{59}</a></span>
+clearly all that can be known about the process of
+cure as revealed by symptoms.</p>
+
+<p>The eye is at its best only in perfect health no less
+than the reason, the judgment, and the spirits. A few
+years ago a drouth of many weeks occurred; in some
+meadows and pastures the grass seemed dead, beyond
+the possibility of growth. Every shade of the green
+had departed; but warm rains came, and in a few days
+there was a green carpet plush-like in its softness and
+delicacy.</p>
+
+<p>So the progress of cure may be read on the tongue,
+on the skin, in the eyes, where there are both eyesight
+and insight to see and to study.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">{60}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>For many years I entered the rooms of the sick a
+sick man myself; I was the victim of that monster of
+hydraheads, dyspepsia, or, to call it by a more modern
+title, indigestion.</p>
+
+<p>In my later teens my stomach began seriously to
+complain over its tasks, and a pint of the essence
+of bitterness was procured to restore it to power. My
+mouth was filled with teeth of the sweet kind; hence
+my horror for the doses far exceeded the milder protests
+of the stomach. Not the slightest benefit came
+from my medicinal sufferings, and this ended all routine
+treatment of my stomach. My intense aversion to the
+flavor of strong medicines caused me to inflict them as
+rarely as possible upon other mouths during the drug
+period of my practice.</p>
+
+<p>Mine seemed to be a weary stomach, in which the
+tired sense was a close approach to acute pain for hours
+after each meal. When a medical student I found
+nothing in the books, in the advice of my preceptor,
+nor in the lectures at the university, but what proposed
+to cure me through drugs that were abhorrent. As I
+never encountered any cures nor received the slightest
+benefit from my experiments, I was deterred from injuring
+myself through persistent dosage.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">{61}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the early part of my student career I was behind
+a drug-counter, where I had ample experience in putting
+up prescriptions, and had an excellent opportunity
+to measure medical men as revealed in their formulas
+and the results in many cases in which failure was the
+rule in chronic ailings; and I was not encouraged to
+abuse myself through the results as revealed by any
+form of medication.</p>
+
+<p>For the benefit of those who suffer from complainings
+of the stomach I give a condensed summing-up
+of myself. I was born with a wiry constitution, but of
+the lean kind, and a weak stomach, the chiefest ancestral
+legacy. With ability to see with intense sense very
+much to enjoy in this world, my resources in this way
+were boundless, hence I was always full of hope and
+cheer.</p>
+
+<p>All the senses of my palate were of the acute kind,
+and so were a continual source of the penalties of
+gluttony. Whatever else there might be alack with
+me, there was never a lack of appetite. I was able
+to eat at each meal food enough which, if fully
+digested, would have redeemed the wastes of any day
+of labor; and not only this, but also enough of sugar-enticing
+foods to anticipate the wastes of the following
+day.</p>
+
+<p>Growing up in the country and with an intense fondness
+for the tart sweetness of apples, pears, and peaches,
+and the harmlessness of eating them no matter how
+full the stomach with hearty food, without question my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">{62}</a></span>
+stomach was never void of pomace during the entire
+fruit season.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever I sat down to eat there was an onrush of
+all the senses of the palate as the outrush of imprisoned
+children to the ecstatic activities of the school-yard;
+hence over-eating always, with never a sense of
+satiety. The penalties were realized in painful digestion,
+with the duodenum the chiefest of protesting voices.</p>
+
+<p>A time came when gas would so accumulate as to
+make the heart labor from mere pressure, the inevitable
+insufficiency of breath causing a lack of a&euml;ration
+of the blood. With a constant waste of power in
+the stomach there was always a sense of weariness;
+hence I was never able to know the luxury of power
+in reserve. All through life my best efforts were the
+result of intellectual inebriation, with always corresponding
+exhaustion as the direct result. This weakness
+compelled me to waste the least time on people who
+could not interest me, and to spend much time alone
+to recharge my exhausted batteries.</p>
+
+<p>For such a case as mine there is not to-day to be
+found an intelligent hint in any medical text-book as to
+the physiological way to recovery.</p>
+
+<p>The breakfasts in my house were of a character that,
+without ham, sausage, eggs, steaks, or chops, they
+would not have been considered worth spending time
+over. I had reached a time when a general collapse
+seemed to be impending; but it was stayed for a few
+years by the new life that came to me through the evo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">{63}</a></span>lutions
+of health in the rooms of the sick that seemed
+to portend possible professional glories: but as the
+years went on I suffered more and more from nervous
+prostration through waste of power in the
+stomach.</p>
+
+<p>My friends began to enlarge upon my wretched looks,
+and with no little concern; but none were wise enough
+to realize that my need was for words that reminded of
+life and not of death.</p>
+
+<p>By chance I met an old friend on the street when he
+happened to be thinking about ways in daily food in
+Europe, from which he had just returned, and at once
+he began to talk, not about my wretched looks, but about
+the exceedingly light breakfasts customary in all the
+great centres where he had been. They consisted only
+of a roll and a cup of coffee. I was impressed just
+enough not to forget the fact, but without there being
+a hint in it to set me to thinking.</p>
+
+<p>But the time came, "the fulness of time." There
+came a morning when for the first time I remembered
+that when in ordinary health I had no desire to breakfast;
+but there was a sense of such general exhaustion
+from power wasted over an unusual food mass not
+needed at the previous evening meal that my morning
+coffee was craved as the morning dram by the chronic
+toper. Only this, and a forenoon resulted of such
+comfort of body, such cheer, and such mental and
+physical energy as had never been realized since
+my young manhood was happy in the blessed un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">{64}</a></span>consciousness
+of having a stomach that, no matter
+how large or how numerous the daily meals, never
+complained.</p>
+
+<p>As for the dinner that followed, it was taken with an
+acuteness of relish and was handled with a power of
+digestion that were also a new, rich experience; but
+the afternoon fell far short of the forenoon. The experience
+was so remarkable that I at once gave up all
+eating in the morning, and with such reviving effects
+upon all my powers that the results began to be
+noticed by all friends.</p>
+
+<p>So originated the no-breakfast plan. Up to this
+time I had never had a thought of advising anyone to
+do without food when desired; much less that any of
+the three daily meals should be given up. My war
+was against feeding when acute sickness had abolished
+all desire for food, and this I had been able to conduct
+many years without exciting suspicion of a general
+practice of homicide.</p>
+
+<p>The improvement in my own case was so instant
+and so marked that I began to advise the same to
+others, and with the result that each would make
+known the redeeming work to suffering friends, and
+so the idea spread in a friend-to-friend way.</p>
+
+<p>Now the American breakfast, in point of sheer
+necessity, is believed to be the most important meal of
+the day, as the means for strength that is to be called
+out for the forenoon of labor, and believed with a force
+of <ins class="correction" title="insistance in original">insistence</ins> that warrants a conclusion that a night of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">{65}</a></span>
+sleep is more exhausting to all the powers than the
+day of labor.</p>
+
+<p>To go into the fresh air, to do anything with an
+empty stomach, is to invite a fainting by the way, is
+the general impression; but there were scarcely any
+cases in which there was not sufficient improvement to
+prevent all possibility of a return to the heavy breakfasts
+that had been <ins class="correction" title="abandaned in original">abandoned</ins>.</p>
+
+<p>How did this scheme affect me in a professional way,
+that is, in the reputation as a physician of average
+balance of brain functions? Some of my professional
+brethren of strong conviction and ready command of
+language began at once to try to abolish the dangerous
+heresy by suggesting that on this one subject I
+was absolutely crazy. Of course, their patrons took
+up this idea with avidity; and so there was a babble
+of tongues, with myself the central point of attack as
+crank-in-chief of all cranks. This is not the language
+of exaggeration; for whatever the law and modern
+civilization permitted to abolish me professionally was
+inflicted with tongues by the thousands, the war being
+made all the more exciting and interesting by the enthusiasm
+of new recruits to the heresy from the professional
+domains of my medical brethren.</p>
+
+<p>What did I gain by this professionally? Mostly the
+odium of heresy during the first few years; but with it
+was the supreme satisfaction that came from seeing
+more additions to bright eyes and happy faces than
+medicine ever gave, and in a way that would redound<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">{66}</a></span>
+to my own good at some time. The fact is, that as a
+means to better health, no matter what nor where the
+disease, there is no limit to its application. As a universal
+panacea its powers are matchless.</p>
+
+<p>For a time I saw no farther than a cure of stomach
+condition and resulting general comfort. That any
+disease was to be cured otherwhere than in the
+stomach by means so simple, did not occur as an
+original conception; but the fact that giving up the
+morning meal was attended with improvement of all
+local diseases set me to thinking. Many of my patients
+became thin under the regime; but as this was
+attended by an increase of strength, not even the
+alarm of anxious friends without faith was ever able to
+induce a return fully to the old ways.</p>
+
+<p>But how explain the loss of weight? A clue came
+from the following case: The first-born of a young
+mother had an habitual diarrh&oelig;a from birth lasting
+many months; and yet it seemed well nourished, for it
+was unusually fat and heavy for its age; but the days
+and nights were long in the care of this apparently
+well-nourished child. The symptoms were heedless to
+the every-hour dosing of pellets, or from the tumblers
+of apparently purest water.</p>
+
+<p>Now this mother, young as she was, was a woman
+of convictions, and with courage to follow each to an
+ultimate conclusion. She had heard of miracles resulting
+from only three feedings per day during the
+nursing period; and so, notwithstanding a storm of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">{67}</a></span>
+opposition from a vast circle of relatives, she put this
+first-born rigidly on the three-meal plan, with the
+result of immediate cessation of the bowel trouble, but
+with rapid decline in weight.</p>
+
+<p>This caused anxiety, and I was called upon for
+advice. In every respect except the weight-loss the
+improvement was wonderful. After much thought
+there was a sudden flash of the truth: there were an
+abnormal weight and bulk, due to the general dropsy
+of debility, similar in character to the swelling of the
+feet and limbs in the old and feeble. The thickened
+walls of the bloodvessels, toned with health, caused
+absorption; but the eyes of the friends would not open
+to the miracle for a very long time, and so render justice
+to the heroine, the young mother. As an aider
+and abettor of such a flagrant system of starvation, I
+had my full share of <ins class="correction" title="opprobium in original">opprobrium</ins>; but, aided by the
+strong-minded, sensible mother, Nature gained a sweeping
+victory, and thus this case cleared my mind from
+confusion as to the anomaly.</p>
+
+<p>One of my medical friends with whom calomel was
+as a sheet-anchor often asserted that babies would
+actually get fat on it. That bulk would actually increase
+by use of the forceful medicine is likely; but
+that the increase would be dropsical I think is unquestionable.</p>
+
+<p>The dropsy of debility is due to a loss of tone of the
+vascular system; the walls of the vessels become
+thinner and therefore dilate. In the feet and limbs of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">{68}</a></span>
+the old and greatly enfeebled by disease the veins become
+distended to abnormal size by the force of gravity,
+resulting in effusion of water into the cellular tissues,
+which increases when in the upright position during the
+day and decreases when in the horizontal position at
+night.</p>
+
+<p>A toning up of the entire vascular system, by which
+a reverse current from the tissues into the bloodvessels
+is made possible, is the only means for relief.</p>
+
+<p>This flash-light upon the part physics plays in the
+cure of disease put me upon the true lines of investigation,
+and furnished a key for the solution of many
+problems. From this time on I was to be kept busy,
+not in winning victories, but in studying them.</p>
+
+<p>This new physiology was not fully apprehended
+until long after the no-breakfast plan was taken up.
+It came to me link by link; but the missing link was
+the fact that food only restores waste, that lost strength
+is only restored by sleep; and it now seems to me
+that I was very dull not to have found it out long before
+I did. It seems to me that no method of health
+culture, none in the treatment of disease can have any
+physiological basis where these facts are not taken into
+account.</p>
+
+<p>For a time I failed to look beyond the ailments of the
+stomach for curative results, until really surprising
+news began to reach me from many sources. There
+would come to me those who had to tell about clearer
+vision, acuter hearing, a stronger sense of smelling,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">{69}</a></span>
+etc., senses that were not thought to be affected by
+disease; or there would be news that chronic, local
+ailings, as nasal or bronchial catarrhs, skin diseases,
+hemorrhoids, or other intractable disease, in some mysterious
+manner, were undergoing a decline under the
+new regime.</p>
+
+<p>In the domain of drugs we have medicines that vivid
+imagination has endowed with presumed affinities for
+locations that are diseased. They enter the circulation
+and happily get off at the right spot, to act curatively;
+but no theories are advanced as to how they aid in the
+construction of new cells or atoms, or how they aid in
+the disposal of the old ones.</p>
+
+<p>Construction, destruction! There is no death of
+atoms: really nothing is generated, nothing destroyed:
+the change is but the rearranging of ultimate elements;
+and how is a drug to influence any more than would
+be in case of the affinities of chemistry?</p>
+
+<p>Hazy conceptions, crude means! The ultimate cell
+multiplies by division to become bone, nails, hair, ligaments,
+muscles, fat, the brain, the whole body. Where
+along the line in the reconstructive work called by a
+disease or injury is a medicine to apply with power to
+aid? In what way the need to be expressed, in what
+operative way the helpful assistance made clear, that
+faith without works that are seen can be made
+strong?</p>
+
+<p>The chemist never rushes into print with news that
+another element has been discovered until demonstra<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">{70}</a></span>tive
+evidence has placed the matter beyond all question.
+If anything new is discovered in the firmaments,
+adequate means to an end will be able to reveal it to
+all interested eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The impressions of science are quite different from
+the impressions of the materia medica; and the miracles
+of cure that are displayed by the column in even the
+highest class public prints are never in reach of scientific
+explanation.</p>
+
+<p>A new element is announced; we know instantly
+that it has been actually discovered. A new cure is
+announced; we instantly may know that the evidences
+will never be displayed along the lines of science.</p>
+
+<p>I now unfold a theory of my own of the origin and
+development of disease, and the development of cure,
+in which the physical changes involved in some of the
+processes are in reach of the microscope.</p>
+
+<p>It is my impression that, with rare exceptions, people
+are born with actual structural weaknesses, local or
+general, that may be called ancestral legacies. These
+are known as constitutional tendencies to disease.</p>
+
+<p>In parts structurally weak at birth the bloodvessels,
+because of thin and weak walls, are larger than in
+normal parts, and because of dilatation the blood circulates
+slower. There is an undue pressure upon all
+between-vessel structures, a pressure that must lessen
+the nutrient supply more or less, according to its
+degree. The death of parts in boils and abscesses is
+due, I believe, to strangulation of the nerve-supply.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">{71}</a></span>
+The bloodvessels are elastic, and capable of contraction
+and dilatation, a matter regulated by the brain.</p>
+
+<p>Now in these weaknesses always lie the possibilities
+of disease; they may be supposed the weak links in
+the constitutional chain, and can no more be made
+stronger than the constitutional design than can the
+body as a whole. By whatever means brain power is
+lessened abnormality is incited in the weak parts;
+hence gradually from the original weakness there is a
+summing up, as a bronchial or nasal catarrh, or other
+acute or chronic local or general disease.</p>
+
+<p>The first step in any disease is the impression that
+lessens brain power; the slightest depressing emotion,
+the slightest sense of discomfort, lessens brain power,
+and to a like degree the tone of all the bloodvessels;
+hence dilatation in degree. That the stomach, as the
+most abused organ of the body, plays the largest part
+in over-drafts upon the brain is not a matter of doubt.</p>
+
+<p>Let us develop a chronic disease along these lines,
+with nasal catarrh for an illustration. As tone is regulated
+entirely by the brain system, all taxing of the
+brain increases the debility of the nasal structures.
+In course of time the debility so increases through
+whatever also debilitates the brain, that a stage is
+reached when water in the blood begins to escape
+through the thin walls of the vessels and mingles with
+the natural secretion of the membrane, and a catarrhal
+discharge is the result. In severe cases a time may
+be reached when death of parts from the strangling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">{72}</a></span>
+pressure may occur, and then we have an ulcerative
+catarrh.</p>
+
+<p>This evolution will go on as determined by the
+gravity of the ancestral weakness, by the natural
+strength of the dynamo, the brain, and the severity
+of the debilitating forces to which it may be subjected.</p>
+
+<p>No one is ever attacked by a nasal or any other
+catarrh, nor by any other chronic ailings. They all start
+from structural weaknesses that are inherited, and they
+are the evolutionary results of brain-wearying forces.</p>
+
+<p>If a specialist were asked to express the actual condition
+of a diseased structure that seems to call for
+medicinal aid, and to tell just how medicated sprays,
+washes, and douches are to reach all the parts involved,
+with healing power, and in what way that power is
+exercised&mdash;in other words, what work actually is to be
+done, and how medicine is to do it&mdash;he would not be
+able to enlighten his questioner no matter how fertile
+his conception, how dexterous his use of language.
+In fact, the healing power of drugs exists in fertile
+imaginations rather than among those ultimate processes
+where disease is cured, where disease destroys.</p>
+
+<p>As the care moves by the power evolved in the
+dynamo, so do the bloodvessels contract and relax as
+determined by brain conditions. Dilating bloodvessels,
+effusion of water from thinning walls, the between-vessels
+starving pressure, increasing general debility of
+all the structures involved&mdash;this is the gradual evolution
+of catarrh and of all other chronic diseases.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">{73}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>From this it was seen that no form of local treatment
+can avail to relieve the operative cause in cases
+of this kind. Tone must be added to all the weakened,
+dilated vessels, in order to contract and thicken
+their walls so as to stop the leakage, and to relieve
+that pressure upon the between structures that have
+become an&aelig;mic through lack of nourishment.</p>
+
+<p>That an evolution in reverse is the one need scarcely
+calls for argument. It is the brain that needs our attention,
+and we meet its need by saving its rare powers
+from wasting.</p>
+
+<p>We will do this by cutting down, as far as possible,
+all the activities for which it furnishes power, even as
+we would diminish the number of cars where power
+in the dynamo had become deficient; we will either
+sever the wires that connect with the stomach, or
+make a marked reduction in the labor to be performed
+in the stomach. With power accumulating in the
+brain, power will reach the utmost recesses of debility
+and disease, with Nature to do all the healing.</p>
+
+<p>To reinforce this physiology, this statement may be
+made with the strongest emphasis: the medical treatment
+of chronic disease fails inevitably because it fails
+to consider the vital force involved. The brain has no
+part in the treatment of chronic disease by the specialist,
+where drugs are a means to an end never reached:
+there are only a disappointment and an interchange of
+pocket-books.</p>
+
+<p>In all parts suffering with pain there is congestion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">{74}</a></span>
+swelling. The bloodvessels are distended; hence the
+nerves suffer violence in stretching or from pressure.
+The pain simply adds to the abnormal conditions by
+causing an active determination of the blood to the involved
+parts. To relieve pain, then, is curative, because
+it lessens the abnormal congestion.</p>
+
+<p>The no-breakfast plan with me proved a matter of
+life unto life. With my morning coffee there were
+forenoons of the highest physical energy, the clearest
+condition of mind, and the acutest sense of everything
+enjoyable.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoons were always in marked sluggishness
+by <ins class="correction" title="constrast in original">contrast</ins>, from the taxing of digestion.</p>
+
+<p>Without realizing that the heavy meals of the day
+were a tax upon the brain, I would scarcely get away
+from the table before I began to feel more generally
+tired out than the severest taxing from a long forenoon
+of general activity ever made me. With the filled
+stomach, fatigue, general exhaustion, came as a sudden
+attack rather than as an evolution from labor, and
+there would be several hours of unfitness for doing any
+kind of service well.</p>
+
+<p>In the application of this method to others I had the
+great satisfaction of good results without any exceptions;
+and the missionary work was begun by friends
+among friends, fairly spreading better health and
+adding thereby more and more disaster to my name.</p>
+
+<p>More and more I became a focus of adverse criticism
+in all matters where level-headedness was deemed im<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">{75}</a></span>portant.
+My acute cases began to be watched with
+hostile interest, as if homicide from starvation were the
+inevitable result in all cases. My country had become
+the country of an enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Not being able to give my patients clearly defined
+reasons for the general and local improvements resulting
+from a forenoon fast as a method in hygiene, it had
+to be spread from relieved persons to suffering friends;
+and according to the need, the sufferers from various
+ailings would be willing to try anything new where
+efforts through the family physician or patent medicines
+had completely failed; it was spread as if by contagion,
+among the failures of the medical profession.</p>
+
+<p>Among those to become interested at an early date
+was a prominent minister who wore the title of D. D.,
+and for a time his interest was intense. He came to
+me one day with word that a member of his household,
+well known to me as a young woman of unusual ability
+and culture, had not been able to take solid food at
+his table for a year, and he believed that my treatment
+would avail in her case. To this she was very averse,
+since every treatment her hapless stomach had received
+had only added to the debility, until disability had become
+the result. She finally came to me to be relieved
+from the forceful importunity of her reverend friend,
+who had excited my eager interest with a prophecy
+that unusual literary distinction would follow a cure,
+as there were abilities of the very highest order, in his
+estimation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">{76}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She came, and I had no difficulty in securing such a
+vacation for the worn-out stomach that it could begin
+with solid food when the time to eat arrived. The vacation
+was so brief and power had accumulated so rapidly
+that almost any food could be taken without discomfort,
+and no trouble ever came not invited by a
+relapse from the better way of living that had really
+created a new stomach.</p>
+
+<p>This case caused more notoriety over the no-breakfast
+plan than any that ever occurred in the city. As
+a writer of biographies and of articles in high-class
+journals and magazines, this talented woman has been
+a miracle of patient, persistent study and investigation.</p>
+
+<p>This endorsement in high places greatly added to
+my reputation as a physician with distorted mind, for
+the idea that any good could come from a short fast,
+to be followed by the giving up of that needed morning
+meal, was too absurd for sober reflection, too violently
+revolutionary to be even patiently considered.</p>
+
+<p>The no-breakfast plan was not so very long in
+becoming known over the entire city; a bridge had
+been crossed, and every plank taken up and destroyed;
+thence the ways into new families were
+nearly closed.</p>
+
+<p>I am enlarging a little upon the opposition that met
+me from all points, because all who are to be convinced
+that these are the true ways in health culture will begin
+at once to enlighten their ailing friends, and will, therefore,
+encounter the same opposition. "Sir, you have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">{77}</a></span>
+not had enough opposition," said bluff, old Samuel
+Johnson. There will be no need to complain of any
+lack of this kind in the efforts to render suffering
+friends the only aid possible, that will be in persistent
+efforts of Nature.</p>
+
+<p>My medical brethren considered the scheme only as
+they would consider an invasion of smallpox or a
+heresy whose methods were a danger to life. One
+physician, a woman specialist, informed me that she
+was continually importuned as to her professional
+opinion of the new craze that had invaded the city.
+That all other physicians were equally called upon,
+that they would condemn, was inevitable; and I permitted
+them the largest liberty without the least
+resentment; but there was the sustaining cheer of
+seeing the happiest faces that only increased as the
+heresy spread.</p>
+
+<p>My attendance upon the severely sick became more
+taxing because of the exceeding concern in the immediate
+environment, that the pangs of starvation were
+being added to the pangs of disease.</p>
+
+<p>As none of my professional brethren ever manifested
+any desire to be enlightened on this subject, I did not
+volunteer, since I felt the wiser way would be to wait
+an adequate amount of evidence before making any
+public announcements of presumed important discoveries
+in practical hygiene.</p>
+
+<p>My experiences in the rooms of the sick had convinced
+me, long before I gave up my morning meal,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">{78}</a></span>
+that death from starvation was so remote as practically
+to exclude it from consideration; hence with the great
+improvement that was the immediate result in my own
+case I could from the first speak with a "thus saith the
+Lord" emphasis on the safety of going through a
+forenoon "on an empty stomach."</p>
+
+<p>As no one could come into my office without my
+being able to give the assurance of at least some relief
+that would be immediately realized, that would be felt
+even to the finger-ends, my office became more and
+more a lecture-room, a school of health culture for
+the education of missionaries, for a friend-to-friend
+uplifting into higher life.</p>
+
+<p>All I needed for my own sake was that missing link
+to clothe my words with all the desired power. With
+so much to enliven, to encourage, it was as if I were
+sitting at the very feet of Nature, so thrilled by her
+wonderful stories that I was utterly unconscious of the
+storm of ridicule and epithet to which I was subjected.</p>
+
+<p>Once in a while Nature would favor me with a
+miracle in the way of an inspiring change. A man in
+the early prime of life had reached a condition in which
+he habitually rejected every breakfast. Two trips to
+Europe and a year in the hands of a Berlin specialist
+for the stomach failed to relieve; and yet he was not
+so disabled as to prevent him attending to his ordinary
+business affairs; the stomach seemed to be eccentric
+in being merely irritable without structural disease.</p>
+
+<p>I asked him if he felt that the breakfasts which would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">{79}</a></span>
+not stay down were doing him any good. To this he
+had to assent that they were not. I told him if the
+breakfast only to result in a heave-offering were
+omitted he would be better able for his duties of the
+forenoon. He began at once to raise his brows.</p>
+
+<p>It was not difficult for him to see that if no breakfasts
+were put into his stomach none would have to be
+thrown up with sickening effort, and hence he could
+not but be better for the forenoon services if the sick
+spell were omitted. The fact was, the breakfast would
+soon be rejected, and then the hours of rest would
+enable the stomach to handle the dinner without the
+repetition of the morning sickness.</p>
+
+<p>Only a few words from me of this kind, and thence
+on there were no breakfasts; and from the first all the
+complaints from the stomach ceased, and he used to
+remark that he began to get well as soon as I began to
+talk to him.</p>
+
+<p>Now this man with his family was a recent arrival in
+this city, and his first intimate acquaintance was one
+who had been relieved of weekly headaches of a skull-bursting
+kind through the no-breakfast plan&mdash;thus the
+missionary contagion.</p>
+
+<p>For many years I was content to allow people to
+have the morning coffee or tea as desired, with the
+largest liberty of dinner gluttony; and this was really
+the only means possible for the introduction of an
+innovation so radical. To have given nothing to
+relieve the morning want for something in the stomach<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">{80}</a></span>
+to set the wheels of life in motion would have been a
+failure from the first. With all the coffee break of the
+fast was attended by so marked an increase of cheer
+and general strength, and the enjoyment of the general
+meal at or before noon was so immeasurably increased,
+that the method spread as a contagion against which
+professional denouncement and ridicule were in vain.</p>
+
+<p>And with all converts I found that the experiences
+in the penalties of gluttony were so enlightening, so
+restraining, that there was apparently little need to say
+much more as to the quantity or quality of food, what
+and how to eat.</p>
+
+<p>The enthusiasm of all over the forenoons of power
+and comfort, to be followed by a luxury of meals never
+before realized, fully satisfied my pride in professional
+success; and all the more because the penalties of
+gluttony were seldom charged to my account.</p>
+
+<p>It was only after the missing link was found and
+added to the chain that I could fully realize the enormous
+waste of strength and the mental and moral
+degradation from eating food in excess, because the
+enticements of relish are taken for the actual needs of
+the body. Think of it! Actual soul power involved
+in ridding the stomach and bowels of the foul sewage
+of <i>food in excess</i>, <i>food</i> in a state of decomposition, to
+be forced through nearly two rods of bowels and largely
+at the expense of the soul itself!!</p>
+
+<p>Oh, gluttony, with its jaws of death, its throat an
+ever-open gate to the stomach of torment!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">{81}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>When I finally arrived at a point of vision where I
+could see the stomach as a mere machine, that it could
+no more act without brain-power than brawny arms
+with their nerves severed could wield a sledge, I began
+a study of digestion with new interest, with a view to
+save power from undue waste.</p>
+
+<p>It is the <i>sense of relish</i>, of flavor, that is behind all
+the woes of indigestion, and not the sense of hunger.
+The sweetened foods; the pies, cakes, puddings, etc.,
+that are eaten merely from a sense of relish after the
+sense of hunger has become fully sated, and generally
+by far more of the plainer foods than waste
+demands, is the wrecking sin at all but the humblest
+tables.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rapid eating</i>, by which there is imperfect solution
+of the tougher solids and a filling of the stomach before
+the hunger sense can naturally be appeased, is the
+additional evil to insure serious consequences to the
+stomach and brain.</p>
+
+<p>For merely <i>practical purposes</i>, all that is necessary
+to know about the digestive process is that by a peculiar
+arrangement of the muscle forces of the stomach
+the food is made to revolve in such a way as to wipe
+the exuding digestive juice from the walls; that, there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">{82}</a></span>fore,
+the finer the division of the solids by mastication
+the more rapid the solution to the absorbing condition.
+That meat in finer particles will sooner dissolve than
+meat in large, solid masses is clearly seen.</p>
+
+<p>It will be recalled that digestive conditions are really
+soul conditions, as if there were actual wires extending
+from the very depths of the soul itself to each individual
+gland, with power to ebb and flow as the mental
+condition shall determine.</p>
+
+<p>It may be presumed that <i>power</i> to digest is the
+power to revolve food in the stomach and the power
+to generate the gastric juice as determined by the
+power of the brain, the glands themselves not holding
+their juice in mere reserve, but power to generate in
+reserve. Thus it is seen that food in excess is in every
+way exhaustive as the immediate result.</p>
+
+<p>These may be called the subjective conditions of
+digestion. Now let us consider some of the objective
+conditions from the standpoint of moral science.
+What the sunshine of a warm day is to all growing
+things on the earth, so is that shining seen in other
+faces that reaches the depths of the human soul with
+brightness and life.</p>
+
+<p><i>Overeating</i> is so universal from the general ignorance
+of practical physiology that few stomachs have a time
+for a full clearing with the needed rest before the time
+of another filling arrives. It is therefore a matter of
+sheer necessity not only to attain and maintain the
+utmost possible cheer of soul, but it is also a necessity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">{83}</a></span>
+to have cheer in other souls with whom relations are
+intimate.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of extraneous <i>digestive aid</i>, a cheerful
+soul in a family is an abiding source of digestive energy
+to all in social contact. It affects the digestive energy
+of all, as the breeze the fire, as the clearing sky the
+low spirits from the gloom of chill and fogs. The eyes
+that do not glisten with higher life, the lines upon the
+face that are not alive with cheerful, kindly emotions,
+the frowning look, the word that cuts deeply, have
+their repressive effects upon digestive energy within
+their remorseless reach.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>moral science</i> of digestive energy is a new
+study; it is not known as a factor in the process of
+digestion; but the time is coming when cheer of soul
+will become a study as of one of the finer arts, and
+then human homes will not be so much like lesser
+lunatic asylums without the restraining hands of a wise
+superintendent.</p>
+
+<p>Life will be different in homes when all within the
+age of reason shall realize that their words without
+kindness, their looks without cheer, are forces that tend
+to physical and moral degradation, really nothing less
+than death-dealing energies upon all lives within their
+reach. The power of human kindness has ever been
+a favorite theme with the moralist, but it has not been
+considered with reference to its power upon digestion.</p>
+
+<p><i>Anger</i> is mental and moral chaos; it is insanity; it
+is revenge in the fury of a hurricane; and sensitive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">{84}</a></span>
+natures have the greatest need for the largest measure
+of health in order that these human tempests shall be
+under larger restraint.</p>
+
+<p>The gloomy, the irritable, the dyspeptic Christian is
+a dispenser of death and not of the higher life, and
+his religious faith does not spread by the contagiousness
+of example: and because of the solemnity, of the
+exceeding importance of his sense of the possibilities
+of the life beyond death he has all the more need to
+have that physical and moral strength that his daily
+walk, conversation, and mien may be consistent, forceful,
+and uplifting.</p>
+
+<p>To this great end study, study to see <i>cheer</i> everywhere,
+and above all things to possess it. Good health
+is also contagious, and, no less than disease, has a reflex
+impression. Only above the chill dampness, the
+fogs, and clouds is the clear sky with the blazing sun.
+There are undreamed-of possibilities of getting above
+the worriments of life through an intelligent understanding
+and application of the physiology of cheer as
+the chief force in the life of the body, mind, and soul.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">{85}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Having finally arrived at the conviction that from
+the first wink in the morning until the last at night
+strength departs, not in any way to be kept up by food,
+that from the last wink at night until the first in the
+morning strength returns, I became fully endowed to
+tell all the sick and afflicted in the most forceful way
+that with the strength of the brain recharged by sleep
+is all the labor of the day performed, and that no labor
+is so taxing upon human muscles that it cannot be
+performed longer without fatigue when the breakfast
+is omitted.</p>
+
+<p>That this is possible came to me as a great surprise
+and in this way: a farmer with a large assortment of
+ailments came to me for relief through drugs. He
+was simply advised to take coffee mornings, rest mainly
+during forenoons, and when a normal appetite and
+power to digest would come he would be able to work
+after resuming his breakfasts. This man, who was
+more than fifty years old, was the first manual laborer
+to be advised to observe a morning fast.</p>
+
+<p>Several months after, he came to me with news that
+his ailing had all departed, and that he had been able
+to do harder work on his coffee breakfasts than ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">{86}</a></span>
+before with breakfasts of solids. And if he so worked
+with power during forenoons, why not others? Why
+not all?</p>
+
+<p>This no-breakfast plan was so contagious that I
+was not long in finding that farmers in all directions
+were beginning to go to their labors with much less
+food in their stomachs than had been their wont, and
+in all cases with added power of muscle.</p>
+
+<p>Only recently three farmers went into the field one
+hot morning to cradle oats, the most trying of all
+work on the farm; two of them had their stomachs
+well filled with hearty foods. With profuse sweating
+and water by the quart because of the chemical heat
+arising from both digestion and decomposition, these
+toiled through the long hours with much weariness.
+The third man had all his strength for the swinging of
+the cradle, the empty stomach not even calling for
+water; with the greatest ease he kept his laboring
+friends in close company and when the noon hour
+came he was not nearly so tired as they.</p>
+
+<p>A man who had been a great sufferer from indigestion,
+a farmer, found such an increase of health and
+strength from omitting the morning meal that he became
+able to cradle rye, a much heavier grain than
+oats, during an entire forenoon "on an empty stomach."
+Later he went from one December to the following
+April on one daily meal, and not only with ease, but
+with a gain in weight in addition. During these months
+this man did all the work usual in farm-houses, be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">{87}</a></span>sides
+riding several hours over a milk route during
+the forenoons.</p>
+
+<p>In this city resides a carpenter, formerly subject to
+frequent sicknesses, who for the past five years has
+walked nearly a mile to the shop where he is employed
+without even as much as a drink of water for breakfast;
+and this not only without any sicknesses, but
+with an increase in weight of fifteen pounds also.</p>
+
+<p>More than a dozen years ago a farmer who was not
+diseased in any way, but who had been in the habit of
+eating three times a day at a well-spread table, and at
+mid-forenoon taking a small luncheon for hunger-faintness,
+omitted his breakfast and morning luncheon, and
+has been richly rewarded since then in escaping severe
+colds and other ailings. He conclusively felt that his
+forenoon was the better half of the day for clear-headedness
+and hard labor; he has added nearly a score
+of pounds to his weight, and his case has been a
+wonder to all his farmer friends, who see only starvation
+in cutting down brain and needless stomach
+taxing.</p>
+
+<p>I must now ask the reader to bear with me while I
+apply the principles of this new hygiene with a good
+deal of reiteration, trying to vary them in utterance as
+far as possible. The need of daily food is primarily a
+matter of waste and supply, the waste always depending
+upon the amount of loss through the general activities,
+manual labor being the most destructive.</p>
+
+<p>Across the street from where I live a new house is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">{88}</a></span>
+being built: for many days during the chilly, windy
+month of March several men have been engaged high
+in the air, handling green boards, studs, and joists for
+ten hours each day; and yet these men are not eating
+more food daily than hundreds of brain-workers who
+never have general exercise. The workmen across the
+street eat to satisfy hunger; the brain-workers, to
+satisfy the sense of relish; and the meals of the latter
+are habitually in excess of the real demands because
+of wasted bodies.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the apparent overeating of the brain-worker,
+I believe the farmer and the manual laborer
+break down at an earlier age, for the reason that they
+overwork and generally eat when too tired to digest
+fully: the farmer is rarely content to do one day's
+work in one day when the crop season invites him to
+make the most of fair days.</p>
+
+<p>With successes rapidly multiplying in all directions
+within my circuit, the desire became urgent for some
+way to make my new hygiene known to the public.
+My first thought was to get some eminent divine interested
+through a cure that would compel him to a
+continual talk as to how he became saved.</p>
+
+<p>At a great denominational meeting in Chicago I
+chanced to hear a splendid address from a sallow-faced
+professor of a divinity school, the Rev. Dr. G. W. N.;
+and after a great deal of reflection I resolved, without
+consulting him, to write him a series of letters on
+health culture, hoping that he would become so im<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">{89}</a></span>mediately
+interested as to permit me a complete unfolding
+of my theory and practice.</p>
+
+<p>I began the series, taking all the chances to be considered
+a crank; they were continued until the end
+without response, when later I received a brief note
+with sarcasm in every line. At least my letters had
+been read; for he informed me that he had no confidence
+in my theory, giving me a final summing up with
+his estimate that there were more "cranks" in the
+medical profession than in any other. I was not in
+the least cast down at this long-range estimate, since I
+had become quite used to close-at-hand ridicule.</p>
+
+<p>There was before me the unknown time when a still
+more eminent D. D. would both accept and practise
+my theory, and also give the world his estimate in an
+elaborate preface to a book that in the fulness of time
+the ways opened to me to write and have published.</p>
+
+<p>I was sent for by a man who had become a moral
+and physical wreck, his body being reduced to nearly
+a skeleton condition from consumption. As he was
+taking an average of two quarts of whiskey per week,
+I accepted the charge of his case with reluctance.</p>
+
+<p>I was not able in any way to change his symptoms
+for the better; there had been no hint of hunger for
+many weeks, and the mere effort to swallow or even
+taste the most tempting dainties was painful to witness.
+He was taken with a severe pain in his side, which was
+fully relieved with the hypodermic needle, and there
+followed several hours of general comfort and no desire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">{90}</a></span>
+for the alcoholic. Seeing this I was strongly impressed
+that by continuing the dosings for a time the seared
+stomach might get into a better condition and the fast
+be followed by a natural hunger.</p>
+
+<p>This is what actually followed: in about a week the
+dosings were reduced to mere hints, and without any
+desire for stimulants there came a desire for broiled
+steak and baked potatoes, which were taken with great
+relish. Thence on this was mainly the bill of fare, and
+the half-filled bottle remained on his table <i>untouched</i>,
+undesired; and in time there were added more than a
+score of pounds to his wasted body.</p>
+
+<p>Now it chanced that this regenerative work was
+seen day after day by his friend, who was badly in
+need of an all-round treatment to meet the needs of
+his case; he was a man of keen intellect, of real ability
+of both mind and muscle. Becoming deeply interested
+in the theory behind the miracle he saw unfolding day
+after day, and all the more because of a total extinction
+of the drink-habit that was deep seated through long
+duration, he began to omit his morning meals.</p>
+
+<p>He saw more than his own case. He had been a
+manager of book agencies, and when he found also his
+desire for the cigar undergoing a rapid decline, he
+became possessed with the idea that a book might be
+written on the subject. The time came when he could
+sit down in the office of the Henry Bill Publishing
+Company, Norwich, Conn., a picture of health, to
+interview Mr. Charles C. Haskell on the subject of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">{91}</a></span>
+publishing a book. Mr. Haskell had known him in
+less healthful years, and he marvelled at the change.</p>
+
+<p>I had duly suggested, and with great emphasis, that
+no publisher would listen to him unless he were sick
+enough to be interested in the theory and would give a
+test by actual trial. He found Mr. Haskell in very
+low health. Experts had sent him on a tour through
+Europe in search of that health he failed to find; his
+body was starving on three meals a day that were not
+digested, and he began to arrange his affairs with
+reference to a near-at-hand breakdown.</p>
+
+<p>To this man was made such an appeal as men are
+rarely able to make, because a regenerated life was also
+vocal in utterance. To him a miracle seemed to have
+been wrought, and he listened to each word as if to a
+reprieve from a death seemingly inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>As there was no disease of the stomach, it required
+only a few days for Mr. Haskell to acquire so much of
+new life that he felt as one born again, and a week had
+not passed before I had his earnest request to put my
+hygiene into a book, he taking all chances of failure.</p>
+
+<p>He began to advise all ailing friends to give up their
+breakfasts or to fast until natural hunger came, getting
+many marvellous results. One of his first thoughts
+was to have the forthcoming book introduced by some
+eminent divine who could write through the inspiration
+of experience.</p>
+
+<p>In a visit to Norwich of that evangelist of world-wide
+eminence, George F. Pentecost, D. D., then of London,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">{92}</a></span>
+Eng., the opportunity came, and for a case of "special
+conversion" he was made the guest of Mr. Haskell.
+He was easily persuaded to the system, and his need is
+expressed in the following from the introduction of
+<i>The True Science of Living</i>, which was actually written
+without his having read a single line of the manuscript.</p>
+
+<p>"Taking the theory upon which this system of living
+is based into account&mdash;and even to my lay mind it
+seemed most reasonable&mdash;and the testimony which I
+personally received from both men and women, delicate
+and biliously strong, workingmen, merchants, doctors,
+and preachers, delicate ladies for years invalided and in
+a state of collapse, and some who had never been ill,
+but were a hundred per cent. better for living without
+breakfast, <i>I resolved to give up my breakfast</i>. I pleaded
+at first that it might be my luncheon instead, for I have
+all my life enjoyed my breakfast more than any other
+meal. But no! it was the breakfast that must go. So
+on a certain fine Monday morning I bade farewell to
+the breakfast-room. For a day or two I suffered slight
+headaches from what seemed to me was the want of
+food; but I soon found that they were just <i>the dying
+pains of a bad habit</i>. After a week had passed I never
+thought of wanting breakfast; and though I was often
+present in the breakfast-rooms of friends whom I
+was visiting, and every tempting luxury of the breakfast
+was spread before me, I did not desire food at all,
+feeling no suggestion of hunger. Indeed now, after a
+few months, the thought of breakfast never occurs to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">{93}</a></span>
+me. I am ready for my luncheon (or breakfast if you
+please) at one o'clock, but am never hungry before
+that hour.</p>
+
+<p>"As for the results of this method of living, I can
+only relate them as I have personally experienced
+them:</p>
+
+<p>"1. I have not had the first suggestion of a sick
+headache since I gave up my breakfast. From my
+earliest boyhood I do not remember ever having gone
+a whole month without being down with one of these
+attacks, and for thirty years, during the most active
+part of my life, I have suffered with them oftentimes,
+more or less, every day for a month or six weeks at a
+time, and hardly ever a whole fortnight passed without
+an acute attack that has sent me to bed or at least left
+me to drag through the day with intense bodily suffering
+and mental discouragement.</p>
+
+<p>"2. I have gradually lost a large portion of my surplus
+fat, my weight having gone down some twenty
+pounds, and my size being reduced by several inches
+at the point where corpulency was the most prominent;
+and I am still losing weight and decreasing in size.</p>
+
+<p>"3. I find that my skin is improving in texture, becoming
+softer, finer, and more closely knit than heretofore.
+My complexion and eyes have cleared, and all
+fulness of the face and the tendency to flushness in the
+head have disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"4. I experience no fulness and unpleasantness after
+eating, as I so often did before. As a matter of fact,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">{94}</a></span>
+though I enjoy my meals (and I eat everything my
+appetite and taste call for) as never before, eating with
+zest, I do not think I eat as much as I used to do; but
+I am conscious of better digestion; my food does not
+lie so long in my stomach, and that useful organ seems
+to have gone out of the gas-producing business.</p>
+
+<p>"5. I am conscious of a lighter step and a more
+elastic spring in all my limbs. Indeed, a brisk walk
+now is a pleasure which I seek to gratify, whereas
+before the prescribed walk for the sake of exercise was
+a horrible bore to me.</p>
+
+<p>"6. I go to my study and to my pulpit on an empty
+stomach without any sense of loss of strength mentally
+or physically&mdash;on the other hand, with freshness and
+vigor which is delightful. In this respect I am quite
+sure that I am in every way advantaged."</p>
+
+<p>Rev. George Sherman Richards, after more than
+fifteen years of frequent severe headaches that were
+supposed to be due to heredity, has had entire freedom
+during the five years of the No-breakfast Plan. He
+can hardly be surpassed as a picture of perfect health.</p>
+
+<p>One of the first prominent converts who finally surrendered
+to Mr. Haskell, whose persistence was beyond
+fatigue, was the editor of the Norwich, Conn., <i>Bulletin</i>,
+a special friend. There was no want of conviction on
+his part, but the evil day to begin the morning fast was
+continually postponed. Finally, one morning when he
+was specially busy and charged with impatience, the
+beaming and hopeful face of Mr. Haskell appeared.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">{95}</a></span>
+Said the busy man, "Mr. Haskell, if you will walk
+right out of that door, I will promise you to begin tomorrow
+morning to do without breakfasts." Mr. Haskell
+walked out&mdash;the breakfasts were given up, and
+some years later I was personally informed that he
+believed that his life had been saved thereby.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 330px;"><a name="illus002" id="illus002"></a>
+<img src="images/illus_002.jpg" width="330" height="500" alt="REV. GEORGE SHERMAN RICHARDS,
+
+Rector of Christ Church, Meadville, Pa." title="" />
+<span class="caption">REV. GEORGE SHERMAN RICHARDS,
+<br />
+Rector of Christ Church, Meadville, Pa.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>One of the expedients was to send a circular about
+the book to every foreign missionary of every denomination,
+and as a result one of these fell into the hands
+of Rev. W. E. Rambo, in India. He had become a
+mere shadow of his former self from ulcerated bowels,
+the sequel of a badly treated case of typhoid fever.
+For seven months there had been daily movements
+tinged with blood; the appetite was ravenous, and
+large meals were taken without any complainings from
+the stomach. Before a well-spread table his desire to
+eat would become simply furious, and it was indulged
+regardless of quality and quantity. His brain system
+had become so exhausted that reason and judgment
+had no part in this hurricane of hunger.</p>
+
+<p>There were seven successive physicians in this case,
+some of them with many titles. The first one he
+called on reaching New England cut his food down to
+<i>six bland meals daily</i>. All of them had tried to cure
+the offending ulcers by dosings. Think whether bleeding
+ulcers on the body would get well with their tender
+surfaces subjected to the same grinding, scratching
+process from bowel rubbish!</p>
+
+<p>He was in condition on his arrival to lose six pounds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">{96}</a></span>
+during the first week of six "bland" daily meals.
+After reading the <i>True Science of Living</i> he discharged
+his physician and came under my personal care.
+These ulcers were treated with the idea of giving them
+the same rest as if each had been the end of a fractured
+bone. To relieve pain, to hold the bowel still, and to
+abolish the morbid hunger, a few doses with the hypodermic
+needle were a seeming necessity.</p>
+
+<p>In less than two weeks this starving man of skin and
+bones was relieved of all symptoms of disease, and
+there seemed a moderate desire for food of the nourishing
+kind. Less than two weeks were required for
+all those ulcers to become covered with a new membrane:
+but for full three weeks only those liquid foods
+were given that had no rubbish in them to prove an
+irritant to the new, delicate membrane covering the
+ulcers. For a time after the third week there was only
+one light daily meal, with a second added when it
+seemed safe to take it.</p>
+
+<p>In a little more than three months there was a gain
+of forty-two and a half pounds of flesh, as instinct
+with new, vigorous life as if freshly formed by the divine
+hand. My last word from this restored man was
+after he, his wife, and four children had been back in
+India for a year and a half, where they were all living
+on the two-meal plan without any sicknesses, and he
+had a class of one hundred and sixty native boys on
+the same plan.</p>
+
+<p>Who can fail to see the science and the sense to re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">{97}</a></span>lieve
+all diseases of the digestive tract? There are no
+cases of hemorrhoids not malignant in character, in
+which total relief will not be the result if fasts are long
+enough; no cases of anal fistula that will not finally
+close if they can have that rest from violence that is
+their only need; and equally all ulcers and fissures
+that make life a history of torture.</p>
+
+<p>No case with structural disease of any part of the
+digestive tract not malignant has yet come under my
+care in which there has not been a cure, or in
+which there has not been a cure in sight. Through
+a fast we may let the diseased parts in the digestive
+tract rest as we would a broken bone or wound on
+the body.</p>
+
+<p>Several missionaries have regained health on these
+new lines, who have returned to preach and practise a
+larger gospel than before. One returned from the
+Congo region of Africa with such wreckage of health
+as to make any active service impossible. Mr. Haskell
+met him in New York, and in time he returned with
+twenty-four missionaries, all as converts to the new
+gospel of health, and to have that sustained health
+only possible through a larger obedience to the laws
+of God "manifest in the flesh"&mdash;obedience that takes
+into account the moral science, the physics and the
+chemistry of digestion.</p>
+
+<p>These and those others who have had their lives redeemed
+from lingering death through the simple, easy
+ways of Nature never suffer their enthusiasm to wane.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">{98}</a></span>
+Not to volunteer aid when unintentional suicide is going
+on seems nothing less than criminal.</p>
+
+<p>As a means to better health the utility of the morning
+fast is beyond estimate. In all other modes of
+health culture there is a great deal of time consumed
+in certain exercises that are certain to be given up in
+time. What the busy world requires is a mode to gain
+and maintain the health that requires neither time nor
+thought&mdash;one that is really automatic.</p>
+
+<p>We arise in the morning with our brain recharged by
+sleep, and we go at once about our business. If we
+take a walk or go to the gymnasium, we simply waste
+that much time, and we also lessen the stored-up
+energy by whatever of effort is called out. We can
+skip the dumb-bells and perform any other kind of
+exercise that is good for the health; and always with
+the certainty that we shall have more strength for the
+first half of the day if none is wasted in this way. As
+a matter of mere enjoyment, walks in fresh air are
+beneficial, but not as an enforced exercise for the reason
+of health.</p>
+
+<p>For the highest possibilities for a day of human
+service there must be a night of sound sleep; and
+then one may work with muscle or with mind much
+longer without fatigue if no strength is wasted over
+untimely food in the stomach, no enforced means to
+develop health and strength. When one has worked
+long enough to become generally tired there should
+be a period of rest, in order to regain power to digest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">{99}</a></span>
+what shall be so eaten as to cause the brain the least
+waste of its powers through failure to masticate.</p>
+
+<p>One need not always wait until noon to eat the first
+meal. Those in good health have found that they can
+easily go till noon before breaking the fast; but in proportion
+as one is weak or ailing the rule should be to
+stop all work as soon as fatigue becomes marked, and
+then rest until power to digest is restored. To eat
+when one is tired is to add a burden of labor to all the
+energies of life, and with the certainty that no wastes
+will be restored thereby.</p>
+
+<p>For the highest efforts of genius, of art, of the simplest
+labors of the hands, the forenoon with empty
+stomach and larger measure of stored-up energy of
+the brain is by far the better half of the day; and,
+more than this, it is equally the better for the display
+of all the finer senses of the tastes, the finer emotions
+of soul life. In addition to these&mdash;and what is vastly
+more important&mdash;it is by far the better half of the day
+for the display of that energy whereby disease is cured.
+All this with no power lost in any special exercise for
+the health!</p>
+
+<p>The time to stop the forenoon labor is when the
+need to rest has become clearly apparent; and there
+must be rest before eating, to restore the energy for
+digestion. This always determines Nature's time when
+the first meal shall be taken, and not the hour of the
+day.</p>
+
+<p>This is especially important to all who are constitu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">{100}</a></span>tionally
+weak or have become disabled through ailings
+or disease. Disappointments have come to hundreds
+who have given up breakfasts, because of the mistaken
+idea that they must wait till noon before breaking the
+fast, and hence had become too tired to digest; and
+therefore experienced a loss rather than a gain from the
+untimely noon meals.</p>
+
+<p>The desire for morning food is a matter of habit
+only. Morning hunger is a disease under culture, and
+they who feel the most need have the most reason to
+fast into higher health. They who claim that their
+breakfasts are their best meals; that they simply "cannot
+do one thing" until they have eaten, are practically
+in line with those who must have their alcoholics before
+the wheels can be started.</p>
+
+<p>Now it has been found by the experience of thousands
+that by wholly giving up the morning meal
+all desire for it in time disappears, which could
+hardly be the case if the laws of life were thereby violated;
+and the habit once fully eradicated is rarely
+resumed.</p>
+
+<p>To give up suddenly the use of alcoholics or of
+tobacco in any of its forms is to call out loudest protests
+from the morbid voices that have been kept silent
+by those soothing powers; and yet no one would
+accept those loud cries as indicating an actual physiological
+need. The difficulties arising from giving up
+the morning meals&mdash;even as those from giving up the
+morning grog&mdash;are an exact measure of the need that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">{101}</a></span>
+they shall be given up in order that health, and not
+disease, shall be under culture.</p>
+
+<p>I once heard a Rev. Mrs. tell a large audience of
+ministers that for more than a week she spent most of
+her forenoons in bed to endure better the headaches
+and other angry, protesting voices that were averse to
+the no-breakfast plan. She won her case, and thence
+on a hint of headache or other morbid symptoms was
+a matter of humiliation and fasting, with prayer for
+forgiveness and for greater moral strength against the
+temptations of relish.</p>
+
+<p>With many people the breaking of the breakfast
+habit costs only less of will-power than is called out by
+attempts to break the alcoholic or tobacco habit; but
+by persistence a complete victory is certain for all, and
+the forenoons become a luxury of power in reserve.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I must warn all that very many persons who
+adopt the No-breakfast Plan are disappointed, because
+they have become chronic in the ways of unwitting
+sin: they are like thin-soiled farms long-cropped without
+soil culture. Harvests in either case can only
+come by the study and practice of the laws of nutrition.</p>
+
+<p>The besetting sin against all such ailing mortals, the
+lines of whose lives are frequently of the hardest, is
+that the friends all oppose cutting down the daily food
+from the dreadfully mistaken impression that weakness
+and debility from disease are the measure of the need
+to eat, not the measure of the inability to digest.</p>
+
+<p>Scores of times I have been written to by this class<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">{102}</a></span>
+of patients as to their troubles from friends in this way.
+Scores of times I have been consulted as to the safety
+of this method in daily living for the old, as if it were
+a tax upon the constitutional powers to stop sinning
+against them! As well ask whether one may get too
+old as to make it dangerous to cut down daily whiskey
+or daily labor that is clearly beyond the reasonable use
+of the powers.</p>
+
+<p>Those who are the victims of chronic diseases and
+have become greatly enfeebled by overwork of body,
+mind, or stomach, will have to work out their salvation
+with most discouragingly slow progress; but not to
+work, not to try, is to invite the processes of disease
+culture.</p>
+
+<p>Now, as to the time when that first meal of the day
+shall be taken. Since the best meal of the day in all
+America with the great majority of the people is at
+noon, this time may well be selected as the most fitting.
+Since the man of muscle loses no time in taking his
+breakfast, he should be able with good sense to rest an
+hour before this noon meal.</p>
+
+<p>Those whose general energies give out earlier in the
+morning and do not care to have general meals prepared
+in advance of the usual hour, can put in the time
+in the best possible way by resting into power of relish
+and digestion, the evil of eating when tired being that
+the exhausted feeling is only increased.</p>
+
+<p>Now think what forenoons may be had with no time
+lost over breakfasts, none in thinking about the health<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">{103}</a></span>
+or in doing anything for it, and not only to have the
+best and strongest use of the reason, judgment, and
+muscles, but also to have the best possible conditions
+for the cure of ailings! Think, too, what it would be
+to the mothers of the land not to have any need to
+go into their kitchens until the time to prepare the noon
+meal arrived!</p>
+
+<p>Can children while growing rapidly do without
+breakfasts? They certainly can without a hint of discomfort,
+and be all the better for it in every way.</p>
+
+<p>A few months ago I spent some hours in Illinois,
+where the no-breakfast plan had been practised for two
+years. When the plan was begun there was a pale,
+delicate mother of four children, who was enduring a
+life that had no cheer. During the first year the battle
+was a severe one, not a little aggravated by the assurance
+of all sympathetic friends that resulting evil was
+making its mark on all the lines of expression; but
+health with its life and color finally came to silence the
+uttered disapproval.</p>
+
+<p>There was a boy in the home who was subject to the
+severest headaches every week, and who was much
+wasted in his body when he began: he had become
+robust and wholly relieved of all his ailings. There
+was a plump, rosy-cheeked girl of fourteen who for a
+year had taken only one daily meal, and yet a better
+nourished body I never saw.</p>
+
+<p>Now in this family the only warm, general meal, and
+this a plain one, was at noon. The evening meal was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">{104}</a></span>
+entirely of bread and butter taken without even a sitting
+at the table. What happy, healthy children they
+were! And the mother was in a great deal better health
+to do all the work of the kitchen: work, she strongly
+asserted, which was not nearly half of what it formerly
+was. For her there was a cure, a great increase of
+strength, and a great reduction of the most taxing of
+all the duties of the home-life.</p>
+
+<p>If there is such a thing as an attack of disease, it
+cannot occur in the forenoon when there is an empty
+stomach and all the powers are at their best for resisting
+disease; and where children are fed as these are,
+disease, acute or chronic, is only a remote possibility.</p>
+
+<p>I belong to a family of seven; the oldest is beyond
+seventy, the youngest beyond fifty. This No-breakfast
+Plan has been very closely adhered to with all for not
+less than twelve years, and during this time not one of
+us has had any acute sickness; and I am not aware that
+any have diseases of the chronic kind.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The accompanying illustration is that of Mrs. E. A. Quiggle, sister
+of the Author, after twelve years' trial of The No-breakfast Plan.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 337px;"><a name="illus003" id="illus003"></a>
+<img src="images/illus_003.jpg" width="337" height="500" alt="MRS. E. A. QUIGGLE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">MRS. E. A. QUIGGLE,
+<br />
+Chicago, Ill.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">{105}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The utility of eating with thoroughness is strongly
+illustrated in the following cases:</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Horace Fletcher, the author and traveller, took
+to the one-daily-meal plan to cut down his abnormal
+weight, having the patience to masticate all sense of
+taste from each mouthful before swallowing. I saw
+him after he had been on this plan for some months:
+there had been a weight loss of some forty pounds; a
+nasal catarrh of many years had been cured, and he
+strongly asserted that in every way he felt himself
+twenty-five years younger.</p>
+
+<p>He had been living a week on baked potatoes for
+experimental reasons when I met him, and without
+experiencing any morbid sensations: a more perfect
+specimen of physical health I never gazed upon. To
+all dyspeptics who are willing to work for their health
+through pains and patience, his little work, <i>Glutton or
+Epicure</i>, is strongly recommended.</p>
+
+<p>A dyspeptic from Vermont came to me who for ten
+years had eaten three hearty meals daily, none of
+which had ever satisfied his hunger. He was in a very
+low mental state when he came, and feeble in body:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">{106}</a></span>
+for fully ten years both himself and physician had held
+the stomach accountable for all its complainings, and
+with no thought of avoidable cause.</p>
+
+<p>I put him on one meal a day, as there was still some
+power of digestion, and with the following list for the
+daily bill of fare: baked potatoes well buttered, bread
+and butter, beans dressed with butter, fish or lamb
+chops, and rice or oatmeal only if strongly desired; all
+sugar foods debarred, and no drinks except water as
+thirst called for it between the meals. The constipated
+bowels were permitted their own times for action. The
+mouthfuls were small and far apart&mdash;like dashes
+between words&mdash;not less than forty-five minutes were
+spent in masticating. Very soon there was a general
+rousement of new life in every way. His first surprise
+was in an unwonted sense of relish and a complete
+sating of hunger long before he had eaten the old-time
+amounts.</p>
+
+<p>There was a fresh revelation to me in this, as I had
+not before been so impressed that by slow eating the
+hunger-spell is also dissipated in part by time, and
+hence there is much less danger of eating to excess.
+Hunger comes in part from habit, and it is appeased,
+with or without eating, with equal completeness. The
+hunger-habit can be trained to come at almost any
+fixed time.</p>
+
+<p>Not long since I read of a farmer who kept his
+horses in apparently perfect condition on one feeding,
+and only at night: they had become so trained that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">{107}</a></span>
+they had no desire for food until their labors were
+over. At night they both ate and rested, and made
+good the waste of the day; they were fully nourished
+and rested by morning, and could labor all the forenoon
+without loss of energy diverted to digestion: at noon
+they would rest&mdash;become strong for the labors of the
+day.</p>
+
+<p>There can be no doubt, I think, that the strongest
+sense of hunger at the regular eating-time could be
+dissipated by a fast not longer in duration than that of
+an ordinary meal-time.</p>
+
+<p>My patient's bowels gave no hint of their locality
+until the eighteenth day, when they acted with little
+effort; on the twenty-fourth day again in a perfect way,
+and thereafter daily. The mind became ecstatic through
+perfect relief from mental and physical depression;
+there were no wants for other than those simple foods,
+and at the end of a month he left me with new views as
+to Nature's power of selection to meet her needs and
+of the vast utility of using both time and food to dissipate
+hunger.</p>
+
+<p>The waste with most people is so small that the cost
+of the food, the cost of time in preparation, could be
+reduced to a startling fraction if the need could be
+actually known, and the pleasures of the palate increased
+by an inverse ratio. There is no redemption for women
+on the earth who have the care of kitchens except
+through simpler, smaller meals&mdash;meals so very far
+apart that there shall be a maximum of the hunger-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">{108}</a></span>sense
+of relish and the resulting maximum of power
+to convert them into tissues instinct with life.</p>
+
+<p>It may be that the waste is so very trifling, especially
+with brain-workers, that one may be a vegetarian,
+fruitarian, or even an eater of pork, without positive
+violence to practical physiology. There is this further
+very practical consideration, that when Nature is so
+fairly dealt with that she can speak in natural tones
+she will call only for those foods easily available along
+geographical lines.</p>
+
+<p>There is this to be said about fruits, that all those
+containing acids decompose the gastric juice, as they
+all contain potash salts in union with fruit acids. As
+soon as they reach the stomach the free hydrochloric
+acid of the gastric juice unites with the potash, setting
+the fruit acid free to irritate the stomach. There is
+never any desire for acid fruits through real hunger,
+especially those of the hyperacid kinds: they are
+simply taken to gratify that lower sense&mdash;relish.</p>
+
+<p>The tropical fruits are without acids, and therefore
+are well adapted to a class of people who have only
+the least use for muscle and brains. Acid fruits can
+only be taken with apparent impunity by the young
+and old, who can generate gastric juice copiously.
+Because of the general impression that they are healthful
+and no tax, human stomachs are converted into
+cider-mills at will, regardless of between meal-times. By
+their ravishing flavor and apparent ease of digestion
+apples still play an important part in the "fall of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">{109}</a></span>
+man" from that higher estate, the Eden without its
+dyspepsia.</p>
+
+<p>What shall we eat? The fig-leaved savage under
+his bread-fruit tree, the fur-clad Eskimo in his ice-hut,
+need not be asked: the needed food is in all due
+supply with little cost of muscle and less of mind&mdash;and
+he has no mental condition that can disturb the
+digestion.</p>
+
+<p>The simpler waste-restoring foods have a flavor of
+their own that needs little reinforcement if developed
+by due mastication and with adequate hunger. In my
+own case butter duly salted seems to be my only
+natural appetizer aside from hunger; and yet I must
+own that at times new honey has a wonderful effect on
+the mouth-glands.</p>
+
+<p>The difference between eating from hunger and mere
+relish, as fruits and the various sweetened foods are
+eaten, is a new study in dietetics, and one more important
+can scarcely be conceived. It can hardly
+be intelligently studied without taking into due account
+this new physiology. With rarest exceptions
+the need of food is estimated by the mere pleasure
+that comes from relish&mdash;that kind of relish that is
+evolved from the pies, puddings, ice creams, the last
+course in Sunday dinners, never taken until the limits
+of stomach expansion are nearly reached.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">{110}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Some of the external evidences of that general regeneration
+which comes through Nature will now be
+given. We will study the human face as we study
+the earth when the favoring conditions of Spring rouse
+all Nature to newness of life. The face shall be our
+human landscape.</p>
+
+<p>I select a face in which the eyes are dull from debility,
+in which there is no sparkle of soul, and beneath
+are the dark venus-hanging clouds. The face
+has a dull, lifeless cast; the veins are all enlarged from
+debility, and cover the larger arteries as with a mourner's
+pall, save where there are patches as of clouds on fire,
+where disease of the skin enlivens the drear landscape.
+There are pimples large and small, some with overflowing
+volcanoes; there are no lines of expression:
+these are changed to lines of morbid anatomy. We
+listen, and there are no echoes of departed joys; look
+as we will, and we see no evidence of the existence of
+a soul.</p>
+
+<p>The ultimate of this picture is death from unrecognized
+suicide; death, a slow dying to every sense that
+made life worth living. There is this about these
+deaths that go on through the months and years: they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">{111}</a></span>
+exaggerate the worst instincts of the soul as it is
+dragged down&mdash;down through brain-wasting largely
+avoidable if only understood.</p>
+
+<p>The instant result of a total suspension of the use
+of the brain power in the digestive tract is the evolution
+of life: new life is sent to the remotest cell as by
+an electric charge. The nutrient vessels of the eye
+tone down in size, and there is polish, sparkle where
+there was only dimness; and on the face the venus
+clouds, black and red, begin to disappear; the toning
+of the veins condenses the skin, and thereby the ruddy
+arteries are uncovered, and a color that has life appears;
+the pimples, the hillocks, even have a brighter look as
+they slowly shrink from sight. Finally, the skin becomes
+of a plush-like texture, soft, condensed, and
+with tints that compare as the tints of flowers with the
+faded colors of the house-painter, or as the matchless
+tint and plush of the perfect peach to the spotted,
+colorless, wilted, degenerated representative awaiting
+the garbage-barrel; and the cherry lips, the cherry
+gums, and the whiter teeth&mdash;Nature does not match
+them otherwheres.</p>
+
+<p>Landscape gardening upon the human face has the
+largest, most inspiring possibilities; and there are no
+eyes so dull, no faces so void of light and life, no skin
+degraded to a parchment, for a public display of an
+assorted collection of evidences of physical poverty, in
+which these changes to a higher life are not in some
+degree easily possible.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">{112}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Face culture becomes of the profoundest interest
+when it is realized that whatever there is in eyes and
+lines of expression that reveals a soul in higher life,
+whatever there is in softness and delicacy of texture,
+in color that is alive with life, is only the external
+revelations of the higher life within. Nature is always
+at work over her waste places, whether about the roots
+in the mouth, or in the depths of the organs; and the
+aches, the pains of the living, and the agonies of the
+dying are only evidences of the earnestness and persistence
+of her efforts to right all her wrongs.</p>
+
+<p>In what ways are drugs available in this kind of
+landscape culture; how sent through the crystalline
+structures of the eye with clearing effect; how to
+polish the retina and the surfaces to a sparkle? What
+drugs for such culture? And yet the materia medica
+needs a hoist to place it on the shelf. These external
+changes that become clearly apparent to even dull eyes
+are the changes that also go on in the very depths of
+diseased structure, in all the special senses, in all those
+higher instincts and tastes that make man the best for
+self, for home, State and Nation&mdash;the image of his
+Creator. Is this high estate ever reached through
+dosage?</p>
+
+<p>Let this matter be again considered. In the days of
+the lancet, roots and herbs, of bleedings and sweatings,
+of fevers without water for parched tongues, throats,
+and stomachs, Nature had no part in the cure of disease
+in the professional or lay mind, except in rare in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">{113}</a></span>stances
+in which there were those specially gifted with
+insight as well as eyesight.</p>
+
+<p>Now such barbarism was inflicted with intense force
+of conviction, and it was patiently endured with the
+largest faith. When a mere child I was a witness of
+the bleeding treatment upon my mother of saintly
+memory, and my child hands carried into the back
+yard nearly a quart of blood drawn for a bilious attack
+that lasted but a few days.</p>
+
+<p>There is this to be taken into account in the dose
+treatment of diseases&mdash;that most cases recover regardless
+of the time of treatment, even whether it is the
+most crucifying or whether there is no dosing. Therefore,
+the good effect of dosing is at best a matter of
+hazy inference, where real evidence is not possible.
+The lack of uniformity in the character and times of
+doses for similar diseases is a burlesque on science.
+What would a text-book on chemistry be worth with
+nothing more in the way of demonstrative evidence
+than we find in our materia medica in the summing up
+of the "medical properties" of drugs.</p>
+
+<p>In modern times hom&oelig;opathy has come in as a protest
+against the drawing of blood and the administration
+of drugs that corrode. For a form of skin disease
+sulphur has been given by the teaspoonful by my
+brethren of the "regular" school; with equal faith,
+my brethren of the hom&oelig;opathic school will give the
+fraction of a grain whose denominator will cross an
+ordinary page: at which extreme is the science of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">{114}</a></span>
+dosage, if any; or where between? I can hardly
+resist the conclusion that faith in dosage is, by as
+much, inability for the deduction of science.</p>
+
+<p>"I know whereof I believe," is the language of
+Science. "I believe," is the language of credulity&mdash;with
+all the ways back to cause too hazy for the perception
+of even the assuring guide-boards. Said that
+prince of American humorists, Artemus Ward, "I
+have known a man who drank one drink of whiskey
+every day, and yet lived to be one hundred years old;
+but do not believe, therefore, that by taking two drinks
+a day you will live to be two hundred years old." "I
+have known a man who had not a single tooth, and
+yet he could play a bass drum better than any man I
+ever knew;" but do not infer that the pulling of sound
+teeth will aid in bringing out all the possibilities of
+harmony, melody, and delicacy of tone of this particular
+instrument of song without words. I have seen a
+man seemingly in perfect health at one hundred years
+old who had eaten three meals a day; but may I infer
+that on four meals a day he would have lived to be
+one hundred and thirty-three and a third years old?
+A hundred times I have been told by physicians that
+they have had the best results from certain drugs; but
+in not one instance was any reason for their faith
+advanced.</p>
+
+<p>If I am to be governed by impressions as to the
+utility of what I may do for the sick, what is more impressive
+than to draw blood as they of old did, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">{115}</a></span>
+recovery in most cases? Have we reduced the mortality
+of disease by a change in dosage? If so, how
+much, apart from the better sanitary conditions of living
+and from those involved in the care of the sick?</p>
+
+<p>I can easily see or believe there is utility in clearing
+the digestive tract at an early date in the case of
+severe sickness; I know that stomach and bowels are
+as machines run by brain power; but beyond this the
+materia medica is summed up in this way, "I dose my
+sick: they get well: therefore my treatment is successful;
+or if they die, it is the providence of God"&mdash;and
+with no thought that it may have been the providence
+of bad treatment.</p>
+
+<p>Men and brethren of the medical profession, you believe
+me a heretic in all my professional modes, and only
+endure me because I do not carry violent hands; but
+you would bar the sick-room from the bleeder of old.
+I may attack the lancet, the herbs, the ground-roots,
+whose doses were only as kindling-wood and sawdust
+a little more refined, and you will say "Amen" with
+emphasis. "But we, we live in a more enlightened
+age: our doses are more refined"&mdash;yes, but you administer
+them with the same force of conviction as to their
+utility in the cure of disease, and with little thought as
+to just why they are given and how they act.</p>
+
+<p>It is my present conception that feeding the sick as
+now very generally practised will be held, in a more
+enlightened age, as we now hold the lancet of a darker
+age&mdash;a twin relic of barbarism; and there will be only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">{116}</a></span>
+wonder that attempts were ever made to convert the
+lower bowel into a temporary stomach <i>thirty feet
+away</i>.</p>
+
+<p>How discriminating this deputy stomach that it
+selects the predigested food-ration from its unutterable
+lower bowel involvements; sending it pure and undefiled
+as ready-made flesh into the blood, only requiring
+it to be placed as bricks to a wall. Fortunately, these
+lower stomachs are not subject to nausea no matter
+how capable of otherwise rebelling, as they so often do.</p>
+
+<p>Predigested foods! If they nourish the sick, why not
+feed the well; why not abolish our kitchens at an
+immense saving in the time, expense, and worry of
+cooking, and live on them at an immense saving of
+the tax of digestion and the indigestive processes?
+Brethren of the medical profession, make haste to let
+the world know when you have found a case in which
+you have made use of the lower bowel so to nourish
+the sick body that it did not waste while the cure was
+going on.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">{117}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1><a name="THE_FASTING-CURE" id="THE_FASTING-CURE"></a>THE FASTING-CURE.</h1>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">NOTES AND PRESS COMMENTS ON VOLUNTARY
+FASTS.</span></h2>
+
+
+<p>The first voluntary protracted fast for the cure of
+chronic ailing to reach the public prints as a matter
+of interesting news occurred in the case of Mr. C. C.
+H. Cowan, of Warrensburg, Ill., early in 1899. He had
+been on the two-meal plan for a time, and wishing for
+something more radical wrote to me as to his entering
+upon a fast. I probably wrote him as I now find it
+necessary to write all who feel that fasts are necessary
+and cannot have my personal care, "Go on a fast and
+stick to it until hunger comes or until your friends begin
+to suffer the pangs of sympathetic starvation; then
+compromise with the sin of ignorance by eating the
+least that will bring peace to their troubled souls."</p>
+
+<p>The results were summed up by the <i>Morning-Herald
+Dispatch</i>, Decatur, Ill., April 16, 1899:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"A few years ago Dr. Tanner, in New York City, fasted for forty
+days and forty nights, and all the world wondered. Up to that time
+the feat was considered impossible. From day to day the papers told<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">{118}</a></span>
+of his actions and his condition, and the entire people became deeply
+interested in the performance. Medical men and scientists became interested
+in the performance, and the laity watched the faster through
+curiosity. Tanner's accomplishment was considered marvellous by the
+medical profession and laymen alike, but Dr. Tanner has long since
+been a back number, and his performance is not now regarded as remarkable,
+although there are not many persons who would care to attempt
+the fast. Tanner was simply trying to prove that the thing could be
+done. He did it, and within a year the man who held the attention of
+the people of the country for forty days was a visitor to this city. What
+Tanner did has been more than accomplished by a Macon County man,
+but he went about his undertaking quietly, and the fact that he was fasting
+was known to only a few of his friends. The man is C. C. H.
+Cowan, of Warrensburg, and for forty-two days and nights he abstained
+from the use of food in solid or liquid form. He began his fast on
+March 2 and broke it on the evening of April 13 at supper-time.
+With the exception of the loss of thirty pounds of flesh, which materially
+changed his personal appearance, Mr. Cowan shows no ill-effects of
+his undertaking. When he began he weighed one hundred and sixty-five
+pounds, and when he quit he weighed one hundred and thirty-five
+pounds. Before his fast he was inclined to be fleshy, and now, while
+still in fairly good flesh, his clothing manifests a desire not to hold close
+communion with his body. Mr. Cowan was in the city Saturday, and
+some of his friends did not know him. He related his experience to
+some of them, but he did this cautiously, and with the oft-expressed
+hope that the papers would not devote any attention to the affair, because
+he was not seeking and did not want notoriety. At different times
+during his fast the <i>Herald-Dispatch</i> has referred to the fact in short
+items. Cowan is a disciple of a Dr. Dewey, living at Meadville,
+Pa., who is an advocate of fasting as a means of curing many of the
+ills to which the body is heir. Dr. Dewey has many pamphlets touching
+the subject, and has also written some books for his belief, and his
+reasons have been made so plausible that a number of persons have coincided
+with him. Cowan says the efficacy of the treatment has been
+established in many instances, a fact that he can prove by ample testimony.
+During his long abstinence from food he had numerous letters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">{119}</a></span>
+and telegrams from Dr. Dewey, encouraging him in the undertaking.
+When asked why he had fasted, Cowan explained that for years he had
+suffered from chronic nasal and throat catarrh which would not yield to
+medical treatment. His appetite was splendid, and he ate many things
+that he really did not want. He read Dr. Dewey's ideas, and became
+convinced that his system needed general overhauling, and that this
+could be accomplished through faithful adherence to the theory of Dr.
+Dewey. One of these theories is to the effect that fasting rests the
+brain, which is ofttimes overworked as a result of heavy feeding. It is
+also supposed that the body throws off old mucous membrane of the
+stomach and bowels, and that these are immediately supplanted by new
+lining. Believing that he could get rid of his catarrhal trouble and get
+the new lining referred to, Cowan decided to fast, and without noise
+about the matter he commenced, and up to Thursday evening he did
+not allow a bite of food to pass his lips. The only thing that he took
+was water. Of this he did not drink much, and he claims that he suffered
+no pain or pangs of hunger. Looking at the matter now, it does
+not seem to have been much of an accomplishment. After he once got
+started he said it was an easy matter to carry out his plan except for
+the worry of his family and some of his friends. They thought that
+he was losing his mind and tried to induce him to relinquish his idea,
+but he took some of them under his wing and reasoned with them on
+the beauties of the treatment, expounded the strong points, gave them
+reasons, showed them testimony of others, and kept on fasting.
+When he began he had no idea that he would continue for forty days;
+but as he progressed he had no desire for food, and therefore did not
+desist. Thursday evening he began to feel hungry, and that night he
+ate a reasonably good supper. The return of hunger, according to his
+theories, was the signal of the return of health. He feels confident
+that his stomach has been relined, and for the present he knows that his
+catarrh has left him. He is a firm believer in the new method of curing
+bodily ailments, and says that during his fast he was able to be
+around the village of Warrensburg every day, and was able to perform
+his duties. His abstinence from food apparently has not weakened his
+constitution. Since breaking his fast he has partaken sparingly of food.
+Cowan's friends are very much interested in the recital of his experience."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">{120}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It so chanced that during this fast much more than
+his ordinary business came to him, and without the
+least inability to perform it. I saw him several months
+later, and found his physical condition seemingly perfect.
+He had found out that for the best working
+conditions a nap at noon was better than even a light
+luncheon, and that one meal a day taken after his
+business was over was the best practice. This fast
+was not in the right locality to excite the attention it
+deserved.</p>
+
+<p>The second voluntary fast was destined to reach the
+ends of the earth through the public prints. The following
+appeared in the <i>New York Press</i> of June 6, 1899:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Twenty-eight days without nourishment and without letting up for
+a moment on the daily routine of his business is the unequalled record
+of Milton Rathbun, a hay and grain dealer at No. 453 Fourth Avenue,
+and living in Mount Vernon. He is a man of wealth, has many
+employ&eacute;s, and has been in the same business in this city for thirty-nine
+years.</p>
+
+<p>"He fasted because he wanted to reduce his weight, fearing that
+its gradual increase might bring on apoplexy. He succeeded in his
+efforts. He weighed two hundred and ten pounds when he stopped
+eating; when he resumed he tipped the scales at one hundred and
+sixty-eight pounds, a loss of forty-two pounds of flesh.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Rathbun's description of how he felt as the days and weeks
+wore along and the pounds of avoirdupois slipped away one by one is
+interesting. The remarkable point about it is that he continued his
+work and kept well. He gave his account of it yesterday to a reporter
+for <i>The Press</i>. Mr. Rathbun is known by the business men for blocks
+around his own place of business, and they all know of his fast.</p>
+
+<p>"Every day his friends would come in and talk to him about it. At
+first they told him he was foolish; that nobody could fast that length<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">{121}</a></span>
+of time, much less continue his work without interruption. Then as
+the days went on and he kept up without a break they began to be
+frightened.</p>
+
+<p>"A crowd would gather about him every night at 6.30 o'clock,
+when he would leave his office, for that was his hour for weighing.
+Some days he would lose two or three pounds from the weight of the
+day before; some days only one, but always something. And as the
+record was scored up on the book each night his friends would shake
+their heads and warn him to beware.</p>
+
+<p>"Finally, on the fifteenth day, his friends and employ&eacute;s got together
+and made up their minds that something had to be done. They were
+afraid that Rathbun would die. They appointed a committee to wait
+on him in his office and beg him to eat something. The committee
+took dainties to Mr. Rathbun, told him their fears, and offered the good
+things to tempt him, but all to no purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"It was the night of April 23 that Mr. Rathbun took his last bit of
+nourishment. He made no attempt to eat a large meal in preparation
+for his fast. He ate his regular supply just as if he had meant to continue
+eating on the following day. Then for twenty-eight days he
+absolutely abjured all food. He drank water, but that was all. Before
+going to bed he would take a pint of Apollinaris.</p>
+
+<p>"Had he remained at his home in bed or taken perfect rest, his
+achievement would have been less remarkable. That is the course
+which always has been adopted by the professional fasters. Dr. Tanner,
+and the Italian, Succi, in their fasts were surrounded by attendants who
+allowed them scarcely to lift a hand, so that every ounce of energy
+might be conserved.</p>
+
+<p>"Rathbun pursued a course diametrically opposite to this. He
+worked, and worked hard. He came down earlier to his office and
+went away later than usual. He made no effort to save himself. On
+the contrary, he seemed determined to make his task as hard as possible.
+On four of his fast days he spent the afternoons in a dentist's chair,
+at which times his nerves were tried as only dentists know how to
+do it.</p>
+
+<p>"It was his idea to continue the fast until he began to feel hunger.
+After the first twenty-four hours his hunger disappeared, and he had no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">{122}</a></span>
+desire for food until the end of the fourth week, when the craving set
+in, and he immediately set about <ins class="correction" title="satifsying in original">satisfying</ins> it in a moderate and careful
+manner. He consulted two physicians while the fast was going on,
+to see that he was suffering no injury that he could not appreciate
+himself. One was Dr. F. B. Carpenter, of Madison Avenue and
+thirty-eight Street, and the other, Dr. George J. Helmer, of Madison
+Avenue and Thirty-first Street. He saw Dr. Carpenter on the eighteenth
+and the twenty-first days, and Dr. Helmer on the twenty-fifth
+day. Both expressed surprise at his long fast and astonishment at his
+excellent condition.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Rathbun is fifty-four years old, and five feet six inches in
+height. He does not look more than forty years old, and he is as
+active as a man of that age. He says he never felt better than when
+he was fasting, and that he has experienced no bad effects of any kind,
+while, on the other hand, he has reduced his weight to a normal limit
+and removed all danger of apoplexy.</p>
+
+<p>"He got the idea of the fast from the new theory exploited by Dr.
+Edward Hooker Dewey, a practising physician of Meadville, Pa., who
+recommends fasting as a cure for many ailments, and advises all persons
+to go without breakfast and eat only two meals a day.</p>
+
+<p>"'I became intensely interested in this new system,' said Mr.
+Rathbun yesterday, 'and I decided to put it to a practical test. Dr.
+Dewey had said that he had many patients fasting all the way from ten
+to thirty and forty days, and I concluded that if it did them so much
+good it would be just the thing for me. So I tried it.</p>
+
+<p>"'On April 23 I ate my last meal, and from then until May 24 I had
+absolutely nothing to eat. I drank water, of course, for that is a matter
+of necessity. One cannot do without drink; but I took no nourishment.
+For the first twenty-four hours I was very hungry, and would have
+liked very much to take a square meal; but I resisted the temptation,
+and after the expiration of one day I had no desire to eat.</p>
+
+<p>"'I had been in the habit of getting to my office about 8; now I
+get there at 7. I generally had left at 5.30; I now stayed until 6.30.
+I had been in the habit of taking an hour or an hour and a quarter for
+luncheon. The luncheon was now cut off, so I stayed in the office and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">{123}</a></span>
+worked. I sat there at my desk and put in a long, hard day's work,
+constantly writing.</p>
+
+<p>"'At night I drank a bottle of Apollinaris, and went to bed at 8.30
+and slept until 4 in the morning. I never enjoyed better sleep than
+in those four weeks. And I was in excellent condition as far as I
+could see in every other way. My mind was clear, my eye was sharper
+than usually, and all the functions were in excellent working order.</p>
+
+<p>"'I had many amusing experiences. I went to a dentist on the
+first day. I had some work requiring several hours' labor on the part
+of the dentist. I said nothing to the doctor on the first day. Four or
+five days afterward I kept a second appointment with the dentist, and he
+asked me how the teeth worked which he had fixed before. I said to
+him: "I haven't tried them yet."</p>
+
+<p>"'You can imagine the look of surprise on his face. When I told
+him that I was fasting, and had been since he had seen me before, he
+showed the greatest concern, and said he did not think I could go on
+with the dental work on account of the weakness of my nerves. He
+solicited me to go out and have just a bite of something. I refused,
+of course, and he continued the work. I visited him on two days after
+that until he had finished the work.</p>
+
+<p>"'The men in my employ were greatly concerned about me, and
+thought I would break down. I used to weigh every night before
+leaving the office, and as they saw my constant wearing away they became
+more and more frightened, and finally appointed a committee to
+wait on me. The committee was headed by my manager, who begged
+me to eat. He brought along some fine ripe cherries to tempt me. I
+told him I would not eat them for one thousand dollars, for I was interested
+thoroughly in the fast by that time and would not have stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"'After that they made no more attempts to stop the fast; but my
+friends all shook their heads, and said that when I started in to eat
+again I would find I was without a proper stomach.</p>
+
+<p>"'On the twenty-eighth day the hunger began to come on again,
+and I began to eat under the advice of Dr. Carpenter. On the twenty-ninth
+day I drank a little bouillon, and afterward from day to day
+increased the amount of food to the normal. I suffered no inconvenience.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">{124}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Rathbun says he is a firm believer in the no-breakfast system
+of hygiene advocated by Dr. Dewey, and that neither himself, his
+wife, nor any of the servants in his house eat breakfast, and as a result
+all are remarkably well. His two sons, one of whom was graduated
+at Harvard in 1896, and a second, who is still at Harvard, practise the
+no-breakfast system.</p>
+
+<p>"Just before beginning his fast Mr. Rathbun ordered a suit of
+clothes at his tailor's. He did not go for it until the end of his long
+fast. Being something of a practical joker, besides a man of great
+nerve, he walked into the tailor-shop and let the tailor try his new suit
+on to see if it was all right.</p>
+
+<p>"When he slipped on the coat the tailor stood aghast. There was
+apparently the same man he had measured twenty-eight days previously
+standing before him in perfect health, but as to dimensions not at all
+the same man.</p>
+
+<p>"'It doesn't fit any part of you,' said the tailor, after the suit had
+been tried on. In the tailor's book Rathbun's measurement was
+entered: 'Forty-three inches around the waist and forty-two around
+the chest.' When he went for his suit his measurements were thirty-eight
+around the waist and thirty-eight around the chest.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Dewey's theory, which led Rathbun to make his long fast,
+is that the brain is the centre of every mind and muscle energy, a sort
+of self-charging dynamo, with the heart, lungs, and all the other parts
+only as so many machines to be run by it; that the brain has the power
+of feeding itself on the less important parts of the body without loss
+of its own structure, and that as the operation of digestion is a tax on
+the brain, a long period of fasting gives the brain a rest, by which
+means the brain is able to build itself up, which means the upbuilding
+of the whole body.</p>
+
+<p>"In this way, it is asserted, the alcohol habit is cured and other
+diseases eradicated.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. F. B. Carpenter said yesterday to a reporter for <i>The Press</i>
+that he had not recommended Mr. Rathbun to take the fast, but had
+advised him while it was going on and after it was over. The doctor
+said he was inclined to believe there might be something in the no-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">{125}</a></span>breakfast
+system, as a great many persons eat and drink altogether too
+much.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Helmer said he had examined Rathbun on the twenty-fifth
+day, and had found him in surprisingly good condition."</p></div>
+
+<p>Mr. Rathbun had been on the no-breakfast plan for
+several years, and he was one of the first to write me
+after my book came out. It was not without reason
+he feared apoplexy, for Ex-Gov. Flower, an over-weighted
+man, had gone down to instant death though
+seemingly in perfect health and in the prime of business
+energy and mental capacity. During his fast my
+only trouble with him was in his drinking so much
+water without thirst, thus greatly and needlessly adding
+to the work of the kidneys.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Rathbun was so disappointed over the skepticism
+of New York physicians as to the reliability of
+the fast that he determined to undergo a longer one
+under such surveillance as would enforce conviction.
+He was mainly actuated, however, to go through the
+ordeal in the interests of science.</p>
+
+<p>Again I had trouble with him on the water question,
+wishing him to drink only as thirst incited. He was
+differently advised by an eminent Boston physician,
+who, taking a great interest in the case, wrote him that
+he should have great care to drink certain definite
+amounts for the necessary fluidity of the blood. I had
+to respond that thirst would duly indicate this need;
+that in my cases of protracted fasts from acute sicknesses
+not one had been advised to take even a tea<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">{126}</a></span>spoonful
+of water for such reasons; that at the closing
+days before recovery of such cases there was only the
+least desire for water, and this with no indication of
+need from the blood. Mr. Rathbun did not escape
+some trouble from overworked kidneys, and he became
+convinced that my theory and practice were more in line
+with physiology.</p>
+
+<p>This fast was made a matter of daily record by the
+leading New York journals, and he became such a
+subject of general interest that in addition to his ordinary
+business he was greatly overtaxed, and was compelled
+to give up the fast on the thirty-fifth day, in part
+from the exhaustion of over-excitement.</p>
+
+<p>This case was summed up as follows by the <i>New
+York Press</i>, February 27, 1900:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Milton Rathbun has ended his long fast.</p>
+
+<p>"After thirty-five days, in which solid food or any liquid other than
+water was a stranger to his palate, he became extremely hungry on
+Sunday night. At first he resisted the longing to eat and tried to sleep
+it off. But he awoke in a few hours hungrier than ever, and then he
+decided he had fasted as long as was good for him.</p>
+
+<p>"He ate a modest, light meal and went back to bed, only to awake
+still hungry. Then he ate an orange, and was asleep again in a jiffy.
+A bowl of milk and cream and crackers sufficed for his breakfast, and
+at noon yesterday he enjoyed his first hearty meal.</p>
+
+<p>"As he walked around the parlor of his home in Mount Vernon,
+lighter by forty-three pounds than he was on January 21, this man of
+fifty-five years and iron will said:</p>
+
+<p>"'I feel like a boy again. I think I could vault over a six-foot
+fence.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Rathbun herself knows what it is to fast. For five years<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">{127}</a></span>
+such a thing as breakfast has been an unknown quantity in her house,
+save when guests were present or for the servants. To this abstinence
+Mrs. Rathbun attributes the curing of catarrh, from which she had
+suffered previously. And as she and her husband do, so do their two
+sons.</p>
+
+<p>"After the first few days of abstinence he had felt no desire to eat
+until Sunday evening. Then he became hungry&mdash;ravenously so. His
+first fast of a year ago&mdash;it was twenty-eight days then&mdash;had taught him
+that sleep took away the longing for food, and, too, he had said he
+would make his fast last forty days this time. So he went to bed and
+to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>"But he awoke at 11 o'clock; he was hungrier than ever, and he
+decided not to resist his inclination for food. Calling his wife he asked
+her for an orange, and ate it; then he took another. His next demand
+was for oysters, and a dozen large, juicy ones disappeared rapidly, to
+the accompaniment of five soda crackers. Then he drank about two-thirds
+of a cup of beef-tea, and some Oolong tea. His appetite was
+not sated by any means, but he knew the danger of overloading his
+stomach, so he stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"He soon was slumbering again, but he was wide awake at 2 o'clock
+in the morning. And his hunger was with him still. He ate an orange
+to appease the craving, and again sought his pillow. He slept again
+until 6 o'clock, and then, breaking some crackers in a bowl of milk
+and cream, he ate again.</p>
+
+<p>"At noon a meal was served to the still hungry man. He began
+with a little clam-broth; then came half a dozen steamed clams, followed
+by a small portion of mock-turtle soup. Of a squab he ate one-half,
+and with it some canned pease and fried potatoes; while for dessert
+he had a little lemon ice.</p>
+
+<p>"'That was good,' he exclaimed, as he finished. The remark was
+unnecessary; the relish with which he had eaten was convincing testimony
+of his enjoyment. Asked why he had decided not to fast for the
+full forty days, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"'I ate just because I was hungry.'</p>
+
+<p>"Asked how the weather affected him, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"'When I began there was a spell of cold weather, and I found it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">{128}</a></span>
+rather hard to keep warm at night. But it soon passed away, and I
+made it a point to wear the same underclothing and outer garments as
+usual. Oh, yes; I did wear a different pair of trousers. I had them
+made five years ago, but they were so tight around the waist I could
+never wear them. They are as loose as can be now, however.'</p>
+
+<p>"'From a scientific standpoint,' said Professor R. Ogden Doremus
+yesterday, 'it is the most interesting and valuable experiment I have
+known. Mr. Rathbun is a man of great nerve force. The very fact
+that he attended to his business was what saved him, in keeping his
+mind away from the thought of food. He could not have done it had
+he been on exhibition or if he had remained at home. If he had been
+at sea, in an open boat, he could not have lasted more than ten days.
+He would have had nothing to think of but his hunger.'</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. George J. Helmer, who has given no little attention to Mr.
+Rathbun, said:</p>
+
+<p>"'I have examined him several times; I did so when his thirty days
+were up. Well, it was remarkable. It's a wonderful exhibition, that
+will attract the attention of the medical world. His heart is as clear as
+a bell and his kidneys are perfect. He is in absolutely rugged health.
+His temperature was normal, his eye clear, and to-day, upon examination,
+any insurance company would rate him as an A1 risk.'</p>
+
+<p>"Following is from the diary kept during his fast, and furnished by
+Milton Rathbun to <i>The Press</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>First Day</i>, Jan. 22, 8.45 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">A.&nbsp;M.</span>&mdash;Weight, 207 pounds; height, 5 ft. 6<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span>
+inches; chest measure, 43<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> inches; waist measure, 43<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> inches;
+hip measure, 46<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> inches; calf measure, 17 inches; biceps measure,
+14 inches; forearm, 12 inches. 3 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P. M.</span>, feels well, but hungry. In
+the evening felt well, not being hungry or thirsty. Have taken no
+water.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tuesday</i>, Jan. 23.&mdash;Slept well until 6 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">A.&nbsp;M.</span> Rested a while, then
+took sponge bath and rubdown. At 8.45 weighed 200 pounds.
+Feel good, but a little weak. 12 o'clock <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">M.</span>, no appetite and
+feverish. 4 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P.&nbsp;M.</span>, weighed 199 pounds; went home; drank one
+pint of water during the evening.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Wednesday</i>, Jan. 24.&mdash;Slept well for nine hours. Got up at 6 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">A.&nbsp;M.</span>,
+drank one glass of water and took train to the city. 8.30 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">A.&nbsp;M.</span>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">{129}</a></span>
+weighed 198<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> pounds; only half pound lost, which shows how
+greedily the tissues absorb moisture and add to weight. 12 o'clock
+<span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">M.</span>, have no appetite nor thirst, and no fever. Retired at 9 o'clock,
+feeling comfortable but a little feverish.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Thursday</i>, Jan. 25.&mdash;After having slept seven and one-half hours
+took a sponge bath and brisk rubdown. Came to the city, and at
+8.25 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">A.&nbsp;M.</span> weighed 195 pounds. Feeling good, with no fever nor
+appetite. 4.45 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P.&nbsp;M.</span>, weighed 193 pounds. At home during the
+evening drank two and one-half glasses of water.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Friday</i>, Jan. 26.&mdash;Slept eight hours. No appetite and feeling
+stronger. Examined by Professor Doremus and Dr. Carpenter.
+Retired at 9 o'clock, feeling first class.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Saturday</i>, Jan. 27.&mdash;Came to the city on the 7.45 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">A.&nbsp;M.</span> train.
+Weighed 191 pounds. Feeling good. No fever and no appetite.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Sunday</i>, Jan. 28.&mdash;Drank one glass of water when I got up. During
+the day and evening drank three more glasses of water. Retired
+feeling first class.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Monday</i>, Jan. 29.&mdash;Slept eight hours last night, and came to the city
+on the 7.45 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">A.&nbsp;M.</span> train. At 8.25 weighed 189 pounds. 4 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P.&nbsp;M.</span>,
+was examined by Dr. F. B. Carpenter, who found the temperature
+98<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span>&deg; F., pulse regular, tongue clean. Measurements were: waist,
+41 inches; chest, 41 inches; hip, 45 inches; calf, 16 inches; biceps,
+13<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> inches; forearm, 11<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> inches. 5.15 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P.&nbsp;M.</span>, weighed 188 pounds.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tuesday</i>, Jan. 30.&mdash;Slept eight hours; weighed 188 pounds, same as
+the night before; feeling good. 5.30 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P.&nbsp;M.</span>, weighed 185<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> pounds.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Wednesday</i>, Jan. 31.&mdash;Slept 7<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> hours, drank one and one-half
+glasses of water; weighed at 8.25 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">A.&nbsp;M.</span> 187 pounds; Dr. Carpenter
+found temperature 98&deg; F., and pulse 88; Professor Doremus called
+a little later; weighed 184<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> pounds.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Thursday</i>, Feb. 1.&mdash;Rested quietly when not asleep; drank only
+one and three-quarters glasses of water all day; weighed 184
+pounds; retired feeling good.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Friday</i>, Feb. 2.&mdash;Not feeling any hunger; was examined by F. B.
+Carpenter; temperature, 98&deg; F.; pulse, 84; weighed 183 pounds;
+retired feeling well, but tired.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">{130}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"<i>Saturday</i>, Feb. 3.&mdash;Somewhat wakeful during the night. 5.45 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P.&nbsp;M.</span>,
+weighed 182 pounds.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Sunday</i>, Feb. 4.&mdash;Read all day and felt well.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Monday</i>, Feb. 5.&mdash;2 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P.&nbsp;M.</span>, temperature, 98.4&deg; F.; pulse, 82;
+tongue clean. Measurements were: waist, 41 inches; chest, 41
+inches; hip, 43 inches; calf, 14<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> inches; biceps, 13<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> inches;
+forearm, 11<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> inches; went to bed feeling a trifle feverish.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tuesday</i>, Feb. 6.&mdash;Wakeful during the night. 11 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">A.&nbsp;M.</span>, had my
+eyes examined by Dr. L. H. Matthez, oculist, and found a marked
+improvement in my sight over same tests of two months previous,
+being 7 degrees stronger; felt a little weak, but no fever or appetite;
+weighed 180 pounds; feeling somewhat exhausted from the day's
+labor and in entertaining guests.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Wednesday</i>, Feb. 7.&mdash;Slept about seven hours during the night; when
+I awoke felt rested; temperature, 98.2&deg; F.; pulse, 80; have felt well
+all day; went to bed at 9.30; some fever.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Thursday</i>, Feb. 8.&mdash;Woke up two or three times during the night.
+Drank water during the night and first thing this morning when I
+got up. Came to the city, and at 9 o'clock weighed 182 pounds,
+showing a gain of two pounds over last night. Not feeling so well
+owing to the amount of water I drank last night, which was induced
+by feverishness.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Friday</i>, Feb. 9.&mdash;Feeling first rate. At 8.25 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">A.&nbsp;M.</span> weighed 180
+pounds. Heart action normal. No enlargement of the spleen or
+liver.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Saturday</i>, Feb. 10.&mdash;Lost nothing in weight during the day and have
+felt well all the while.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Sunday</i>, Feb. 11.&mdash;Passed the day in reading and drank frequently
+of water.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Monday</i>, Feb. 12.&mdash;This being a holiday, did not go to the city.
+Passed the day in entertaining callers. Have not felt quite so well
+owing to a slight cold settling in my left kidney.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tuesday</i>, Feb. 13.&mdash;Measurements: waist, 38<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> inches; chest, 40
+inches; hip, 43 inches; calf, 14<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> inches; biceps, 12<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> inches;
+forearm, 11 inches; weight, 177<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> pounds.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">{131}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"<i>Wednesday</i>, Feb. 14.&mdash;I attribute the cause of loss of sleep to a hard
+day's work and in reading too long last evening.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Thursday</i>, Feb. 15.&mdash;Somewhat wakeful during the night. Retired
+at 7.30 o'clock, after a hard day's work.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Friday</i>, Feb. 16.&mdash;3.30 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P.&nbsp;M.</span>, temperature, 98.5&deg; F.; pulse, 74;
+tongue clean; weighed 172<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> pounds. During the evening drank
+one cup of hot water.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Saturday</i>, Feb. 17.&mdash;After a restful night felt well all day.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Sunday</i>, Feb. 18.&mdash;Retired at 9 o'clock and have rested a good deal
+during the day.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Monday</i>, Feb. 19.&mdash;Weighed 169<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> pounds, and retired feeling well.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tuesday</i>, Feb. 20.&mdash;Weighed 168<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> pounds; was examined by Dr.
+Helmer, who found me in excellent condition; 4.30 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P.&nbsp;M.</span>, weighed
+169<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> pounds, a gain of one pound during the day, on account of
+drinking a little more water than usual.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Wednesday</i>, Feb. 21.&mdash;Temperature, 98.5&deg; F.; pulse, 69; 4 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P.&nbsp;M.</span>,
+weighed 168<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> pounds; have not felt quite so well during the day.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Thursday</i>, Feb. 22.&mdash;Occupied the day&mdash;holiday&mdash;in reading and
+reclining, and went to bed feeling pretty well.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Friday</i>, Feb. 23.&mdash;At 8.30 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">A.&nbsp;M.</span> weighed 166 pounds; 3.30 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P.&nbsp;M.</span>,
+temperature, 99&deg; F.; pulse, 98; lung expansion, 2<span class='frac'><sup>3</sup>/<sub>4</sub></span> inches; went
+home and to bed, feeling considerably exhausted owing to a hard
+day's work and too many callers.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Saturday</i>, Feb. 24.&mdash;Did not rest very well from overtaxing the brain
+yesterday. Do not feel quite so well this morning owing to that fact
+and from drinking too much water during the past twenty-four hours.
+At 8.25 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">A.&nbsp;M.</span> weighed 166 pounds; went home not feeling well to-day
+on account of some stomach disturbance, which probably comes
+from drinking too much water; did not drink any water during the
+evening; feeling quite tired at bedtime.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Sunday</i>, Feb. 25.&mdash;Slept nine hours and rested well, and did not
+drink any water during the night. Kept quiet all day, lying down
+most of the time, and felt the coming of hunger about 6 o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>12 o'clock noon, pulse regular; tongue clean; temperature,
+98.2&deg;F.; weighed 164 pounds. Measurements were: waist, 36<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">{132}</a></span>
+inches; chest, 38 inches; hip, 40<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span> inches; calf, 14 inches; biceps,
+11 inches; forearm, 10 inches.</p>
+
+<p>Was in bed at 8 o'clock, still feeling hungry, and after a short
+sleep woke up at 11 o'clock with a sharp appetite, and ate a dozen
+raw oysters, two oranges, two-thirds cup of beef-tea, five crackers,
+and part of a cup of Oolong tea.</p></div>
+
+<p>I insert a photograph of Mr. Rathbun taken shortly after his second
+fast. There had been five years' trial of the No-Breakfast Plan before
+these fasting demonstrations.</p></div>
+
+<p>One of the hardest things on earth as a mental
+operation is to be fair to the opposition. Now lest I
+have beguiled my readers overmuch by the force of
+my convictions even to the point of danger, I will give
+an estimate of the danger of fasting by one of the
+most eminent physicians of New York City, Dr.
+George F. Shrady. I quote from an interview reported
+in the New York <i>Sun</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The strange case of Milton Rathbun, of Mt. Vernon, who, to reduce
+his flesh and generally tone up his system, is said to have gone without
+food of any sort for thirty-six days, still continues to be the subject of
+more or less discussion among the medical men of the city. Dr. George
+F. Shrady, in speaking last evening of Mr. Rathbun's remarkable
+exploit, said:</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 340px;"><a name="illus004" id="illus004"></a>
+<img src="images/illus_004.jpg" width="340" height="500" alt="MR. MILTON RATHBUN." title="" />
+<span class="caption">MR. MILTON RATHBUN,
+<br />
+SHORTLY AFTER HIS FAST.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"'There are three things to say about it. In the first place, the fact,
+if it be a fact, as it seems to be, is astonishing; secondly, it was very foolish;
+and thirdly, it would be a very unfortunate and dangerous thing
+to popularize such experiments. Now as to whether the gentleman in
+question actually did go thirty-six days without taking nourishment of
+any sort is a matter I will not discuss. If he were a professional faster,
+I would hardly hesitate to say his claim was fraudulent, for I am fully
+convinced that all the professional fasters are frauds. They are simply
+adept sleight-of-hand men. They work out some adroit trick by which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">{133}</a></span>
+they may get nourishment into their systems in spite of the always more
+or less negligent or suspicious watchers, and then advertise for a forty
+days' or sixty days' 'fast.'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"'Now, mind you, I do not say this Mt. Vernon case is anything of
+this sort. I only say that if it is true it is most astounding. It is in
+flat contradiction of all the authorities on the subject of a human being's
+ability to do without food. The extreme limit of all well-authenticated
+cases of total abstinence from nourishment is from nine to ten days.
+Imprisoned miners have been known to go that time and survive.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"'But at all events it was a very foolish thing for Mr. Rathbun to
+do. About that there can be no manner of doubt. What will be the
+future effect upon him&mdash;upon his heart action, upon his impoverished
+blood, upon his nervous system, upon his organs of nutrition, necessarily
+paralyzed for days? These are grave questions, the answers to
+which may be unpleasant to Mr. Rathbun as they reveal themselves to
+him in the future. You cannot fly in the face of Nature and ignore all
+her laws in that way with impunity. She exacts her penalties and there
+is no court of appeals in her realm.</p>
+
+<p>"'When I say that the extreme limits of abstinence from nourishment
+in clearly authenticated cases is from nine to ten days, you must
+not get the impression that all persons can last that long.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"'It is a question of environment, of mental condition&mdash;whether
+buoyed by hope or stimulated by ambition to do a great feat&mdash;and above
+all, of course, of the physical condition of the faster. Without food
+the body absorbs its own tissues. Mr. Rathbun, I am told, was a very
+heavy man with a superabundance of tissue. Naturally he could go
+longer without nourishment than a weak, attenuated, thin-blooded
+man.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"'Yet Mr. Rathbun was exercising daily and about his usual avocations,
+and he abstained from food for thirty-six days! Well, it's remarkable!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">{134}</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"'But I sincerely hope Mr. Rathbun will have no imitators. It
+would be a very unfortunate thing, fraught with grave possibilities, if
+the newspaper accounts of his reduction in weight and general improvement
+in health were to move others to follow his example. Many persons
+would be injured for life, physically wrecked, and perhaps actually
+killed if they conscientiously did the fifth part of what he is said to
+have done.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"'And right here it may be said that there is a great deal of exaggeration
+in the sweeping statements made about people eating too
+much. If a man sleeps well, goes about his business in a cheerful
+frame of mind, and does not get what is called "out-of-sorts," he may
+be pretty sure he is not eating too much, even though he eat a good
+deal. My observation is that the average man who works and gets a
+proper amount of exercise does not eat too much. If you want to get
+work done by the engine, you have got to stoke up the furnace. If a
+man wants to keep his vital energies up to par he has got to put in the
+fuel&mdash;that is, the food.</p>
+
+<p>"'Of course, there are those who lead sedentary lives who get too
+much absorbed in the pleasures of the table and overfeed. There are
+a sufficient number of these, to be sure, but I think they are the exception.
+But it will be a sad mistake if even they seek a road to health by
+Mr. Rathbun's starvation methods.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>The doctor is astonished, and so am I that he is
+astonished. This would seem to imply that he has
+never had cases of acute sickness in which the amount
+of food taken during many days or even weeks was
+too small to play any part as a life-prolonging factor.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a foolish, even dangerous experiment."
+How foolish or dangerous? What vital organs suffered?
+Was there evidence of a loss of anything but
+fat? What organs were "necessarily paralyzed" during
+the fast? Evidently not the brain, else longer days<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">{135}</a></span>
+of labor would not have been possible; and the grave
+future possibilities in heart action, impoverished blood,
+nervous system, upon organs of nutrition "necessarily
+paralyzed" for days; and the extreme limit of nine or
+ten days before death from starvation; and that without
+food the <i>body</i> lives on its own tissues!</p>
+
+<p>One can easily see that the earnest doctor is full of
+strong impressions that have little of the flavor of science:
+truth that is not self-evident should have the instant
+logic in easy reach. I may here say that my hygienic
+scheme has from the first been subject to similar attacks
+by physicians from the standpoint of impressions, but
+no physician has ventured into print against it after
+becoming aware of its physiologic basis.</p>
+
+<p>I am happy to assure all readers that in all the involuntary
+fasts of my cases of acute sickness or in the
+voluntary fasts in chronic disease, has there been any
+other than improved general health as the result.
+Notably was this the case in a man who fasted ten years
+ago for forty days for an ulcer of the stomach, and who
+had been troubled with indigestion for more than forty
+years. He had become nearly a mental and physical
+wreck when he took to his bed with an abolished appetite.
+There have since been some ten years of nearly
+perfect health, and now in his seventy-seventh year he is
+the youngest-looking man for his age I have ever seen.
+He walks the streets with the gait of a youth of twenty.
+To do without food without hunger does not tax any
+vital power, as Dr. Shrady may yet become aware.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">{136}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The next fast to have a brief notoriety as the "most
+remarkable on record" occurred in Philadelphia, the
+medical center of America, and beneath the very
+shadow of its great medical schools; in Philadelphia,
+a city that surpasses all other cities for the wisest conservatism,
+for all-around level-headedness. Its journals
+are rarely equalled for their clean, winnowed columns;
+there is no "yellow" journalism in that great,
+fair city, known as the "Quaker City."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Estella Kuenzel, a lady of twenty-two years, of
+acutest, finest sensibilities, born to live in June and not
+in March, lost her mental health to a degree that death
+became the final object of desire.</p>
+
+<p>She had a friend in a bright young man of the name
+of Henry Ritter, chemist and photographer at the
+Drexel Institute, a born scientist, and who possesses
+the very genius of the pains and persistence of science.
+Well versed in the science of the morning fast, he believed
+that a fast which would merely end with hunger
+would result in all-around improvement. A fast was
+instituted which he thought would not last more than
+a few days, but went on until the days merged into
+weeks: it went on because only general improvement
+attended it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">{137}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I first heard of it in a letter written by him on the
+thirty-eighth day of the fast, during which there had
+been a walk of seven miles. On the forty-second day
+of the fast I had a brief letter from Miss K., in which
+every line was radiant with cheer.</p>
+
+<p>At the Asylum five feedings per day were ordered,
+and at first were rejected; but finally she accepted
+them as a means to end her unhappy life; took them
+in bed, and in the last weeks seemed to be fleshing up,
+as there was a gain of seventeen pounds above the
+normal, of water&mdash;she had become dropsical. The
+last professional expert in her case advised a half-gallon
+of milk daily in addition to the three regular
+meals&mdash;making a five-meal plan.</p>
+
+<p>To carry out an unopposed fast it was necessary to
+take her to a home where the parents would be ignorant
+of this radical means to a cure.</p>
+
+<p>The following is from Mr. Ritter's letters:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I had made my views known to the parents and daughter when
+the case commenced, and after the failure of these methods they decided
+to let me have charge of the case, which was on Sept. 30, 1899.
+I at once requested them to send her to the house of some friends to
+whom I made my views known. We then discharged the nurse who
+had gone with her. With doctor and nurse gone there was free room
+for Nature's victory (the young lady being as deeply interested as any).
+We put her upon the rest, which was the only needed sign since her
+first signs of breakdown appeared Oct. 2, at the supper table, being the
+last meal she has taken up to to-day, Nov. 9, this being, as you will
+see, the thirty-eighth day of her fast, with cheerfulness and strength
+holding full sway. I put her to bed on the first day, to which she
+kept, with an occasional day in the rocker, until the eleventh day,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">{138}</a></span>
+when she took a walk of about one mile. Then she rested indoors
+until the twentieth day, when we went to church, walking a little over two
+miles, with no fatigue or tired feelings. I forgot to mention that we
+had been out driving in the bracing air for over three hours in the afternoon.
+On the twenty-first and twenty-second days, indoors, walking
+and working around the house, reading, etc. On the twenty-third day
+walked through the country for three miles, stopping at friends to
+enlighten them upon 'Nature's Laws;' twenty-fourth day, eight miles,
+no fatigue; twenty-fifth day, between seven and eight miles, no fatigue;
+twenty-sixth day, walked one and a half hours; twenty-ninth day,
+rainy, no walks; thirtieth day, walked in the evening for two and a
+half hours; thirty-first day, walked seven miles, no fatigue; thirty-second
+day, rainy, no walks; thirty-third day, went to the Exposition,
+walked all day from 2 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P.&nbsp;M.</span> until 11.30 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P.&nbsp;M.</span> (with rest while at the
+performance we attended of not over one and a quarter hours), this
+being the only resting, possibly two hours, during the whole time.</p>
+
+<p>"Weight taken at the start, one hundred and forty pounds; at the
+Exposition one hundred and twenty-five and three-quarters pounds; no
+sense of tired feeling, but hunger started to assert itself for a period
+of about three hours, after which it passed over.</p>
+
+<p>"On the thirty-fourth day went driving; thirty-fifth day, walked
+one mile, then went to the asylum to show the results. The physicians
+in charge were simply astounded, and would hardly believe it possible
+for one to be so active while taking no food. I believe we have done
+quite a little good there, as they have expressed the desire to try the
+same on others. They examined the tongue and took the pulse, finding
+both in good, normal state; in the evening walked another mile,
+visiting the other doctors whom her parents called in. On the thirty-sixth
+day walked one and a half miles; thirty-seventh day, walked
+seven miles, hunger sensation becoming decided.</p>
+
+<p>"I have given you a sketch of this case because it seems to me an
+unusual one owing to the great activity."</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right; margin-right: 4em;">
+"November 18, 1899.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Kuenzel's hunger arrived as per Nature's demand on the
+forty-fifth day at noon. One poached egg and two slices of toast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">{139}</a></span>
+(whole wheat). There was an intense relish for her simple fare, but
+not the least sign or desire for haste in eating. She was amply satisfied
+for the day, and relished the same bill of fare and quantity for the
+forty-sixth day, with a very slight luncheon in the evening. We had been
+to the Exposition the night of the forty-fourth day, when the tongue
+again started cleaning and a most distinct craving for food presented
+itself. It persisted on retiring, and also on the next morning, when she
+felt that Nature again was ready for her wonderful chemistry of digestion.
+I had her weight taken after her first meal, which revealed a
+loss of twenty pounds. We called to see the professor under whom
+she was last placed, and he was surprised with the clearness of her
+mental condition and good general appearance, though he observed
+she had gotten a trifle thinner, but which he had also in view to accomplish
+upon a five-meal plan per day. He tried his best to confuse
+and trouble her with questions, etc., but found her too intensely awake,
+and she won the victory by cornering him in his own set traps. We
+received his congratulations and were made to promise to call again.
+I have now been with her to seven physicians who were interested, and
+have shown them Nature's own unhampered work.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Kuenzel has now an intense desire to help others. You are
+at liberty to make use of Nature's work in her case for the benefit
+of others, and I shall be only too glad to give you any desired information
+that may be of use. The good work you have started will, I am
+sure, never end; and it will prove a pleasure to me indeed to work with
+added interest for the benefit of those in need of the same in the
+future."</p></div>
+
+<p>The forty-fourth day of the fast was the busiest of
+all with her. She arose at 8.30 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">A.&nbsp;M.</span> to attend to her
+affairs until the late afternoon, when she and her
+friend met a sister, by appointment from her home, at
+the Exposition. Several hours were spent there, and
+when they took the street car for return the only
+vacant seat was accepted by the sister, because she
+was tired, and not knowing that there were forty-four<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">{140}</a></span>
+days without food with her sister, who was not tired.
+A striking feature of these daily walks was that they
+did not cause marked fatigue. Miss Kuenzel retired
+near midnight without unusual fatigue, and so ended
+the forty-fourth day of the fast.</p>
+
+<p>I quote from the <i>Chester County Times</i> of Feb. 12,
+1899:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"'Conclusive evidence is being multiplied as to the wonderful
+power of fasting in the restoration of health, but it is only more recently
+that its power in the case of insanity is even yet more wonderful. A
+recent case is as near home as the city of Philadelphia, and those interested
+are very willing that others may know of it, so that its usefulness
+may be extended and its value appreciated. The discovery was
+made by Dr. E. H. Dewey, of Meadville, Pa., and tidings of the good
+work are being spread by Charles C. Haskell &amp; Son, of Norwich, Conn.
+The editor of this paper knows somewhat the value of the discovery by
+an experience of several years. We give a letter from the lady who
+was cured.</p></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p style="text-align: right; margin-right: 4em;">
+"'<span class="smcap">Philadelphia, Pa.</span>, Dec. 12, 1899.</p>
+
+<p>
+"'<i>My Dear Mr. Haskell:</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"'I have received your letter of the 9th inst., and at last find time
+to fulfil the request for a statement. In regard to my <i>wonderful cure</i>
+through "The New Gospel of Health," I would state that the second
+week after Christmas, 1898, I first had a paralyzing effect which affected
+the right side of face, body, and limbs, also tongue, which nearly prevented
+my speaking. This passed over and I again began working at
+my position as milliner in a large establishment, and after a short while
+became so dizzy and confused that I was compelled to ask my friends
+to direct me home. (This was around Easter, 1899.) I was then
+taken to a doctor, who at once requested me to stop working, and to
+take a <i>complete rest</i>, but not for the stomach, as he prescribed a severe
+and exacting master to stimulate the <i>tired and overworked stomach</i> to
+<i>renewed life</i>, and so give the nerves plenty of pure food, as they were
+in need of same. I then, after getting a ravenous hunger, weakened<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">{141}</a></span>
+myself still more and became worse. My stomach felt numb and paralyzed,
+as did also my other internal organs, but this was put down
+against me as an illusion. So a <i>professor of nervous diseases</i> was called
+in consultation, owing to my many desires to die (as life had no sunshine,
+flowers, or music for me); I was simply living a living death of
+torture which these professors would have were illusions. My parents
+were then informed that I must be sent to an asylum, where I was for ten
+long weeks. <i>They</i> also told me that my feelings were illusions, and
+proceeded to banish the same by giving the <i>tired-out nerves a little rest</i>
+and <i>plenty of nourishment</i> on a <i>five-meal</i> plan per day. If refused
+(owing to a loss of appetite), I was threatened to have nature helped
+by the aid of a stomach or nasal tube. I lost none of my illusions
+while there, as I could not feel any improvement in my feelings. I
+left the institution June 28, 1899, feeling no better; in fact, worse than
+when I arrived there. I was then taken from one doctor to another,
+the one wishing to operate, the other not; one advising me to go to
+the seashore, country, etc., but <i>none</i> to give my stomach the needed
+vacation.</p>
+
+<p>"'It was then that my friend, Mr. Ritter, stepped in, as he saw the
+failures of professors and specialists, and begged my parents to let him
+have a chance to demonstrate what Dr. Dewey's method would do for
+melancholy illusions and tired-out stomachs and nerves. I then went
+to friends, and, in entire ignorance of my parents, began under directions
+of Mr. Ritter the most natural, sensible, and cheapest of all
+cures. I began my fast on Oct. 3, and broke the same on Nov. 16.
+During the first week of my fast I was in bed; during the second
+(excepting the eleventh day, when I took my first walk of seven-eighths
+of a mile) I was in bed, in rocker, reading, etc. On the
+twentieth day, after a drive of three hours, went to church, walking
+two and one-sixteenth miles. I then stayed indoors again on the twenty-first
+and twenty-second days, and then started taking daily walks
+(weather permitting). I went out walking twenty-three out of the
+forty-five days of my fast, and during that time walked one hundred
+and twelve miles. This was besides the carriage-drives, Exposition,
+and evening gatherings (walking to same included). I did not in the
+least feel tired or weak, but happier and brighter each day of the fast,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">{142}</a></span>
+as I could feel the effects of a new life throughout my whole body.
+My mind also became clearer and dizziness became a thing of the past.
+This was indeed <i>joy supreme to me</i>, and life became once more a joy
+instead of a burden. Sunshine, trees, flowers, etc., again made an
+impression, and my parents, sisters, and friends are rejoiced to see me
+in my happy normal state of health.</p>
+
+<p>"'I have gone through a year of unspeakable torture brought on by
+overwork and <i>human-wise professors</i>; but at last, through the wonderful
+teachings Dr. Dewey has given to mankind, and through a friend,
+who was able to preach the "New Gospel of Health," am now well,
+strong, and happy. May God only help and bless the many sufferers
+throughout the world (especially in the asylums) with the rays of this
+Gospel. I have been saved, no doubt, from a gloomy future, and may
+such be the realization of many more unfortunate souls is the sincere
+wish through experience of</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">"'Yours very sincerely,<br /></span>
+<span style="margin-left: 14em;">"'<span class="smcap">Estella F. Kuenzel</span>.'"<br /></span>
+</p></div>
+
+<p>This case was summed up in the Philadelphia <i>Public
+Ledger</i> of Dec. 25, 1899, whose columns are guarded
+with unsurpassed care, as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"One of those cases which a judicious editor ponders in no little
+perplexity is that of a young lady who was taken out of an insane hospital
+and subjected to a protracted fast, without medical supervision,
+and with results that appear to have been quite successful. On the one
+hand, there is the benefit that may be derived by having the attention
+of the profession called to the subject, with possibly good results; on the
+other hand, there is the danger of having a lot of ignorant or impulsive
+people risking their lives by starving themselves for this or that real or
+fancied disease, forgetting the adage that a little knowledge is a dangerous
+thing, especially in therapeutics.</p>
+
+<p>"The mind of the young lady referred to became affected about a
+year ago, and after what was regarded by her parents as an unprofitable
+period of treatment for two and a half months in a hospital for the
+insane she has been apparently cured by fasting&mdash;some would call it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">{143}</a></span>
+starvation. The case has been attracting attention and discussion lately
+in a growing circle that has included a few physicians.</p>
+
+<p>"The subject is a Miss K., aged twenty-two years. Henry Ritter,
+who has charge of the Photography Department of the Drexel Institute,
+and who is better acquainted with the matter than any one else,
+furnished a <i>Ledger</i> reporter with the particulars as they are here given,
+the name and address of the young lady, for obvious reasons, being
+omitted. Mr. Ritter was at first loath to have any publicity given the
+case, but felt upon reflection that the results were properly a subject
+matter for inquiry by physicians, at least, not to speak of others who
+may be interested.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss K., by the advice of specialists who had treated her at home,
+was put under treatment for melancholy in an institution for the insane.
+Mr. Ritter, being an intimate friend of the family, visited her, and, he
+says, found her retrograding. She was receiving three meals a day,
+with two luncheons between them. Having built up his own digestive
+powers by following the tenets laid down by Dr. Dewey, a Crawford
+county physician, he had become a student and advocate of the latter's
+theory, briefly stated, that no food should be given to a patient except
+in response to a natural call or appetite for it. Believing that no improvement
+could result from the course Miss K. was receiving in the
+hospital, he prevailed upon her parents to permit him to have her
+placed in the home of a friend, and suggested the fasting process.
+This was the more readily done as the physicians in whose care she had
+been advised her parents to leave their daughter as much as possible
+among strangers.</p>
+
+<p>"This young lady, according to Mr. Ritter, was absolutely without
+food for forty-five days, beginning October 3 and ending November 16.
+He says he did not fear, as others did, that she would starve, as the
+authority he depended on had never fed a sick patient during a practice
+covering twenty-two years, no matter how protracted the case might
+have been, and claimed to have had only the best results. 'This,' said
+Mr. Ritter, 'is on the theory that, since all bodily energy is the result
+of the brain, by abstaining from feeding in the absence of appetite
+there is all the energy of cure undiverted by needless waste in the
+stomach. Feeding the sick, this physician contends, is a tax on their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">{144}</a></span>
+vital power, adding indigestion to whatever other troubles exist: because
+the brain has the power in sickness to absorb nourishment from
+the body, as predigested food, so that it never loses weight, even in
+death from starvation.'</p>
+
+<p>"The patient herself became interested, Mr. Ritter says, and evidenced
+great relief from abstinence from enforced periodic feeding.
+Gradually a numb feeling of which she had complained as affecting her
+internal organs, and which had been ascribed to her illusions, left her,
+and she appeared to gain daily in strength and brightness. Mr. Ritter's
+narrative proceeds:</p>
+
+<p>"'On the eleventh day of her fast a walk was suggested, and she
+covered about seven-eighths of a mile; on the twentieth day she was
+taken for a carriage drive of three hours in the afternoon, and in the
+evening she walked to church and back, a distance of something more
+than two miles. From the twenty-third day she took walks daily,
+excepting on October 31 and November 3, when rain prevented. She
+visited friends and the theatre and the Exposition, went to church several
+times, to the hospital where she had been a patient&mdash;this on the
+thirty-fifth day of her fast&mdash;and to the Drexel Institute on the thirty-ninth
+and forty-second days. A table of dates shows that she walked
+from two or three to six and eight and as high as nine miles a day during
+the period of forty-five days that she abstained from food, with a
+general increase of strength and cheer and no sign of fatigue. Hunger
+sensations were marked on the forty-fourth day and night, and on the
+morning of the forty-fifth day Miss K. broke the fast by eating a
+poached egg and two slices of buttered whole wheat toasted bread.</p>
+
+<p>"'During her fast she was seen by seven physicians and medical
+professors, President MacAlister and professors of the Drexel Institute,
+and many others.'</p>
+
+<p>"The young lady's weight at the beginning of the fast, Mr. Ritter
+says, was one hundred and forty pounds, and just after the meal with
+which she broke the fast she weighed one hundred and twenty pounds.
+By December 15 she had regained nine pounds, meanwhile eating one
+meal daily and sometimes two, with an occasional light luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Chase, medical director of the institution above referred to,
+was visited on Saturday by a <i>Ledger</i> reporter in regard to the case of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">{145}</a></span>
+Miss K. He had been informed of her long fast and of its results, and
+had seen Miss K. herself when she called at the asylum on the thirty-fifth
+day of the fast. He said that when she was first brought to the
+asylum she was suffering from melancholia, and was put under the
+treatment which all the leading alienists had found most beneficial for
+persons suffering from nervous disorders, viz., quiet, rest of mind and
+body, and full, nourishing diet, carefully selected to produce the best
+results. During the time she remained at the asylum she improved
+both in bodily and mental health.</p>
+
+<p>"Referring to the treatment she had received under Mr. Ritter's
+supervision since leaving the asylum, Dr. Chase said he had first heard
+of the system through a work published two years ago by Dr. George
+S. Keith, of London, from which he first learned of Dr. Dewey, who also
+uses the fasting cure. In all the cases cited by Dr. Keith none had
+been afflicted with any mental disorder. He looked upon the cases,
+however, as showing some remarkable results, warranting a careful
+study. But it would not do to adopt such a system without a most
+thorough examination. As 'one swallow does not make a summer,'
+neither will one case nor half a dozen cases cured by such a method
+prove anything. No universal method can be adopted for treating disease.
+Hardly two cases are alike. Cures also may be brought about
+in different ways if the exact condition of the patient is understood.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mr. Ritter says the patient lent herself very willingly to the
+treatment, which was a great deal to start out with in her case. But I
+am surprised that a young man with no medical knowledge would do
+a thing like that. The treatment might easily have resulted differently.
+If he had been a doctor, he would have had that fact to sustain
+him in case he got into trouble. The case might very well
+have resulted fatally, because the treatment was so contrary to what
+would naturally be pursued by physicians in nervous cases.</p>
+
+<p>"'I do not ridicule the system. There have been cases which
+were cured by ways not recognized by the general practitioner
+after they had been given up. I am a firm believer that in selected
+cases the fasting method would be efficacious, but I do not believe in
+its general application.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mr. Ritter is evidently an enthusiast, and apt to overstate the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">{146}</a></span>
+points in favor of the method, neglecting those which tell against it.
+It is too early yet to say what the outcome of Miss K.'s case will be.
+I think the matter ought to be looked into more fully. Mr. Ritter
+could not have been with the patient at all times. It is a remarkable
+thing that she should have kept up and had the strength reported,
+unless she had some food. He may have been deceived in that.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>During several months since the fast there have been
+the best physical <i>health</i> and mental condition, the
+weight having increased several pounds above the
+former average.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ritter conducted this case in a blaze of publicity.
+He showed it to no less than seven physicians,
+some of whom were college professors, and one of
+them at near the close of the fast suggested that if food
+were not soon taken a sudden collapse would be the
+result. There seemed to have been less danger of this
+calamity on the forty-fourth day than on any other.</p>
+
+<p>The reliability of the fast was so clearly evident that
+the leading papers of the city accepted it as authentic
+news and of the most startling kind. <i>The Times</i> gave
+several columns of its first page to an illustrated
+article.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The accompanying illustration shows Miss Kuenzel on the forty-first
+day of her fast. She walked seven miles on this day without any signs
+of fatigue.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 293px;"><a name="illus005" id="illus005"></a>
+<img src="images/illus_005.jpg" width="293" height="500" alt="MISS ESTELLA F. KUENZE." title="" />
+<span class="caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Copyrighted 1900, by Henry Ritter.</span>
+<br/><br />
+MISS ESTELLA F. KUENZEL,
+<br />
+FORTY-FIRST DAY OF FAST.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">{147}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The following table of miles walked were measured
+from exact diary notes with bicycle and cyclometer
+after the fast was broken. The table gives the total
+sum of each day, walks being taken both afternoon
+and evenings of same day.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>Date.</td><td align='right'>Miles.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>October</td><td align='right'>3</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>4</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>5</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>6</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>7</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>8</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>9</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>10</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>11</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>12</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>13</td><td align='right'><span class='frac'><sup>7</sup>/<sub>8</sub></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>14</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>15</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>16</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>17</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>18</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>19</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>20</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>21</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>22</td><td align='right'>2<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>16</sub></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>23</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>24</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>25</td><td align='right'>3&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>26</td><td align='right'>6<span class='frac'><sup>5</sup>/<sub>8</sub></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>27</td><td align='right'>5<span class='frac'><sup>7</sup>/<sub>8</sub></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>28</td><td align='right'>4<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>29</td><td align='right'>4<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>8</sub></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>30</td><td align='right'>5<span class='frac'><sup>5</sup>/<sub>8</sub></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>31</td><td align='left'>rain</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>November</td><td align='right'>1</td><td align='right'>6<span class='frac'><sup>3</sup>/<sub>4</sub></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>2</td><td align='right'>8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>3</td><td align='left'>rain</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>4</td><td align='right'>9&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>5</td><td align='right'>6&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>6</td><td align='right'>3<span class='frac'><sup>3</sup>/<sub>4</sub></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>7</td><td align='right'>1<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>8</td><td align='right'>7<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>4</sub></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>9</td><td align='right'>7&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>10</td><td align='right'>4<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>4</sub></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>11</td><td align='right'>2<span class='frac'><sup>5</sup>/<sub>8</sub></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>12</td><td align='right'>7&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>13</td><td align='right'>2<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>4</sub></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>14</td><td align='right'>3<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>4</sub></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>15</td><td align='right'>5&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>16</td><td align='right'>5<span class='frac'><sup>3</sup>/<sub>4</sub></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'></td><td align='left' class='bt'>112<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>16</sub></span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>The next fast, under the care of Mr. Ritter, still
+holds the record as being the most remarkable for its
+number of days and the miracle of results. The following
+account of it appeared in the <i>North American</i>,
+one of whose editors had personal knowledge of its
+history:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">{148}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Leonard Thress, of 2618 Frankford Avenue, has learned how to
+live without eating. By physical experience he has proved not only
+that food is not a daily necessity of the human system, but that abstinence
+therefrom for protracted periods is beneficial. Indeed, it saved
+his life. He has just finished a fifty days' fast. When he began it he
+was on the brink of the grave and his physicians had abandoned hope.
+When he ended it he was in better health than he had enjoyed for years,
+although in the meantime he had lost seventy-six pounds, falling away
+from two hundred and nine to one hundred and thirty-three pounds.</p>
+
+<p>"Thress, who is about fifty-seven years old, was attending the
+Grand Army Encampment at Buffalo in the fall of 1898, when he
+caught a violent cold, which settled in his bronchial tubes. It proved
+so stubborn that his general health became affected, and a year later
+dropsy developed. His condition grew steadily worse, and at Christmas
+time, 1899, it was such that he could neither walk nor lie prostrate,
+but was compelled to sit constantly in an armchair. His doctors exhausted
+their skill in the effort to bring relief, and eventually, in the
+early part of last January, they told him that their medicines refused to
+act, and that his death was a question of only a few days.</p>
+
+<p>"Up to this time Thress had been subsisting on the meagre diet
+permitted to a man in his condition, but his stomach rebelled even at
+that. He had heard of the Dewey fasting cure and its boasted efficacy
+against all human ills, and, though he had little faith, death was already
+looming before him, and he knew that he could lose nothing by
+the experiment.</p>
+
+<p>"He began to fast on January 11 by taking in the morning a portion
+of Henzel's preparation of salts in a glass of water and the juice of
+two oranges, and in the evening a hot lemonade. For twenty-five days
+he also drank a teaspoonful of a tonic consisting chiefly of iron, but the
+rest of the diet he continued until two weeks ago, when he discontinued
+the salts and orange juice and confined himself to a hot lemonade
+at morning and evening. This was his only sustenance until last
+Thursday.</p>
+
+<p>"According to Thress's own recital, the effects of this course of treatment
+were amazing. He says that the natural craving for food was
+gone after the first day. Three days later he had regained so much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">{149}</a></span>
+strength that he was able to go upstairs to bed and enjoyed a good
+night's sleep. From that time on, although he steadily lost in weight,
+his vitality grew greater, and on January 22 he left the house and
+took a half-mile walk.</p>
+
+<p>"Before three weeks of his fast had elapsed his dropsy had disappeared,
+and thereafter he took almost daily walks, increasing the distance
+with his strength. Some days he covered as many as five miles,
+and never less than two, even while he was growing thinner and thinner,
+as the accompanying table shows.</p>
+
+<p>"For the first time since the beginning of his fast he became hungry
+last Thursday, March 1, and he felt that he should like some pigs' feet
+jelly. It is one of the prescriptions of the fasting cure that when
+hunger finally comes the patient shall eat whatever he craves, so Thress
+consumed two slices of the jelly and one piece of gluten bread, with
+butter. He says he enjoyed it and felt well afterward.</p>
+
+<p>"He ate no more that day, but at noon yesterday he became hungry
+again, and this time his appetite was for something more substantial.
+He disposed of a dish of mashed potatoes, some red cabbage, another
+portion of pigs' feet jelly, apple sauce, and a cream puff for dessert.
+He even smoked a cigar after the meal, enjoyed it, and felt still better.
+He says he will eat no regular meals, but only when he becomes
+hungry.</p>
+
+<p>"While he looks haggard and worn from the loss of flesh, Thress
+declares that all his ailments have left him and that he never felt healthier
+and heartier in his life."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"The following table shows how Thress grew stronger and walked
+miles while he was constantly losing weight from a fifty-days' fast:</p></div>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td colspan='2'></td><td align='center'>Weight.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>January</td><td align='right'>11</td><td align='left'>209</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>12</td><td align='left'>207</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>13</td><td align='left'>205</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>14</td><td align='left'>202</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>15</td><td align='left'>201</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>16</td><td align='left'>200</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>17</td><td align='left'>199<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">{150}</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>18</td><td align='left'>196</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>19</td><td align='left'>192</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>20</td><td align='left'>190</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>21</td><td align='left'>188</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>22</td><td align='left'>186</td><td align='left'>Walked</td><td align='left'><span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span></td><td align='left'>mile.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>23</td><td align='left'>180</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>2</td><td align='left'>miles.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>24</td><td align='left'>177</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>2</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>25</td><td align='left'>172</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>3</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>26</td><td align='left'>167</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>3</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>27</td><td align='left'>165</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>3</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>28</td><td align='left'>162</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>2<span class='frac'><sup>1</sup>/<sub>2</sub></span></td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>29</td><td align='left'>160</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>3</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>30</td><td align='left'>157</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>31</td><td align='left'>155</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>3</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>February</td><td align='right'>1</td><td align='left'>154</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>2</td><td align='left'>153</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>3</td><td align='left'>152</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>3</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>4</td><td align='left'>151</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>5</td><td align='left'>149</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>3</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>6</td><td align='left'>147</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>3</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>7</td><td align='left'>146</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>3</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>8</td><td align='left'>145</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>9</td><td align='left'>145</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>4</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>10</td><td align='left'>145</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>4</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>11</td><td align='left'>145</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>12</td><td align='left'>145</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>4</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>13</td><td align='left'>145</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>14</td><td align='left'>145</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>3</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>15</td><td align='left'>144</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>2</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>16</td><td align='left'>142</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>17</td><td align='left'>140</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>18</td><td align='left'>140</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>19</td><td align='left'>140</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>20</td><td align='left'>138</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>2</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>21</td><td align='left'>137</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>4</td><td align='center'>"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">{151}</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>22</td><td align='left'>135</td><td align='left'>Walked</td><td align='left'>3</td><td align='left'>miles.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>23</td><td align='left'>135;</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>3</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>24</td><td align='left'>135</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>25</td><td align='left'>135</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>26</td><td align='left'>135</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>27</td><td align='left'>133</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>2</td><td align='center'>"</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"</td><td align='right'>28</td><td align='left'>133</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>March</td><td align='right'>1</td><td align='left'>133</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>A. H. Potts, Editor of the <i>Chester County Times</i>, a
+man who has the largest faith in eating only to restore
+the wastes of the body, thus gives vent to his emotions
+after seeing the case by invitation of Mr. Ritter:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"On January 10 there sat in his home, at 2618 Frankford Avenue,
+Philadelphia, Mr. Leonard Thress, with dropsy, hopelessly given up
+to a speedy death by the many physicians he had vainly sought and
+paid well for relief. His weight was two hundred and nine pounds.
+His limbs were at the bursting point, and the water was close up to the
+top of his chest. He could not lie down nor even lay his head back
+without choking, and to walk across the room completely exhausted
+him. At that critical moment a friend of his heard of Miss Kuenzel's
+miraculous cure, and told him of it. He at once sent for Mr. Ritter,
+who thought that a cure was in his reach, and on January 11 Thress commenced
+a fast that has been absolute up to yesterday, the only things
+passing his lips being water, a little lemonade, and rarely the juice of
+an orange. Learning through the <i>Chester County Times</i> that we were
+interested in Dr. Dewey's discovery, he invited us to come and see the
+cases now under his care, and on Friday of last week we gladly availed
+ourselves of the opportunity to see the living proof of what we believed
+but had never seen. We were very cordially received at Mr. Ritter's
+home, and instead of meeting a pompous, egotistic, big man, as we
+might expect, we met a young gentleman of small stature, like ourselves,
+modest, retiring, and claiming no credit for his own part in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">{152}</a></span>
+these remarkable cures; but insisting that he is only observing the
+progress of cases, following in the line of truths discovered only by
+Dr. Dewey, giving such advice as he is enabled to do from his thorough
+knowledge of chemistry, anatomy, and hygiene. He took us to the
+house of Mr. Thress, and the startling impressions we received can
+never be effaced. We seemed to be in the presence of one who had
+arisen from the dead, and could not realize the truth of what we saw
+and heard from him and his estimable wife, who shows the happiness
+she feels in receiving her husband back to life. Impossible as it seems,
+yet on the previous day, as well as many other days, that man had
+walked three miles after six hours given to his business as a baker,
+which he now attends to personally. All traces of dropsy have disappeared,
+and his weight is now less than one hundred and thirty-five
+pounds, having lost this nearly seventy-five pounds of water through
+the natural channels at the rate of five or six pounds per day at times.
+His eyesight has grown younger and his hand is firm. He sleeps
+soundly several hours out of each twenty-four, and is almost a cured
+man, although the curative action is still going forward throughout his
+system, and his many friends are now awaiting the arrival of his normal
+healthy appetite, which in these cases does not arrive until the cure is
+entire, and then it comes in such a way as not to be mistaken. On
+Monday of this week we again visited him, taking a friend who has
+long suffered similarly to what he did, that she might see results for herself.
+We found him looking even better than on Friday, and it is very
+interesting to hear him tell his experience, which he will be glad to
+impart to those who are seeking after the truth, and interested in the
+cure of disease of themselves or their friends by this natural and without
+price (but priceless) means. We also visited two other of the five
+cases over which Mr. Ritter is at present keeping watch, and every one
+bore evidences of the great truth. No one should undertake the fast
+on their own responsibility, as certain conditions may arise requiring
+the eye of one who has made the matter a study, and no one should
+pass an opinion on the matter until they read Dr. Dewey's <i>New Gospel
+of Health</i>, wherein the reasons are made so plain that all can understand."</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 310px;"><a name="illus006" id="illus006"></a>
+<img src="images/illus_006.jpg" width="310" height="500" alt="MR. LEONARD THRESS." title="" />
+<span class="caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Copyrighted 1900, by Henry Ritter.</span>
+<br /><br />
+MR. LEONARD THRESS,
+<br />
+FIFTIETH DAY OF FAST.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">{153}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Thress has regained his normal weight and has
+been in the best of health in the several months since
+the fast.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>The following case was deemed a miracle by all
+friends: Mrs. H. B., a woman of seventy-six, became
+exceedingly breathless, due, it was supposed, to defective
+heart action that had been chronic for many years.
+The final result was general dropsy. The eyelids had
+become so heavy that reading could be indulged only
+a short time because of their weight; the throat was
+also charged with water so as to make swallowing difficult.
+Beneath the eyes and jaws were pockets of
+water&mdash;in short, the skin of the entire body was distended,
+a condition that had deceived the friends as revealing
+only an increase of her natural stoutness.
+The real condition became known through a call to
+treat a bad cold.</p>
+
+<p>What had authorized medical art to promise in such
+a case? Absolutely nothing, as she had become too
+old and weak to be subjected to the ordinary means
+for such a general condition. As for a fast for one so
+old, that was the last thing that would have been
+thought of: her age and debility would only have
+seemed to invite more daily food than she had been
+taking.</p>
+
+<p>She was put on a fast, or rather the fast was contin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">{154}</a></span>ued,
+the cold having abolished her appetite. It went
+on until the fifteenth day, with increasing general
+strength and diminishing weight. The last days before
+hunger came she was able to go up a long flight of
+stairs without the aid of the railing and without marked
+loss of breath, the heart-murmur had nearly disappeared,
+and water by the gallon seemed to have been absorbed.</p>
+
+<p>On the fifteenth day there was a desire for food,
+that was taken with relish through the enlarged throat
+without difficulty; the water pockets had become emptied,
+and the lids so thin and light as to reveal no
+fatigue in reading. Thence on one meal a day became
+the rule; and since there have been five years without
+any recurrence of the conditions&mdash;five years of remarkable
+general health and girl-time relish for her daily
+food.</p>
+
+<p>How often has the cutting down of the daily food
+by the old and weak been condemned as too severe an
+ordeal to be safe! For this woman there have been
+these acquired years of nearly perfect health, and the
+end will be in the natural, easier death of old age.</p>
+
+<p>The following is inserted as additional evidence of
+Nature's power over disease, and that brain-workers
+may go on with their labors with increasing power while
+waiting for natural hunger in cases in which hunger is
+possible:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Rev. C. H. Dalrymple, of Hampden, Mass., has just completed a
+fast, of which he says, February 5, 1900: "My fast continued thirty-nine
+and one-half days. My appetite came on me about 9 o'clock at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">{155}</a></span>
+night, and I thought I would wait until the next day; but two boiled
+eggs and some dry toast would not retire before my presence. I have
+never had such an assault upon my will power as that imagined egg
+and toast made on me. I was finally compelled to surrender. My
+tongue had been clearing up that day, and the next day I was hungry
+at noon. I have not missed a first-class appetite at noon since. My
+tongue has kept clear and my taste has remained sweet. I have had
+no chills nor fevers this winter, nor cold in any form. I have made no
+allowance for my sickness and have never worked harder. My flesh
+came back rapidly, and now I think I must weigh about fifteen pounds
+more than last summer. <i>I gained strength beyond all question about
+three weeks before my appetite returned. I would work all day long
+finally.</i> It was good to get well."</p></div>
+
+<p>Mr. Ritter conducted over twenty cases, some being
+able to carry on their usual avocations. I give the
+most important ones: Mr. A. H., forty-five days; Miss
+B. H., forty-two days; Mrs. L., thirty-eight days; Mr.
+L. W., thirty-six days; Miss L. J., thirty-five days;
+Mrs. M., thirty-one days; Miss E. S., twenty-six days;
+Mr. G. R., twenty-five days; Mr. P. R., twenty-four
+days; and Miss E. Westing, forty-two days, who, on
+the fortieth day, was able to sing with unusual clearness
+and power, and ended her fast without losing a
+day from her duties as a teacher of music.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>Wonderful are these fasts? Not in the physiological
+sense. These fasts went on with only increasing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">{156}</a></span>
+comfort by day and more refreshing sleep at night. It
+is quite another thing to endure the fasts of acute sickness,
+for such they all are. That life is maintained for
+days and weeks, even months, under pain, discomfort&mdash;under
+all the torturing conditions of such diseases as
+pneumonia, typhoid fever, or inflammatory rheumatism,
+is far more a matter to wonder over.</p>
+
+<p>I may well wonder that Nature is powerful enough
+to cure the sick at all even under the wisest aid; but
+with me the abiding wonder is that physicians do not
+see that acute sickness is a loss of all the natural conditions
+of digestion, with the wasting bodies the clearest
+evidence that food is neither digested nor assimilated.
+I wonder with only increasing impatience that
+the stomach is not understood as a machine that Nature
+wills shall not be run to tax her resources when
+life is in the throes of disease.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 298px;"><a name="illus007" id="illus007"></a>
+<img src="images/illus_007.jpg" width="298" height="500" alt="MISS ELIZABETH W. A. WESTING." title="" />
+<span class="caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Copyrighted 1900, by Henry Ritter.<br /></span>
+<br />
+MISS ELIZABETH W. A. WESTING,
+<br />
+FORTIETH DAY OF FAST.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">{157}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The fasts conducted by Mr. Ritter constitute performances of the
+most impressive kind as demonstrative evidence of the practical physiology
+I have been teaching for many years. For the copyrighted photographs
+he has kindly furnished I am very thankful, and to all who have
+been willing to enhance the value and interest of this volume by such
+eyesight illustrations.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The accompanying illustration shows Mr. Thress on the fiftieth
+day of his fast; weight loss, seventy-six pounds. Does the picture reveal
+any skeleton condition?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The accompanying illustration is a reproduced copyrighted picture
+of Miss E. Westing. This picture was taken on the return home from
+her duties at church on the fortieth day during the cold of winter; the
+weight at the start being one hundred and ten pounds, at the close on
+the forty-second day ninety-three pounds&mdash;loss, seventeen pounds.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>I had not been long engaged in observing the evolution
+of cure through Nature when I began to suspect
+strongly, as before intimated, that fasting is the
+true "medicine for the mind diseased." Not less evident
+than the cure of various ailings would be the
+emergence of the soul into higher life, and in some
+instances from the depth of despair. As the scope of
+my vision constantly enlarged through multiplying
+experiences, I began to see great hopes of the cure
+of the gravest of all diseases&mdash;insanity&mdash;through a rigid
+application of this method in Nature. I gave the
+matter so much thought and study that I wrote a
+monograph on the subject with the idea of publishing
+it, but gave it up to the idea of telling my impressions
+in "The No-breakfast Plan."</p>
+
+<p>There are the same structural changes in the evolution
+of insanity as in that of catarrh. There is a morbid structural
+basis in minds diseased, the abnormal mentality
+or morality being merely symptoms of a physical disease.
+Of all human legacies, structural weakness of
+the mental or moral sense is the most unfortunate.</p>
+
+<p>I shall say no more about the forms of mental disease
+than that there is distinctively both intellectual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">{158}</a></span>
+and moral insanity as a direct result of disease of the
+intellectual and moral centres. This will be more
+clearly seen when I recall the fact that moral insanity
+in its worse form&mdash;the suicidal&mdash;often exists with such
+intellectual clearness that there is the greatest ingenuity
+displayed in carrying out self-destruction. These mind
+and soul centres are often gravely diseased without
+impairment of muscle energy: the furious strength of
+the insane is an abiding fear with all.</p>
+
+<p>It is clear that weakness of structure so soft as brain,
+a substance which is on the dividing-line between
+liquids and solids, must be of the gravest form from
+the first: grave because so fragile, grave because the
+sick centres cannot rest as the broken arm, the sick
+body: these centres, regardless how sick, must continue
+to serve, even in abnormal ways.</p>
+
+<p>The possibility of insanity must always be a matter
+of the degree of the primary structural weakness and
+the energy and persistence of the operative forces; on
+these must depend the mere gentle, persistent illusion,
+or that fury of mania which transforms man, the
+"image of the Creator," into a wild beast. That
+insanity, no matter what its form or degree, is an
+evolution from an ancestral structural legacy, not
+essentially different from the structural conditions
+evolved from those of any other chronic disease, I
+cannot have the slightest doubt, any more than I can
+have for the structural means for the cure.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing that so illustrates the civilization,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">{159}</a></span>
+the benevolence of the age and of the nations as these
+palaces we call hospitals for the insane. Whatever
+there is that can add comfort to the body, or charm to
+the tastes, or new life to the soul has its culmination in
+these palaces of wood and stone, with one great
+exception: the structural condition of the diseased
+centres indicating rest, even as the ulcer, wound, or
+fracture, has no part in the methods of cure.</p>
+
+<p>The feeding is all done not at the time of hunger,
+but at the time of day. All patients are expected to eat
+no less than three meals a day, regardless of any desire
+for food and whether the patient spends all his time
+in bed in mindless apathy, whether pacing his room
+with meaningless tread, whether active in light service
+in the building or in heavy labor without. When there
+is refusal to eat it seems to be taken for granted that
+suicide by starvation is the design, and the pumping of
+food into the stomach through the nose is the common
+resort. There seems to be no thought that there may
+be no hunger in such cases, and no apprehension of
+any danger from not eating; that in this they follow
+the instincts of brutes. Would the desire for food not
+come and with a saner condition of mind if they were
+permitted their own ways of eating?</p>
+
+<p>A physically strong woman, whom I knew well, was
+sent to a hospital for the insane in a generally bad
+state of mind, with destructive propensities marked.
+With no desire for food, and certainly with no mind to
+realize the need to eat without hunger, she naturally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">{160}</a></span>
+refused to eat. But for a time her meals were forced
+down her throat, a proceeding that taxed the strength
+of several strong arms.</p>
+
+<p>Why were the meals not omitted long enough to
+cause such a reduction of strength as to make feeding
+less expensive in the outlay of others' muscle? The
+persistent refusal to eat resulted in a cessation of all
+efforts to enforce food; left to the gentler hands of
+Nature for a time, the mental hurricane subsided in
+great degree on the return of hunger, and long before
+there was an appreciable loss of weight or strength.
+In a few months this woman was able to return to her
+home, and with restored mind to tell me of the violent
+feedings she had endured.</p>
+
+<p>Now let us look again to the structural conditions
+involved in diseases of the mind. There are those
+soft, pulpy centres from which emanate the highest
+powers of life: power to think, to admire, to rejoice,
+or to suffer; and we know how digestive power varies
+along the scale between ecstacy and despair. In
+mental disease there is the same abnormal structural
+change as in other local diseases; but for these sick
+mind-centres there is no rest. There must be still
+thinking and feeling, <ins class="correction" title="now in original">no</ins> matter how chaotic, to
+tax them, and there is no cheer to electrify the stomach
+into easy display of power. We may well marvel that
+powers so wonderful as the power to think, love, admire,
+see, hear, and feel are located in structures so
+fragile as the brain; and we may well marvel at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">{161}</a></span>
+provision of the turret of flinty hardness to protect it
+from violence.</p>
+
+<p>Now we are to consider these centres of energy
+as abnormally weak in all their structures at birth in
+those who become insane: these are the luckless legacies
+from the fathers and the mothers, and for how far
+back in the ancestral line we do not know. We are to
+consider that there is the same abnormal condition of
+the cerebral bloodvessels and of the softer inter-vascular
+structures as in other local diseases; and when
+you recall the fact that everything that worries, that
+adds discomfort to either mind or muscles, is a force that
+tends to develop weakness and disease, you will see
+how it applies in the evolution of insanity.</p>
+
+<p>Shall these fragile centres be permitted to rest when
+overwork has made them sick, or is there any other
+rational means for their recovery? Shall they not be
+permitted to rest when abundantly able to keep physically
+nourished in a way that does not cause even the
+slightest shade of discomfort?</p>
+
+<p>Again, let it be borne in mind that recovery from
+acute disease is attended with a revival of strength in
+every power that makes life worth living, and that every
+person not acutely sick who has fasted under my care
+or who has cut down the waste of brain power by less
+daily food has found the same revival of power. To
+this there have been no exceptions.</p>
+
+<p>What do we fear in sickness? Is it disease or the
+wasting pounds? Since they will disappear when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">{162}</a></span>
+Nature would have the food-gate closed, since they
+reappear when there is the highest possible reach of
+mere relish, and when all the other senses have become
+more acute, and also when existence has become almost
+ecstatic, why ever oppress the weak or sick centres
+when Nature wills a rest?</p>
+
+<p>The literature on the disease of the mind has become
+so massive in mere bulk, in its physiological refinements,
+that it would require time with a long reach into
+eternity to go through it; but it has not come to my
+knowledge that it contains any reference to the brain
+as a self-nourishing, self-charging dynamo; that therefore
+the stomach is only a machine whose use can well
+be omitted for long periods when these centres of moral
+and intellectual energy have become worried into disease,
+with rest the only means, the only need for all
+the recovery possible.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you giants of the medical profession!" You
+who have been elected to preside over these great
+homes of the mentally wrecked because of your eminence
+in character, ability, experience, and professional
+attainments, do you deny the soundness of the physiology
+involved in this method of reaching health through
+Nature? Then let me array against you Alexander
+Haig, M. A., M. D. Oxon., F. R. C. P., Physician to
+the Metropolitan Hospital, and the Royal Hospital,
+and for Children and Women; late Casualty Physician
+to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. I quote from his exhaustive
+work, <i>Uric Acid in the Causation of Disease</i>:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">{163}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And now I come to the causes which led me to
+take too much albumen and to suffer severely; in
+<i>Fads of an Old Physician</i>, Dr. Keith refers to another
+work on diet, by Dr. Dewey, of Meadville, Pa., <i>The
+True Science of Living</i>, and the chief point in this book
+is that temporary, complete starvation till there is once
+more a healthy appetite is the best cure for a host of
+dyspepsia, debilities, depression, mental and bodily,
+and numerous other troubles, and that for similar less
+severe disturbances of nutrition the great remedy is to
+leave out the breakfast, so as to give the stomach a long
+rest of sixteen hours or more, with the object of allowing
+it to recuperate and accumulate secretions after the
+last meal of the previous day.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems from internal evidence in Dr. Dewey's
+book, a copy of which I owe to Dr. Keith, that his
+plans have been completely successful in a large number
+of cases, <i>and it seems to me that his logic is unanswerable</i>,
+and that in his main contentions he is perfectly
+right.</p>
+
+<p>"Having arrived at this conclusion, I proceeded
+forthwith to put the matter to the test of experience
+by placing myself on two meals a day&mdash;that is, I left
+out my breakfast&mdash;and the result was I ate such a
+good lunch at 1 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P.&nbsp;M.</span> that it was impossible to take
+anything more till dinner-time, 7.30 or 8 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P.&nbsp;M.</span>; so that
+I reduced myself at once from four meals a day to two.
+The result was exactly what Dr. Dewey describes. I
+felt extremely bright and well in the morning, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">{164}</a></span>
+capable of very good work, both mental and bodily.
+At 1 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P.&nbsp;M.</span> I had keen hunger, even for dry bread; such
+hunger as I had not experienced for years. After
+lunch (breakfast) I felt a little bit dull and occasionally
+sleepy, and the mental work for the first hour or two
+after it was not as good as usual. About 5 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P.&nbsp;M.</span> I was
+very thirsty and had to have a drink of water, but
+there was not the least desire for food until several
+hours later; though by 7.30 or 8 <span class="smcap" style="text-transform: lowercase;">P.&nbsp;M.</span> I was able
+to manage another fairly good meal; and thus my
+meals automatically, so to speak, reduced themselves
+to two."</p>
+
+<p>I also quote from his work on <i>Diet and Food</i>,
+page 10:</p>
+
+<p>"It is also possible, by introducing more food than
+can possibly be digested, to overpower digestion so
+that nothing is digested and absorbed, and starvation
+results, a fact that has been brought to the front in the
+most interesting manner in the writings of Dr. Dewey."</p>
+
+<p>And who is Dr. Keith? You know that he is one
+of the youngest physicians in all Scotland, even if he
+does possess eighty years that are no burden to him.
+I quote him from his <i>Fads of an Old Physician</i>:</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Dewey's grand means of cure now is abstinence
+for the time from all food, and this he carries out to a
+degree which must astonish most physicians of the
+present day, as well as their patients. During times of
+sickness, when there is no desire for food, he gives none
+till the desire comes, and then only if the state of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">{165}</a></span>
+tongue and general condition show that the power of
+digestion has returned. This may be in a few days, or
+in severe cases, as of rheumatic fever, it may not be for
+forty days or even longer. He points out very forcibly
+that we have all a store of material laid up in the body
+which supplies what is required for keeping necessary
+functions of the system going, while no food can be
+usefully taken in the stomach. I had mentioned this
+provision in my <i>Plea</i>, and had stated that so long as it
+lasts it is sufficient to preserve life. I also suggested
+that it might be found that the waste of the body was
+less when this internal supply was alone trusted to, than
+when it was supplemented by food from without which
+the organs of nutrition were not in a condition to utilize.
+This, to my mind, Dr. Dewey has proved to be
+the fact, and no one can read his case without being
+convinced that it is so. He gives a most interesting
+table from Dr. Yeo, showing what textures of the
+body waste most rapidly in disease. Fat is at one end
+of the scale, and at the other the brain, which does
+not waste till all the other textures and organs are
+depleted to the utmost.</p>
+
+<p>"In cases of slighter disease where the patient is
+able to be about or to carry on his business, but with
+discomfort, the same abstinence from all food is recommended.
+It is usually found that work can be done
+more easily, and that strength actually increases,
+although the starving may have to be kept up for
+several days. But the great <i>coup</i> in Dr. Dewey's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">{166}</a></span>
+practice is, that to improve or to preserve health he
+advises all to give up breakfast, and to fast till the mid-day
+meal. In this he has had a very large number of followers,
+very much to their advantage. It may be that
+the omission of breakfast is more needed and has
+greater effect in America than it would have on this
+side of the Atlantic. In America the meal is generally
+a very full one, made up in a large measure
+of a variety of hot cakes, also flesh food and tea or
+coffee. The other two meals of the day are full,
+'square' meals likewise. I have seen much overfeeding
+in this country, but never to such a degree, and so
+generally, as I have seen in America and on American
+steamers. In one of the latter the cooking was the
+worst I ever met with, but the hard meat was swallowed
+all the same, and the consequences must have been
+grievous."</p>
+
+<p>Are you still without any questioning of your authorized,
+established methods of treating the mentally
+sick? Then let me quote against you another man
+across the ocean, whose ability, learning, and professional
+attainments are of the highest order. I quote
+from <i>Air, Food, and Exercise</i>, by A. Rabagliati, M. A.,
+M. D., F. R. C. S., Edin., a man with whom patient,
+exhaustive investigation is only a recreation:</p>
+
+<p>"It has been shown by physiologists that certain
+tissues are absorbed and used before others. Dr.
+Dewey, of Pennsylvania, with whose views I am glad
+to find myself in general accord, and who seems to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">{167}</a></span>
+have made the same attempt as the writer to view the
+facts of medical practice from an independent&mdash;and
+may I say, original?&mdash;standpoint, quotes a table of great
+significance from Dr. Yeo. Besides quoting it in the
+text of his book, <i>The True Science of Living</i>, Dr.
+Dewey places it in capital letters in the frontispiece
+of his book. He calls it Nature's Bill of Fare for the
+Sick; and he shows that in illness, when we are using
+up the materials accumulated in our bodies, we may
+use as much as 99 per cent. of our fat (practically all
+of it), that of muscle we may use as much as 30 per
+cent., that the spleen may waste to the extent of 63
+per cent., the liver as much as 56 per cent., and the
+blood itself be absorbed to the extent of 17 per cent.
+of its total amount. But even when wasting to this
+extent has occurred the curious and significant fact is
+emphasized that the <i>brain and nerve-centres may not
+have wasted at all</i>. The controlling nervous system
+thus does not lose its powers till the very last. Generally,
+however, the wasting process does not require
+to be carried to the very last, the chronic inflammatory
+deposit (and in rare cases even a cancerous infiltration)
+being absorbed and got rid of before this point is
+reached.</p>
+
+<p>"As most, if not all, of the chronic diseases depend
+upon the deposition of waste, unassimilated materials
+in various situations; or, in other words, depend upon a
+blocking of the local circulation in this way, a little
+wholesome starvation is generally of vast benefit by in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">{168}</a></span>ducing
+the economy to use up some of its waste stuff.
+Nature herself points the way to us in this matter, because
+when things have gone as far as she can bear,
+and when, were things to go on in the same way, death
+must ensue, she generally throws the patient into bed
+with a digestive system entirely disorganized, taking
+away all appetite for food and all power of assimilation
+for the time being. We may, in such circumstances,
+do much harm by efforts too persistently made to feed
+our patients; but generally they refuse all sustenance
+for some time. After a while (Dr. Dewey does not seem
+to be afraid if his patients refuse all food even for as long
+on some occasions as thirty days continuously, or even
+longer) they right themselves, the tongue cleans, appetite
+returns, the power of assimilation is re&euml;stablished,
+and recovery takes place. It strikes me as somewhat
+curious (and yet, if we both look at the facts of life candidly
+and impartially, perhaps it is not curious) that
+observers so wide apart, and in circumstances so very
+different as the conditions of human life must be in
+Yorkshire from what they are in Pennsylvania, should
+come to conclusions so practically similar as Dr. Dewey
+and the writer have reached."</p>
+
+<p>Gentlemen, masters in the medical profession, to
+what good end are you pumping food into human
+stomach, where there is no hunger and no mind left to
+know the need? Is it to maintain that strength which
+costs you so much muscle at every feeding. Or is it that
+it would be a danger to lose a few pounds of body while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">{169}</a></span>
+Nature gets ready to ask for food in the gentlest and
+most persuasive way? Whatever there is in appeal to
+the best in any human life to uplift it from the deepest
+depths, you have at the readiest command. You seem
+amply equipped to reach everything but those sick, afflicted,
+oppressed brain-centres. You treat everything
+but these, but to these you are worse than the Egyptian
+task-masters in that you force needless labor
+where rest alone is the need. It is not bricks without
+straw, but labor with exhausted power; and for all your
+efforts you simply maintain weight at a tremendous
+cost to the energy of cure. In no class of patients is
+rest for the brain more indicated than in yours; in
+none are the means so at command and the results for
+good so promising. With your patients the importance
+of time for business or social use is no more a concern;
+the abnormal is all due to disease.</p>
+
+<p>Let us consider those rooms of bedlam you call the
+"excitable wards." They who enter leave all hope (of
+the friends) behind. Is there special need in these
+regions of despair and mental chaos that the mere
+pounds and strength shall be kept up? What will be
+lost by protracted fasts? Nothing in the kitchen. As
+for the brain and those sick centres, they will feed
+themselves until the last heart-beat sends the last
+available nourishment to the remotest cell. Will the
+functions of the brain grow more abnormal by a suspension
+of digestive drafts upon it? Does rest to anything
+that is tired tend to the abnormal?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">{170}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Again I ask, What will be lost by protracted fasts
+in such cases? Nothing but weight, of which the
+fat will be by far the larger part. Would there be
+worry about starvation? With most of the cases there
+is not mind enough to worry over anything from the
+standpoint of reason. The very fact of the absence
+of the sense of the importance of daily food would
+render fasts in the highest degree practical and successful.</p>
+
+<p>The fasts could be instituted with the certainty of a
+calmer condition of mind as soon as the digestive
+tract would cease to call upon the brain for power,
+and with the probability that a surprising degree of
+improvement would be manifest in all, and long before
+the available body-food for the brain would be exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>Gentlemen, you have treated acute sickness in all its
+forms, and you have had many cases in which, because
+of irritable stomachs, neither food nor medicine could
+be given. Day after day you have seen the wasting
+of the bodies, and you have also seen mental aberration
+or stupor lessen day by day as the disease lessened
+its grasp upon the brain-centres, and finally when
+the point of natural hunger was reached, you never
+found the lost pounds a matter of physical discomfort
+or mental abnormality or weakness; rather you
+have always found at this point a mental condition in
+every way the most highly satisfactory. I never saw
+brighter eyes, a happier expression on every line, than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">{171}</a></span>
+revealed by a woman after a fast of forty-four days, in
+which acute disease had reduced the weight forty pounds.</p>
+
+<p>All overweight not due to dropsy or other disease is
+due to eating more food than the waste demands. As
+an abnormal condition overweight has received a great
+deal of attention in the way of misguided effort to
+both prevention and cure. These efforts are such conspicuous
+failures that even the patent medicine man
+has not found his "anti-fat nostrums" the happy means
+to fortune. There have been all kinds of limits built
+around bills of fare, but sooner or later Nature revolts
+and they are given up.</p>
+
+<p>The reason that certain people take on weight easily
+and become "stout," is because of constitutional tendency,
+good digestion, and excess of food. As a general
+fact, the overweights are "large feeders," and they
+not only look well but feel well, for they have much
+less stomach trouble than the average mortal, and in
+cheerful endowment of soul they rank the highest
+among all the people.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of my philosophy, I, who am one of the
+leanest of the kind, look upon the stoutness of those
+in the early prime of life with something of both envy
+and admiration; they seem so ideally conditioned
+to enjoy the best of all things on earth. But it is
+quite a serious matter when the muscles and brain
+have to deal with pounds in excess by the score, even
+as if the victim were doomed to wear clothes padded
+with so many pounds of shot.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">{172}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Why some people take on fat easily even with the
+smallest of meals, why some of the largest eaters are
+of the leanest, are matters to talk about but not to
+know about. For my purpose it is sufficient that I
+assert that overweight can be prevented by an habitual
+limitation of the daily food to the daily need; that it can
+be cut down to any desired degree by stopping the supply,
+a method that is not attended with any violence to
+the constitution, nor even to comfort or power. This
+plan has the great advantage of adding to the curative
+energy of disease as well; and more than this, there is
+a change attending the loss that seems at first phenomenal,
+as involving a physiological contradiction&mdash;there
+is an actual increase in muscle-weight as the bloat and
+fat weight go down.</p>
+
+<p>How is this, you ask? Here is the explanation:
+As the fat weight increases by surplus food, so decrease
+the disposition and ability for general exercise.
+As it declines, so do muscle and all the other energies
+increase, and the use of muscle within physiological
+limit tends to restore the normal weight and strength.</p>
+
+<p>There are no overweights who would not receive the
+greatest benefit by a fast that would diminish the
+pounds to that of the ripest maturity of life, a fast that
+would be determined by the time required to reach the
+desired number of pounds. As a means this method
+is available to all, and practical where due physiological
+light will enable it to be carried out with no starving
+concern to disable vital power.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">{173}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As a general fact, the No-breakfast Plan has been
+attended by a highly satisfactory reduction of surplus
+pounds; where there has been a failure it has been due
+to such an increase of digestive power as really to add
+to both an increase of the average amount of daily food
+and of power to digest it. For instance, one of my
+fellow citizens, weighing not less than three hundred
+and thirty pounds some years ago, gave up his morning
+meals. This was attended with entire relief from
+frequent bilious spells; but the average of daily food
+was increased and the business of a barber did not add
+anything to muscle development. Finally from mere
+excess of weight he became a prisoner to his house and
+yard, unable to walk a square without the greatest
+difficulty; and yet there were two enormous meals put
+into a stomach daily that did not complain, and the
+weight increased until the three hundred and seventy-five
+pound notch was nearly reached. He heard about
+the Rathbun fast, and I was able to persuade him to
+come down to one light meal daily, and day after day
+bonds were loosened. After a year there have been
+nearly seventy-five pounds lost, and there is ability to
+labor and to walk several miles daily.</p>
+
+<p>Very many thin persons have gained as high as forty
+pounds by reason of the larger degree of muscle exercise.
+Since last writing, this word has come from Miss
+K., who one year ago was at the asylum eating several
+meals a day in bed with suicidal intent. She left that
+bed with a weight of one hundred and forty pounds,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">{174}</a></span>
+and, as I have mentioned before, lost twenty pounds
+of it by her fast. My last news is from a letter written
+the day after a twenty-five-mile ride among the mountains
+with a soul as free and joyous as there are freedom
+and joy with the birds whose songs greeted her rapt
+ears from every treetop. She writes of a gain of twenty-four
+pounds since the fast, and states that the glasses
+she has worn for thirteen years are wanted no longer!</p>
+
+<p>I feel that I need not multiply words as to the ability
+and utility of bringing all overweight down to the physiological
+normal and of keeping it there. I could fill
+hundreds of pages with the joyous testimonies of those
+who have been relieved of many surplus pounds, with
+numerous accompanying ailings; they all tell the same
+story, and I will only add this, that there is no physiological
+excuse for any mortal to carry around weight
+that disables.</p>
+
+<p>Not very many months ago ex-Governor Flower, of
+New York, a statesman of national fame, a man of
+largest public spirit, a most valuable citizen, and
+Colonel Robert Ingersoll, an orator of world-wide
+fame and of great nobility of soul, dropped as beeves
+beneath the stroke of an ax because of a fracture of
+brittle bloodvessels. In both of these cases not many
+less pounds than a hundred had needlessly accumulated.</p>
+
+<p>Could I have had the Colonel's ear when I last saw
+him as a listener to almost matchless oratory, whose
+rotundity of belt was to be measured by the yard, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">{175}</a></span>
+would have addressed him as follows: "My dear
+Colonel, when I last saw you you were just filled out
+enough to be the joy of your tailor, and as a picture of
+health in form and looks you were ideal. You were
+then eating the meals of a woodchopper; and merely
+because food tastes good and does not seem to hurt
+you, you have been doing the same during the nearly
+score and a half of years since I have seen you. You
+have been eating more food every day in proportion to
+general muscle exercise than the hardest toiler does in
+a week, and your vast bulk evidences against you."</p>
+
+<p>After explaining to him the structural possibilities
+of apoplexy as a legacy, as I have to you in the cases
+of insanity, I would continue: "Now by virtue of a
+possible ancestral weakness of your brain arteries this
+may happen: the arterial walls, because of habitual
+food in excess, may undergo a fatty, limy degeneration
+that will make a rupture possible, with death or paralysis
+of one-half or more of the body as the direct result;
+or the small arteries may have their walls so thickened
+as not to permit enough blood to circulate in order
+duly to nourish parts of the brain they supply; hence
+softening of the structure and more or less imbecility.</p>
+
+<p>"The history of all overweights is that of a decline
+of muscle energy, and very generally of the amount of
+muscle activity as the pounds and years increase; but
+no cut in the amount of daily food so long as it can be
+taken with relish and disposed of without any special
+protesting from the stomach. This is the history of by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">{176}</a></span>
+far the largest majority of those sudden deaths due to
+cerebral hemorrhage, and also the history of most of
+the cases of imbecility with the overweights.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Colonel, you should make a radical parting
+with those surplus pounds by a fast that may extend
+into months, or take one of the lightest of meals
+once a day. Follow this out rigidly until you have
+lost a hundred pounds, and then by as much will you
+be not only free from disease, but free also from the
+danger of disease."</p>
+
+<p>My experience with cases of epilepsy, or "fits," is
+confined to a half dozen cases, in which permanent
+relief seems to be assured. There is an acquired
+structural abnormality behind the spasms, acquired
+from surplus food, with a cure to be reached ultimately
+in most cases along these physiological lines.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">{177}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>I shall not take time in telling the evils of alcoholics.
+It would not be more enlightening were I to
+spend hours in telling of wrecked lives, of wrecked
+homes, of prisons filled with their victims, of the
+immense loss to states and nations from the loss to
+sufferers and the loss they inflict. Alcoholism has no
+sense for frowning, ominous statistics, for it is a disease
+to be rationally treated, a disease to be rationally
+avoided.</p>
+
+<p>In the light of later science the word "stimulants"
+has become a misnomer as applied to alcoholics; the
+term, no doubt, came into use from the fact that under
+their use there is more endurance to both physical and
+mental ills, an endurance or indifference ascribed to
+stimulation.</p>
+
+<p>If power is stimulated by their use, then there should
+be a rise in temperature whereby severe cold is better
+endured; but this is not the fact any more than that
+temperature is lowered whereby extreme heat is endured;
+in either case the endurance is due to benumbed
+brain-centres. The alcoholic simply lessens the power
+to suffer mentally or physically; hence in degree it is an
+an&aelig;sthetic, and as such it also affects the moral sense<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">{178}</a></span>
+and lessens the power of reason and judgment. They
+are habitually taken for no other reason than for the
+temporary relief they give to some ill of life.</p>
+
+<p>It seems the very depths of total depravity when
+there is no bread for the hungry family, that the price
+of a loaf will rather be spent for a drink; but it is
+not so much moral depravity as depravity of brain-substance.
+The lethal drink is taken because without
+it there is more acute suffering than from the want of a
+loaf of bread by the entire family. In my practice an
+ordinarily sober father would always get drunk and
+stay drunk while any member of his family was sick,
+and for the sole reason that he could not endure the
+worry of apprehension. This was not so much
+depravity as an acute sense of the suffering and danger
+involved, a painful rousing of the best instincts of the
+soul, those instincts that raise man above the brute and
+make him the noblest work of the divine hand. That
+is not a bad man at heart who has such a sense of
+affection for his wife or child when they seem dangerously
+sick that he must have artificial aid to endurance;
+and if you shall detect the alcoholic odor in his breath
+at the funeral you may know that there is heart agony
+under repression.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that alcoholics are an&aelig;sthetics, and not
+stimulants, has become known to a few of the scientists
+in the medical profession; but it can scarcely be
+said to have become known to the profession generally.
+That the habitual drinker partakes for any other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">{179}</a></span>
+reason than to drown his woes that will not stay
+drowned, and that the drowning is not stimulation,
+do not need argument.</p>
+
+<p>The alcoholic in proportion to its strength is mental
+chaos and paralysis to power, and it has not the virtue
+to contain an atom that can be converted into a living
+atom. In not the least sense is it a tissue-builder, and
+its use by the medical profession is without the shadow
+of a reason, and is all the more reprehensible in cases
+of shock.</p>
+
+<p>Let us see: shock in degree is brain paralysis;
+alcoholics in degree are brain paralyzers; shock is
+simply a state of exhaustion with rest the supreme
+need. All the rousement that is necessary and that
+can avail will be called into action by the need of
+oxygen. There are cases of disease in which breathing
+goes on hour after hour, when the soul seems to
+have departed and with it every life sense. The patient
+has become dead beyond reviving, and yet breathes
+hour after hour. Now can one for one moment think
+that an alcoholic can add to the power of the respiratory
+centres of the brain to respond to the calls for
+oxygen and so prolong life? Shock in its gravest
+degree is to be considered the extreme of the tired-out
+condition, with rest the only restorative means; and
+rest may be permitted with the certainty that for mere
+breathing purposes alcoholics are dangerous in proportion
+to the gravity of the shock.</p>
+
+<p>In health the alcoholic only adds discomfort, because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">{180}</a></span>
+there are no complaints to soothe; hence it is the duty
+of every mother so to train her sons in health-habits
+that those first drinks will be discouraging because
+they bring no cheer of contrast, but rather sensations
+that are not suggestive of a better physical condition.</p>
+
+<p>Alcoholics have a corroding effect upon the mucous
+membrane of the stomach, a congestive effect by
+which the glands are subjected to starving pressure;
+hence their use always disables the mere mechanics
+and the chemistry involved in digestion, and so prolongs
+disease, and this applies to all medicines that
+corrode. This corroding power of the alcoholics upon
+the walls of the stomach and its paralyzing effect upon
+the brain-centres, with the additional fact that there is
+nothing in it that adds force to any life power or that
+can be converted into living atoms, should make its
+use in the stomach of the sick a crime scarcely to be
+excused by ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>The evolution of the drunkard is a process of culture,
+and involves something of a constitutional tendency
+as in other diseases. I conceive that there is an
+alcoholic temperament, or a temperament in which the
+inability to bear with patience the various mental and
+physical woes of life is marked even from childhood.
+Indigestion and every cause that lowers vital power
+only add to the importance of such a nervous system.</p>
+
+<p>The first step in the evolution of the drunkard is
+the first untimely meal drawn from the breast of the
+mother. By irregular nursings and the nursings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">{181}</a></span>
+merely to stop crying the nervous system is continually
+overtaxed. There are the untimely meals to prevent
+gluttony; there are the between-meal lunches to
+incite nervousness, irritability, a feeling of unrest that
+nothing seems to satisfy.</p>
+
+<p>This goes on year after year until the time comes
+when that first drink has power to soothe many discordant
+voices, and the die is cast. Other drinks
+follow, with each to lessen the power of the dynamo
+and to disable the machine. At first, drink is indulged
+not without a sense of wrongdoing, but with that
+feeling of power in reserve to keep within the limits
+of safety.</p>
+
+<p>The gradual corrosion of the stomach adding to the
+labors of the brain in the matter of food mass decomposition
+as well as digestion marks the decline of
+power to abstain and the degradation of every sense
+that makes life worth living. Now add to the corrosion
+of the membrane and the paralysis of the brain-centres
+from alcoholics the other inciting causes in the
+culture of disease, and you have the evolution of the
+drunkard.</p>
+
+<p>How is he to be cured? Only through a fast
+that shall let that diseased stomach become new from
+regeneration, that will let the brain accumulate rest in
+reserve. For a time you will need to have him under
+bonds, for his will power is abolished. Put him where
+there will be deaf ears to the cries of morbid nature,
+for there is to be a conflict at first; but long before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">{182}</a></span>
+hunger will come the storm will subside; and finally,
+when food will be really desired, there will be a new
+stomach and a new brain to which an alcoholic will be
+no temptation.</p>
+
+<p>This is no figure of speech, because there is such a
+continual change of life and death going on in the soft
+tissues of the body that in a month or more of fasting
+it may be assumed that much of the tissues which is
+left has undergone reconstruction, and both brain and
+stomach act as if they are new when the time comes
+to restore the lost pounds.</p>
+
+<p>The ways of the kitchen and dining-room are the
+ways of disease and death, ways whose ends are
+prisons, asylums, scaffolds, to a far larger extent than
+is dreamed of by the fathers and mothers of the land.
+A new crusade against intemperance, the intemperance
+of the dining-room, is the only one that will ever settle
+this so-called liquor question. The rum-seller will only
+pull down his sign through the starvation of his business.</p>
+
+<p>With brains and stomachs kept in the highest order,
+the alcoholic has only the least power of the beguiling
+kind; it is rather a dose whose effects do not invite
+repetition. But for all who have the drink disease
+seemingly beyond hope a fast of a month, or two
+months if necessary, will cure any stomach or brain,
+no matter how pickled they are with alcoholic soaking,
+and with only the least disturbance in the habit breaking;
+even within a week the hardest of the fighting
+should be over when the fast is made absolute.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">{183}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>I have now to consider briefly a most distressing
+disease, one that perhaps was never cured by the
+power of doses, and that most happily illustrates the
+structural changes in the cure of disease.</p>
+
+<p>Asthmatic distress is caused by congestion of the
+terminals of the bronchial tubes, by which entrance of
+air into the cells is made difficult, even in some cases
+to the point of suffocation. This condition as a disease
+may be called bronchial catarrh, as in most cases there
+is such a condition of the larger tubes as to cause the
+habitual raising of a discharge. As to the disease
+itself, you have only to recall what has been said about
+nasal catarrh in order to understand its origin and
+development. It would be as trivial a disease were it
+not for the fact that those smaller and ultimate tubes,
+because of flabby walls and weak vessels, become congested,
+with resulting narrowing of the air-ways of life.</p>
+
+<p>For this most distressing disease local treatments
+are as futile and void of intelligence as the physiology
+and anatomy involved in cause and cure of other local
+diseases. Is it not a great thing that those too narrow
+ways of life may be reached through a fast which shall
+so charge the brain with power that the flabby walls
+will be condensed; that most cases of asthma may be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">{184}</a></span>
+cured, with marked relief for every case? This is as
+certain as a result, as that rest restores strength. With
+the toning of the brain through rest, a catarrh of the
+bronchial tubes is certainly curable in most cases.
+With a large opportunity to know I am able to say this
+with intense conviction.</p>
+
+<p>Only a few months ago, just before the break of day,
+a freight train took a side track; in a few moments,
+with nearly a mile-a-minute speed, a limited passenger
+train took the same track, and in the time of a second
+five men were hurled into eternity. Why? How?
+The conductor and his brakeman were in such heavy
+sleep when the switch was opened that they were not
+awakened to close it.</p>
+
+<p>Why? How? There was the torpor of indigestion
+holding the tired brains of those two men in its fatal
+grasp; their stomachs were full of food when they
+were already tired out by their long trip that was
+nearly at its close, and for them those untimely meals
+were the last.</p>
+
+<p>Of all men who ought to work with empty stomachs
+for the sake of the best possible reach of the memory
+it is the railroad engineer and conductor; so also every
+man who is in any way responsible for the safety of
+the trains. If we had the history of all the derailments,
+collisions, of cars with human freight converted
+into funeral pyres, a frightful percentage of them
+could be traced to where "some one had blundered"
+because of the torpor from handling meals when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">{185}</a></span>
+brain was compelled to higher services. Digestive,
+indigestive torpor is also torpor of the sense of <i>responsibility</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In the city where I live is the point between two
+divisions of the Erie Railroad, each somewhat more
+than a hundred miles long. Before I began the agitation
+of the No-breakfast Plan all trainmen felt that filling
+their stomachs was the last duty before entering
+upon their taxing trips, and tired wives would have to
+get up at all times of the night to prepare general
+meals. In this city a mighty revolution for the good
+of wives, for the good of men themselves, and for the
+safety of the trains and the hapless passengers has
+been going on for some years.</p>
+
+<p>In former times when these men came home from
+their rounds generally tired out, and with a feeling that
+in proportion to the sense of exhaustion was the need to
+eat, general meals had to be prepared at any time of
+night. All this is changed in a large measure. Trainmen
+have been finding out that the less food in their
+stomachs they take into bed with them and on to
+their trains, the better it is for them in every way.</p>
+
+<p>More and more they are getting into the way of
+having a general meal when they can eat it with leisure
+and leisurely digest it; and I predict that a time will
+come when all who are in any way responsible for
+the running of trains will have to know how to take
+care of their stomachs, in order that they shall attain
+and maintain the highest efficiency for services where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">{186}</a></span>
+human lives so much depend on the best there is in
+memory, reason, and judgment. This will be a part
+of their preparatory education.</p>
+
+<p>The "block system" has wonderfully added to the
+safety of the trains, but there should be a block system
+added to the stomachs of the dispatchers and all whose
+duties are so grave as the handling of human <ins class="correction" title="frieght in original">freight</ins>.
+There is no division so long that it cannot be doubled
+with less fatigue and better mental condition if the
+stomach be not on duty at the same time. In this I
+speak with the authority that comes from the study of
+the experiences of trainmen during many years: with
+one accord they speak of their trips as taken with
+clearer heads and stronger muscles than when large
+meals were thought a necessity while on duty.</p>
+
+<p>With an empty stomach it takes a very long time
+to get into such torpor&mdash;drowsiness&mdash;as compels the
+after-dinner sleep. That engineer who once told me
+of such sleepiness as made him nod while on duty
+was not suffering from either lack of sleep or overwork
+of his body: it was simply a case of the torpor
+of indigestion, and this was when there was no block
+system to lessen the danger of such services.</p>
+
+<p>There is a great deal of imperfection in what
+man does for man that comes from the indifference
+arising from the torpor of untimely food, and far more
+than there is any conception in what man does against
+man from the destruction of power in this way.</p>
+
+<p>There is now one of the Erie conductors who five<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">{187}</a></span>
+years ago was losing at least half of his time from
+asthma; there is another who was equally disabled
+from sudden head symptoms that would immediately
+disable. These men have lost no trips since they
+began to run their stomachs with the same care as
+their trains. And there is an engineer whose trips to
+the physician and to the drug-store for many years
+were as frequent as those to his engine. There has
+since been a half dozen years of wiser care of his
+stomach, and his wife says that the change for the
+better in his disposition is beyond description. These
+men have rendered far more service, and who cannot
+see that these services have been of far higher character
+for the company, and that they have been infinitely
+better husbands, fathers, and citizens?</p>
+
+<p>The following case will interest trainmen: D. S., a
+brakeman, reached the burden of two hundred and
+forty-six pounds, with resulting breathlessness and
+other ailings that taxed all his resources to perform his
+duties. He was induced to cut down his daily food
+as the only means for relief, and to add to his strength.
+It took him a long time to master the fact that his
+strength was not kept up by food, but the gradual loss
+of weight with the general improvement made this
+more and more evident. He finally reached a time
+when he was able to make his round trip of one hundred
+and ninety-six miles without a morsel of food the
+while, and with much less fatigue than when there was
+a midnight meal from a lunch-pail. Within a year the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">{188}</a></span>
+weight has gone down to one hundred and eighty-eight
+pounds. To my professional eye there is beauty in
+the bright eyes, in the condensed, smooth face, in the
+body enfolded with clothes that flap in the breeze like
+the sails of a ship. No accident will happen to precious
+human freight through his brain kept free from
+digestive torpor while on duty.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since my book has been out I have been in
+more or less trouble with cases that badly needed
+my personal care, and not few in which death was inevitable.
+For instance, there is a woman in Illinois
+who has been ailing for years, and in spite of the No-breakfast
+Plan has had to take to her bed with acute
+aversion to food. Medical art had utterly failed before
+she changed her dietary methods.</p>
+
+<p>Her dietary views are known, and so she is held in
+severe censure because the sick stomach is not compelled
+to a futile service; and though I am informed
+of an enlargement in the region of the bowels that has
+been perceptible and tender for years, her death will be
+considered suicidal from <i>starvation</i>.</p>
+
+<p>A Warrensburg, Ill., editor began his fast by throwing
+up his food and continued it to the end; yet because he
+had talked about a fast it was supposed to be a case
+of suicide of the stupid kind; and though the post-mortem
+revealed a diseased gall-bladder, the doctors
+who made it did nothing to lessen the suicidal impression,
+and the death from "starvation" appeared under
+large headlines in the public prints.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">{189}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When men as learned, able, and eminent as Dr.
+Shrady, of New York, go into print to inform the
+public that people may starve to death in ten days, and
+when such men as Prof. Wood, of the University
+of Pennsylvania, do not see any starvation in the wasting
+pounds of acute disease, the care of acute sickness
+as Nature would have it is a grave matter for the
+physician.</p>
+
+<p>In five fatal cases under my care in which there was
+no possibility of feeding, there was such agitation over
+the question of starvation as would have subjected me
+to violence had my city been nearer the equator. In
+all these cases I was compelled to have a post-mortem
+to silence heathen raging. In one case in which a
+young man had died after weeks of inability to take
+food, even one of my medical brethren carried the conviction
+with him for years, and without seeking to inform
+himself, that there was a death from starvation.
+In this case there were spells of hunger in a fury, when
+meals would be taken, only to be soon thrown up, and
+he finally took to his bed to starve slowly to death.
+There was mind enough left to make a will, though the
+body had lost apparently more than half the normal
+weight; the post-mortem revealed a stomach seared,
+thickened, and not more than a third of the normal size.</p>
+
+<p>The physiology of fasting in time of sickness is so
+entirely new to the medical world that every death
+that occurs with those who practise it is certain to
+be attributed to starving.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">{190}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Early in this year (1900) a woman of seventy, in
+high circles, died from an obscure stomach trouble.
+For thirty-eight days there averaged nearly a half-dozen
+spells of vomiting; and yet it was generally
+believed that it was clearly a case of death from starvation,
+believed by those whose power to receive impressions
+is far stronger than their power to consider.</p>
+
+<p>Fasting, because it is Nature's plan, will win the
+victory in all cases in which victory is possible; and
+yet wherever it is adopted, to become known about,
+there will be the same confusion of tongues as would
+be were violent hands laid upon gods of wood and
+stone in heathen temples. "Starved to death" is the
+verdict.</p>
+
+<p>Fasting during sickness, because of the vast utility
+and from the impetus arising from the cases in Philadelphia,
+is bound to spread as by contagion; but when
+death occurs, all friends involved will be charged as
+abettors of homicide. To be fair to the opposition, and
+to let all readers know what chances for public censure
+will be theirs, whenever they see fit to let their friends
+recover on Nature's plan or die natural deaths, the following
+case is given. I quote from the Philadelphia
+<i>Press</i> of May 7, 1900:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"In the death notices of April 26 appeared the name of Mrs. Hermina
+Meyer, fifty years of age, of 1233 North Howard Street. At the
+time this short and simple record of the passing away of an ordinary,
+obscure woman attracted no more attention than the hundred similar
+names that constituted the necrological annals of April 25. But there is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">{191}</a></span>
+a startling aftermath that at once gives significance to this brief record,
+and rude and bitter awakening to the followers of the so-called 'Starvation
+Cult,' that has gained a considerable acceptance in the northeast
+section of the city.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Meyer was a believer in the fasting treatment. She was
+apparently a victim of this strange and heretical therapeutical faith.
+Kensington is buzzing with gossip concerning the deplorable death of
+the unfortunate woman. C. F. Meyer, the husband of the victim,
+accepts the death of his wife as due to heart-failure, and apparently is
+not disposed to complain.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Meyer talked freely with a <i>Press</i> reporter yesterday concerning
+the sickness and death of his wife. He said that Mrs. Meyer
+had been ill for about a year, her malady having been diagnosed as
+chronic rheumatism. She had been treated by the family physician for
+this disease, but without relief. In despair she turned to the fasting
+treatment.</p>
+
+<p>"From time to time she had read of the remarkable cures claimed
+to have been effected by complete abstention from food. Through a
+friend she met and talked with the family of Leonard Thress, of 2618
+Frankford Avenue, whose case is proclaimed as one of the most remarkable
+that had been successfully treated by the fasting system. Thress
+was widely advertised as a victim of dropsy, who, after a complete
+fast of more than a month, was restored to sound health.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Meyer believed, and sent for Henry Ritter, the chief advocate
+and adviser of the fasting cult in Philadelphia. His belief in the <ins class="correction" title="wierd in original">weird</ins>
+treatment of disease he has adopted is seemingly unshakable.</p>
+
+<p>"Ritter has superintended many cases of starvation treatment,
+wherein, according to his own statements, the patients have totally
+abstained from actual food for periods of from four to six weeks. He
+claims that in every case the afflicted person has completely recovered
+health&mdash;with the single exception of Mrs. Meyer.</p>
+
+<p>"In response to her request, Ritter called upon Mrs. Meyer. She
+at once began her fast. Nothing was allowed to pass her lips but a
+small quantity of tonicum and some physiological salts, dissolved in
+water. Of each of these she was permitted to take sparingly every day.
+It is claimed by Ritter, a fact well-known to physiologists, that there is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">{192}</a></span>
+no actual food in either of these thin condiments. They are simply
+stimulants. These liquids, according to Ritter, are the only things
+given to any of the patients whose cases he has supervised.</p>
+
+<p>"For twenty-five days, so says Mr. Meyer, his wife fasted and
+improved. At the expiration of that time, he says, her health was
+very much improved. She was able to walk about her room, a thing
+she had not been able to do for many weeks. Then there was a sudden
+and violent change for the worse. The patient was seized with
+convulsive vomiting.</p>
+
+<p>"For sixteen days she suffered the excruciating pains of these convulsions.
+But, under Ritter's advice, Mrs. Meyer continued her fast.
+Till the thirty-fifth day she tasted no food. The vomiting continued
+unabated. On the thirty-sixth day she felt a craving for food for the
+first time since her long fast began. She was given oatmeal porridge.
+But the vomiting continued unabated.</p>
+
+<p>"She grew weaker and weaker. From one hundred and fifty pounds
+weight she was reduced to a gaunt skeleton. When, upon the resumption
+of a food diet, the vomiting did not cease, the family was alarmed.
+The family physician was sent for in dismay. But he could do nothing.
+Flesh-building foods were prescribed, but they accomplished nothing.
+The vomiting continued, and three weeks following the breaking of the
+fast Mrs. Meyer died.</p>
+
+<p>"The death was put down to a depleted blood-supply, or heart-failure.
+Ritter claimed that this unexpected turn could not have been
+anticipated, as the fact that the patient was subject to heart disease was
+previously unknown.</p>
+
+<p>"He had treated her for rheumatism, and the cure was apparently
+in sight when heart-failure carried the patient to her grave.</p>
+
+<p>"These facts were detailed by Mr. Meyer. He added that Mr.
+Ritter was not a physician; that he charged no fees; that he did not
+claim to prescribe remedies, but only advised.</p>
+
+<p>"So ends the case of Mrs. Hermina Meyers, first victim of the
+starvation cult."</p></div>
+
+<p>The following is from the <i>Press</i> of May 8:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">{193}</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>"The death of Mrs. Hermina Meyer, after undergoing the fasting
+treatment for thirty-five days, has not at all shaken the faith of the adviser
+responsible for the ordeal, Henry Ritter, who claims to have
+restored tireless persons to health. He affirmed that the ravages of
+chronic disease had progressed too far for his treatment to conquer
+them, and that his attendance was advised by the family physician.</p>
+
+<p>"Against this comforting declaration, however, stands the fact that
+the certificate of death, signed by Dr. James Chestnut, Jr., gave as the
+cause prolonged abstinence from food; in other words, <i>starvation</i>. Dr.
+Chestnut also has stated that the case was taken out of his hands, and
+Ritter installed as medical adviser, by what was virtually a dismissal.
+Dr. Chestnut was summoned again when the condition of the woman
+became critical, after twenty-five days of fasting, but she became rapidly
+weaker with violent convulsions and vomiting, and was beyond medical
+aid.</p>
+
+<p>"She had never been treated for cancer of the stomach, which
+Ritter says he thinks she may have had, although she had a valvular
+affection of the heart which had existed for some time. But the fact
+that the cause of her death was officially attested by the family physician
+as due to her long fast contradicts flatly the position taken by the self-constituted
+healer, who made the following statement last night:</p>
+
+<p>"'I have seen all the members of Mrs. Meyer's family to-day, and
+they are entirely satisfied that my treatment was in no way responsible
+for her death. I was called in at their urgent request, as their own
+relatives were numbered among the cures to the credit of the fasting
+treatment, as well as Mr. Thress. I accept no money for my work;
+they knew it was a labor of love, and the family physician, Dr. Chestnut,
+agreed with them as to the advisability of this system which they
+had seen tested.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mrs. Meyer improved rapidly for a time, her chronic rheumatism
+causing her less trouble than in years, after the first three weeks of fasting.
+She had been treated previously for catarrh of the stomach, and
+it is probable that a cancer afflicted her. I am using no new system.
+The method has been used with very notable success by Dr. Edward H.
+Dewey, of Meadville, whose reputation and standing are distinguished.
+This is the first case I have lost out of twelve patients who had been
+given up as hopeless by regular physicians. It is Nature's cure,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">{194}</a></span>
+nothing more; but it was applied too late in the case of Mrs.
+Meyer.'</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Chestnut would not allow himself to be quoted because of the
+rigid rules of medical ethics. It may be stated, however, in addition
+to what has been said, that he does not wish to be considered as having
+encouraged the experiment, and that the death certificate defined
+his view of the responsibility."</p></div>
+
+<p>A verdict on the part of the doctor <i>without a post-mortem</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Against the doctor is the following, from the daughter,
+Miss Kate Meyer. I quote from an article in
+the <i>North American</i> of May 8, 1900:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mrs. Hermina Meyer, devotee of an odd cult, that regards starvation
+as a sure cure for all bodily ills, fasted for nearly forty days
+because she was suffering from rheumatism.</p>
+
+<p>"The rheumatism disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"But after twenty-five days of total abstinence from food she sickened.
+Violent nausea came to her. She died.</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless, Miss Kate Meyer, daughter of the dead woman,
+says:</p>
+
+<p>"'My mother did not die because she fasted. The fasting did her
+good. When she began it she had been ill with rheumatism for more
+than a year. She could hardly walk. Her left arm was powerless.
+She could not lift it from her side. After two weeks of fasting she was
+active. She could walk. The power came back to her arm. She
+suffered little pain. She looked well. Then came the attacks of
+nausea.</p>
+
+<p>"'But Dr. Chestnut, who is our family physician, was attending
+mother all the time. He called once a week. He said himself that
+the fast cure seemed to be doing mother good. When she got nausea
+he did not lay it to her fasting. He said it was heart trouble. That's
+what mother died of. Dr. Chestnut said so.</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you remember the case of Leonard Thress? He cured him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">{195}</a></span>self
+of dropsy by fasting. Mother heard of it. She was introduced to
+Mr. Thress. He told her that all he knew of the fast cure he had
+learned from Henry Ritter. Mother sent and asked Mr. Ritter about
+the cure. Then she began it. Mr. Ritter never charged mother for anything.
+Dr. Chestnut consented that mother should try the Ritter cure.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Meyer was the wife of Charles F. Meyer, of 1233 North Howard
+Street. Meyer, like his daughter, has only friendliness for Ritter,
+and also favors the fast cure. Mrs. Meyer, past middle age, had been
+sorely tried by her ailment. For more than a year Dr. Chestnut
+attended her, but her condition did not improve. Prescription after
+prescription was tested, only to fail.</p>
+
+<p>"'There is little hope for me,' said the woman to her daughter.
+'I'm tired of taking medicines. They do me no good.'</p>
+
+<p>"She became more melancholy as the days passed. She regarded
+her case as hopeless. Dr. Chestnut acknowledged defeat. He had
+only a change of climate&mdash;a long stay in Colorado&mdash;to recommend. A
+very domestic woman was Mrs. Meyer. She looked with horror upon
+a journey. She said she would remain at home and die.</p>
+
+<p>"But one day last March there gathered at a banquet in the home
+of Leonard Thress about a dozen persons, very happy, very healthy
+(or believing themselves to be so), all members of the 'starvation cure'
+cult.</p>
+
+<p>"Each had to tell the story of a long fast that brought a remarkable
+cure. Newspapers gave publicity to the dinner of the little band with
+the odd faith in fasting. Mrs. Meyer heard of it. Here was a chance&mdash;a
+gleam of hope! She came to know Leonard Thress, and, through
+him, Henry Ritter, the apostle of the fast cure. He told her of
+remarkable recoveries. She caught his enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>"But, according to Mr. Meyer, the young man was careful first
+that the family physician should consent. He never hinted at compensation
+for his services; never got it. Aside from advising total
+abstinence from food, he supplied small quantities of tonicum and salts
+dissolved in water. These contained no food matter; they were merely
+stimulative.</p>
+
+<p>"In two weeks hope was strong with Mrs. Meyer; with all the
+family. Certainly, she was improving. She could walk; her arm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">{196}</a></span>
+that had been stiff and painful moved with ease&mdash;hurt no more. She
+still suffered occasional twinges, and decided to continue her self-imposed
+starvation until every rheumatic germ in her body was eradicated.</p>
+
+<p>"She regarded herself as almost cured, when, after twenty-five days,
+she was attacked with nausea. She was very ill. It lasted sixteen
+days. After the first few days of fasting all desire for food had vanished.
+But on the thirty-sixth day she was hungry.</p>
+
+<p>"Oatmeal porridge was given her sparingly. The nausea, however,
+did not cease. She began to grow alarmingly emaciated. She had
+weighed one hundred and fifty pounds. Her weight had fallen to one
+hundred.</p>
+
+<p>"The family physician prescribed light food, but her stomach
+repulsed it. She grew very weak.</p>
+
+<p>"On April 26 she died. Dr. Chestnut unhesitatingly issued a
+death certificate, ascribing her death to heart-failure. He also suspected
+a cancer of the stomach, but was not sure.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Herman Reinhardt, a cousin of the deceased woman, is
+firmly convinced that fasting had nothing to do with her death.</p>
+
+<p>"'For more than fifteen years Mrs. Meyer suffered from some acute
+stomach trouble,' Mrs. Reinhardt said yesterday, 'and it is my belief
+that it caused her death. Her general health had been greatly benefited
+by abstaining from all food, but the disorder from which she
+suffered most could not be cured. My husband fasted for twenty-five
+days and was completely cured of stomach trouble, and there were no
+ill effects in his case.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>The impression of this death and of these fasts upon
+the minds of the medical profession was perhaps fairly
+summed up by the eminent Horatio C. Wood, M. D.,
+LL. D., Clinical Professor of Nervous Diseases in the
+University of Pennsylvania. He disregarded the legal
+phase of the question, the question of the legality of
+a layman dealing out words of cheer and comfort in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">{197}</a></span>
+cases in which the medical profession had retired in
+total defeat. The question had been seriously raised
+as to whether Mr. Ritter had not committed a crime
+against the laws of Pennsylvania, and for what? For
+simply advising these people to stop all eating until
+there would come a natural desire for food!</p>
+
+<p>Professor Wood thus gave utterance in the <i>Press</i> of
+May 10:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"'These people are falsifying,' he said, 'There have been liars,
+you know, and they are not all dead. I don't believe for an instant
+such stories as fasting totally for forty or fifty days and keeping
+up energy and activity. It is contrary to common sense as well as to
+all we know about the human body. I don't know the object of deception,
+but somebody must be making money out of it, or having a
+craving for notoriety. It is preposterous. I understand that one of
+these fasters walked ten miles a day, after doing altogether without
+nourishment for a month or so. If these persons did what they claim to
+have undergone, more than one death would have been charged against
+the treatment, you may be sure.</p>
+
+<p>"'You will remember that the professional forty-day fasters, Tanner
+and Suci, were reduced to mere skin and bone, were almost helpless,
+carefully husbanded every bit of their vital energy, and took no exercise.
+They were <i>watched</i> and studied scientifically. And here is a
+woman, weighing only one hundred pounds when she started fasting,
+claims she began to eat after thirty-eight days of starvation, and
+had more energy and took more exercise than in years. It is all amazingly
+absurd, whatever the motive may be.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>Tanner and Suci, "skin and bones?" Cowen weighed
+one hundred and seventy-five pounds when he began
+his forty-two day fast, and lost only thirty pounds.
+My case of acute rheumatism revealed a loss of only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">{198}</a></span>
+forty pounds after a forty-six days' fast; and the
+woman of fifty-seven who began eating on the forty-third
+day was so well padded with muscle and fat as
+not to reveal the slightest suggestion of starvation as
+she sat down to the first meal. "Skin and bones?"
+This is a matter for months, and not for days.</p>
+
+<p>"Falsifiers, these fasters?" Science settles important
+questions by investigation, not by epithet.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">{199}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>As I write the closing pages of this book, the most
+taxing case of fasting that ever came under my care
+has ended in hunger, and I insert it that all may know
+what tribulations will be theirs if they have any part
+in letting their sick get well or die in that peace God
+and Nature clearly design for all.</p>
+
+<p>A man of large mould came to me, unknown, unbidden,
+from a distant city on the seventeenth day of
+his fast. His appetite had been abolished by a severe
+throat and bronchial attack, both of which had been
+relieved before reaching me. Well posted in the
+theory of fasting, he came with the declared intention
+of fasting until hunger or death would come.</p>
+
+<p>For two or three weeks he was able to be about the
+city with his nearly two hundred pounds of flesh; but
+there was an unknown, unknowable disease of the
+bowels and stomach in slow development. There were
+a dryness of the mouth and such aversion to food as
+to forbid all eating, and he was deaf to my suggestion
+that he should at least taste some of the liquid foods
+from time to time, to save me in the eyes of his friends
+from a verdict of homicide, were we to fail to win a
+victory. After more than fifty days without even a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">{200}</a></span>
+taste of food nausea and vomiting were added to his
+woes, and when his friends became aware of the many
+days without food no words I could utter saved me
+from the severest condemnation. The anxiety that
+involved the sick bed only depressed the patient, and
+when another physician had to be called to relieve the
+pressure the last hope with him nearly departed.</p>
+
+<p>The adviser was a man of high character and of
+unusual general and professional acquirements. Behind
+him was the entire medical profession and all its
+literature: behind me were only Nature, many-voiced&mdash;and
+the patient. With us there was no lack of
+mutual respect, except in matters of faith and practice;
+but he no more tolerated my "crankiness," lunacy&mdash;perhaps
+imbecility&mdash;in withholding food from the sick
+than I his paganism in enforcing it. For the sake of the
+agony of friends my noble patient accepted one severe
+dose of medicine and one ration of predigested food.
+The instant response of the digestive powers was, "We
+have stopped business down here for repairs: when we
+are ready we will let you know."</p>
+
+<p>Next a ration of food was sent into the sick bowels,
+only to cause hours of pain. The enemy having been
+expelled with disaster from all points of attack, there
+simply had to be a waiting on Nature, and in one day
+after the last vomiting spell there was a natural call for
+food&mdash;and this on the <i>sixtieth day of the fast!</i></p>
+
+<p>Had this man died&mdash;such was his prominence&mdash;I
+should have been paraded as a criminal of the stupid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">{201}</a></span>
+kind in the entire press of America, except in the papers
+of my own city. For this man of sixty-five, who with
+marvellous faith in Nature patiently waited upon her
+time, there promises to be many years of the days of
+his youth restored to him. As for me, with authorized
+medicine driven from the field, I see only new life
+unfolding in him daily, and my reward is exceeding.</p>
+
+<p>Men and brethren of the medical profession: This
+man read his favorite <i>Sun</i> during every one of those
+sixty long days, and not one day was there revealed
+a hint of mental loss in clearness of apprehension. He
+lived because he knew that starving to death was his
+remotest danger; he lived also because he was made
+to see evidences that a cure was evolving in many ways.
+There was at no time apprehension, except when he
+felt unable to resist his friends with a <i>No</i> in thunder
+tones when it was proposed to torture him with drugs
+and foods.</p>
+
+<p>Brethren, are you going into print to denounce the
+physiology or the practicality of this old method in
+Nature, this new method in humanity, to the sick and
+afflicted? Not one of you can advance arguments
+that will convince those who reason.</p>
+
+<p>To what good end are you now enforcing your <i>predigested</i>
+foods? Are they relished better than other
+foods? Can they be taken with less aversion in cases
+of nausea and vomiting? Do they really nourish the
+brain so as to add clearness and strength to the mind?
+Do they ever prevent the uncovering of bones that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">{202}</a></span>
+makes the ways of acute sickness? If food actually
+can be so digested out of the body as to be ready for
+instant absorption, we should be able to abolish our
+kitchens, and at once enter upon that golden age in
+which there would be no dyspepsia hydraheaded; no
+disease of any kind, not even drunkenness, and where
+death would be only as the last flicker of the burned-up
+candle.</p>
+
+<p>In this case, as in all other cases, the desire for water
+was abolished before hunger became marked. In this
+connection I will suggest to the reader that thirst is a
+morbid condition to be avoided as far as possible; that
+water is its only need, and no mortal ever needs a drop
+for health's sake except when thirsty. Making water-tanks
+of human stomachs is without the shade of physiological
+reason, and the alleged results for good are
+not based on a shade of scientific evidence: these are
+based wholly in the minds of the credulous enthusiasts
+who prescribe them. Taking large quantities of water
+without thirst only entails added work upon the kidneys,
+and thus it becomes a factor in the development
+of Bright's disease and other forms where the tendency
+exists. The actual need of water is always made clear
+in every case; the need always disappears before
+hunger can become possible.</p>
+
+<p>As to the use of water on the body, this physiology
+has to be taken into account. The skin is covered
+with scales that are constantly dropping off as they
+mature, each to uncover a bright, clean one. As the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">{203}</a></span>
+skin is not an absorbent membrane, and as old scales
+are constantly dropping off, the need of frequent baths
+is more a need to satisfy the personal sense of cleanliness
+than a physiological need. These scales should
+not be either soaked off or brushed off in a wholesale
+way; the oil in the skin is a protection against weather-changes,
+and is also a necessity to its functional integrity,
+and therefore should not be dissolved and washed
+off by soaps that are strongly alkaline.</p>
+
+<p>The body itself is very sensitive to contact with
+water below the natural temperature of the skin. The
+plunge bath is specially depressing to every human
+energy, and should never be indulged by the debilitated.
+The daily bathings of nursing children are
+cruel and life-depressing. Their little bodies are always
+clean in the physiological sense when their clothes are
+kept clean; hence once a week ought to satisfy all
+mothers.</p>
+
+<p>The question of how often to bathe must be considered
+along these physiological lines. They whose employments
+soil their clothes and bodies spend the least
+time in cleansing their bodies; and yet in no medical
+work that treats of diseases and their causes is there
+to be found a hint that any special disease has its origin
+in uncleansed skin as a chronic condition. That will
+be a small-minded reader who draws conclusions from
+these statements that the author is not highly in favor
+of having bodies and clothes kept so habitually clean
+as not to be an offence to the finest fibred olfactory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">{204}</a></span>
+nerve at close range. In the use, then, of water on
+the body be physiologically sensible, and not the slaves
+of the bath-tub or "medicated" waters.</p>
+
+<p>Lay readers, I draw my message to a close. I have
+addressed it to you because your minds are open and
+free. Draw near and listen while I talk rather than
+write. Let me look into your eyes, see the play on
+all the lines of expression, as I would were you in
+my consulting-room. Mine has reached your ears
+as a lone voice from the depths of some wilderness;
+I have tried so to speak with my pen that you could
+catch an echo as if from between the lines of every
+page.</p>
+
+<p>You will not banish your medical adviser, for you
+still need his knowledge of the workings of disease, if
+you do not need the drugs you formerly believed
+necessary; but you will now be able in a more intelligent
+way to diminish the possibilities of the future need
+of him.</p>
+
+<p>Since these wonderful fasts in Philadelphia others are
+occurring over the country from the contagion of
+example. Many are certain to be undertaken as a last
+resort where hope has departed; and death will come;
+and then there will be the confusion of tongues, as in
+the case of Mrs. Meyer. Her case has been the third
+one that I know of where the press has spread the news
+of death from starvation.</p>
+
+<p>I have given you the case of Mrs. Meyer that you
+may know that no matter how hopeless any case may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">{205}</a></span>
+be considered, no matter how given up by venders of
+drugs, if a fast be advised and death come, death from
+starvation will be the general verdict. Hence on as
+fasts multiply, so will the press continue to make
+special note of all who chance to die because they
+had ceased to add distress to their bodies by foods
+that were only taken as the medicinal dose. All this
+you need to take into account in those cases you
+would advise where the medical faculty has retired in
+defeat.</p>
+
+<p>Never in my entire professional life have I been so
+depressed by discordant voices as during this sixty-day
+fast just ended. All the air has been charged,
+darkened with frownings&mdash;even threats of what would
+happen in case of death; and as never before has this
+question come to me, "Why do the heathen rage and
+the people imagine vain things?"</p>
+
+<p>Again I must tell you that the No-breakfast Plan,
+the plan not to eat in time of health until there are a
+normal need and desire for food, that are only developed
+after several hours of morning labor, and not to
+eat at all during acute sickness, is the easiest of all
+means to maintain health, and to regain it when lost.
+In my message I have had the greatest good for the
+greatest number of the world's busy people, who have
+no time to indulge abnormal, artificial ways in the
+recovery and maintenance of health&mdash;ways that are a
+real tax on time and taxing in the means involved.
+Passing few are they of the world's workers who have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">{206}</a></span>
+the time for all this, and especially they who are the
+slaves of the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>Again I must suggest to you that the actual need of
+daily food as a matter to meet the actual daily need is
+a new question in practical physiology. It may be
+very much less than is supposed, a matter to be determined
+by the scales. There are none who can eat at
+all with relish who are not more governed by relish
+than the hunger sense, as to the amount of food eaten.
+The real amount of daily food needed may be so small
+that enough of nourishment can be extracted from
+almost any of the easiest available foods, the main
+question being one of slow eating, restful eating, and
+with the most thorough mastication. For those who
+have the leisure and tastes for study over what to
+eat there are the works of Haig, Hoy, Hensel, Sir
+Henry Thompson, and others, that may be read with
+both interest and profit.</p>
+
+<p>And now I address my last words to the mothers of
+the land. For you the No-breakfast Plan means the
+highest possible health, the greatest possible relief from
+the slavery of toil. On no other plan are there such
+promises of relief and prevention of all your sex ailings.
+On this plan only can you become man's equal in the
+hours of leisure that are his by a feeling of divine right;
+you also should consider the possibilities of a day of
+eight or ten hours as needing the reduction all the
+more because of your weaker bodies.</p>
+
+<p>The No-breakfast Plan means for your children the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">{207}</a></span>
+best possibilities for the conservation of all the higher
+instincts and powers that will tend to save them from
+the saloon, the prison, the electric chair. If the Garden
+of Eden was abolished because you enticed
+man to eat the wrong food, it is for you to restore a
+new race of Adams in all the ways of health, of such
+health as will make the entire earth a "Paradise
+regained."</p>
+
+<p>Readers, lay and professional, let me reiterate in my
+parting words, words at white heat with conviction as
+to their soundness and utility. Enforced food is a
+danger always to be measured by the gravity of the
+local or general disease; a danger always to be measured
+also by the feebleness of old age&mdash;by feebleness
+no matter how caused.</p>
+
+<p>This physiological righteousness will remain unquestioned,
+its practicality unsurpassed, while man
+remains on the earth to violate the laws of his Creator
+manifest in his own body. The penalties of disobedience
+are as certain as that every cause is followed
+by a definite effect. There are no remissions in the
+various antitoxins; there is no hope for you through
+hollow needles. Nature is exacting, but she is merciful.
+Obey her laws that your ways may be toward
+Paradise, and not away from it.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The No Breakfast Plan and the
+Fasting-Cure, by Edward Hooker Dewey
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,6332 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure, by
+Edward Hooker Dewey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure
+
+Author: Edward Hooker Dewey
+
+Release Date: November 2, 2008 [EBook #27128]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NO BREAKFAST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Susan Skinner, Bryan Ness and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+DR. DEWEY'S BOOKS.
+
+=The True Science of Living; or, The New Gospel of Health.= $2.25, sent
+postpaid.
+
+"Dr. Dewey's logic seems unanswerable."--_Alexander Haig, M.A., M.D.
+Oxon., F.R.C.P._, London, Eng. author of "Uric Acid as a Factor in the
+Causation of Disease," "Diet and Food."
+
+"I am glad to find myself in general accord with the views of Dr.
+Dewey."--_A. Rabagliati, M.A., F.R.C.P._, Edinburgh, Scotland, author of
+"Air, Food, and Exercises."
+
+"Dr. Dewey has written an epoch-making book."--_Emmett Densmore, M.D._,
+New York.
+
+"'The True Science of Living,' in its adaptation to the needs of
+humanity, ranks, in my estimation, with the writing of the Egyptian
+prince, the Jewish law-giver, the inspired Moses."--_Amos R. Collins,
+M.D._, Westerly, R. I.
+
+"To live according to the teaching of either of these books would soon
+make a new race."--_J. W. Dill, M.D., D.D._
+
+"I have just finished 'The True Science of Living,' and would recommend
+every person to read it and follow its direction."--_D. M. Sheedy, M.D._
+
+"A book written by a man with a burning conviction, and bearing an
+introduction by an eminent preacher who has tested the treatment
+recommended in it and found therein a great reinforcement of
+intellectual and spiritual power, which he attributes directly to having
+followed its teachings, is sure to have more than a kernel of truth in
+it, and, written in a lively, conversational style, will not be 'heavy'
+or a bore to those who read it."--_The Independent, New York._
+
+"The book is given in the form of plain lectures; it holds the interest
+from the first chapter, and its logical reasoning cannot be
+gainsaid."--_Chautauquan._
+
+"It consists of twenty-seven lectures, written in a style at once
+interesting, practical, logical, forcible."--_Philadelphia Educational
+News._
+
+
+=A New Era for Women.= $1.25, postpaid.
+
+"The last line of 'A New Era for Women' has been read, and I wish, with
+all my heart and soul, that every woman in the world could read Dr.
+Dewey's words with that burning conviction which is mine."--_Alice
+McClellan Birney_, President of Woman's Congress.
+
+"Taken altogether, 'The New Era for Women' will be found worthy of a
+place in every household, and should be read by every woman in the
+world."--_Chester County Times._
+
+"Plain, common sense, devoid of puzzling, technical terms. Every woman
+who cares for ideal health should purchase this book, and help to
+inaugurate the 'new era' for her sex."--_The Search Light._
+
+=Chronic Alcoholism.= Price, 50 cents.
+
+[Illustration: (signed) E. H. Dewey.]
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+NO-BREAKFAST PLAN
+
+AND
+
+THE FASTING-CURE.
+
+BY
+
+EDWARD HOOKER DEWEY, M. D.
+
+
+
+MEADVILLE, PA., U. S. A.:
+PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR.
+1900.
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1900,
+BY EDWARD HOOKER DEWEY.
+
+REGISTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL, LONDON, ENGLAND.
+
+_All Rights Reserved._
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+GEORGE S. KEITH, M.D., LL.D., F.R.C.P.E., SCOTLAND,
+
+A. RABAGLIATI, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., EDINBURGH,
+
+AND
+
+ALEXANDER HAIG, M.A., M.D., OXON., F.R.C.P., LONDON, ENGLAND,
+
+WHO HAVE COMMENDED THE WRITINGS OF THE AUTHOR IN THEIR
+OWN PUBLISHED WORKS,
+
+THIS BOOK IS
+
+GRATEFULLY DEDICATED.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+This volume is a history, or a story, of an evolution in the
+professional care of the sick. It begins in inexperience and in a haze
+of medical superstition, and ends with a faith that Nature is the all in
+all in the cure of disease. The hygiene unfolded is both original and
+revolutionary: its practicality is of the largest, and its physiology
+beyond any possible question. The reader is assured in advance that
+every line of this volume has been written with conviction at white
+heat, that enforced food in sickness and the drug that corrodes are
+professional barbarisms unworthy of the times in which we live.
+
+E. H. DEWEY.
+
+    MEADVILLE, PA., U. S. A.,
+        _November, 1900_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+THE NO-BREAKFAST PLAN.
+
+I.
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+Introduction--Army experiences in the Civil War--Early years in
+  general practice--Difficulties encountered--Medicinal treatment
+  found wanting as a means to superior professional success           13
+
+II.
+
+A case of typhoid fever that revolutionized the Author's faith
+  and practice--A cure without drugs, without food--Resulting
+  studies of Nature in disease--Illustrative cases--A crucial
+  experience in a case of diphtheria in the Author's family           26
+
+
+III.
+
+A study of the brain from a new point of view--Some new
+  physiology evolved illustrated by severe cases of acute disease     34
+
+IV.
+
+The error of enforced food in cases of severe injuries and diseases
+  illustrated by several striking examples                            42
+
+V.
+
+An apostrophe to physicians                                           56
+
+VI.
+
+The origin of the No-breakfast Plan--Personal experience of the
+  Author as a dyspeptic--His first experience without a
+  breakfast--Physiological questions considered--A new theory of
+  the origin and development of disease and its cure--The spread of
+  the No-breakfast Plan--Interesting cases                            60
+
+VII.
+
+Digestive conditions--Taste relish--Hunger relish--The moral
+  science involved in digestion as a new study--Cheer as a
+  digestive power--Its contagiousness--The need of higher life in
+  the home as a matter of better health--Cheer as a duty              81
+
+VIII.
+
+The No-breakfast Plan among farmers and other laborers--A series
+  of voluntary letters to an eminent divine, and the writer put
+  down as a crank--The origin of the Author's first book--How the
+  eminent Rev. Dr. George N. Pentecost was secured to write the
+  introduction--His no-breakfast experience--The publisher converts
+  a prominent editor--The case of Rev. W. E. Rambo, a returned
+  missionary--The publishers' missionary work among missionaries--
+  The utility of the morning fast--Its unquestionable physiology--
+  Why the hardest labor is more easily performed and for more hours
+  without a breakfast                                                 85
+
+IX.
+
+The utility of slow eating and thorough mastication unusually
+  illustrated by Mr. Horace Fletcher, the author--What should we
+  eat?--The use of fruit from a physiological standpoint             105
+
+X.
+
+Landscape-gardening upon the human face--A pen-picture--
+  Unrecognized suicide--Absurdity of the use of drugs to cure
+  diseases--A case of blood-letting--Mission of homoeopathy--
+  Predigested foods                                                  110
+
+
+THE FASTING-CURE.
+
+XI.
+
+The forty-two day fast of Mr. W. W. C. Cowen, of Warrensburg,
+  Ill., and its successful end--Press account--The twenty-eight day
+  fast of Mr. Milton Rathbun, of New York, and its successful
+  end--Press account--A second fast of Mr. Milton Rathbun, of
+  thirty-five days, in the interest of science, and its successful
+  end--Press account--Adverse comments of Dr. George N. Shrady, an
+  eminent New York physician                                         117
+
+XII.
+
+The remarkable fast of forty-five days of Miss Estella Kuenzel,
+  of Philadelphia, resulting in a complete cure of a case of
+  melancholia--Press accounts--A still more remarkable fast, of
+  fifty days, of Mr. Leonard Thress, of Philadelphia, resulting in
+  a complete cure of a bad case of general dropsy--Press
+  accounts--General dropsy in a woman of seventy-six relieved by a
+  fifteen-day fast, with the cure permanent--Rev. Dalrymple's fast
+  of thirty-nine and one-half days without interruption of pastoral
+  duties                                                             136
+
+XIII.
+
+Insanity--A study from a new point of view--Its radical cure
+  deemed probable in most cases by protracted fasts--Feeding the
+  insane as practised in the hospitals sharply criticised--Some
+  direct words to physicians in charge                               157
+
+XIV.
+
+The evolution of obesity, and its easy relief by fasting--
+  Overweight prevented by a limitation of the daily food
+  and without lessening any of the powers or energies--The
+  evolution and prevention of apoplexy                               177
+
+XV.
+
+Chronic alcoholism--The evolution of the drunkard--His complete,
+  easy, rational cure by fasting--No case so grave as to be beyond
+  cure by this means--Asthma; Its cure through dietary means--A
+  railroad tragedy--The need of railroad men to save their brains
+  from needless waste of energy in their stomachs--An illustrative
+  case--Some of the Author's troubles from the ignorance of the
+  people--The death of Mrs. Myers, of Philadelphia, on the
+  thirty-fifth day of her fast--Adverse press accounts and
+  comments--Adverse comments of Prof. H. C. Wood, M. D., L. L. D.,
+  on fasting and fasters                                             183
+
+XVI.
+
+A successful sixty-day fast under the Author's care--More about
+  predigested foods--Bathing from a physiological standpoint--The
+  error of drinking water without thirst--Some earnest words to the
+  mothers of this land--What the No-breakfast Plan means for them
+  and their children--Concluding words                               199
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR                                    _Frontispiece._
+
+MRS. A. M. LICHTENHAHN, THIRTY-SIXTH DAY
+    WITHOUT FOOD                                          Opposite p. 54
+
+REV. GEORGE SHERMAN RICHARDS                                  "       94
+
+MRS. E. A. QUIGGLE                                            "      104
+
+MR. MILTON RATHBUN SHORTLY AFTER HIS FAST                     "      132
+
+MISS E. F. KUENZEL, FORTY-FIRST DAY OF FAST                   "      146
+
+MR. LEONARD THRESS, FIFTIETH DAY OF FAST                      "      152
+
+MISS E. W. A. WESTING, FORTIETH DAY OF FAST                   "      154
+
+
+
+
+THE NO-BREAKFAST PLAN.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+A hygiene that claims to be new and of the greatest practicality, and
+certainly revolutionary in its application, would seem to require
+something of its origin and development to excite the interest of the
+intelligent reader. Methods in health culture are about as numerous as
+the individuals who find some method necessary for the health: taking
+something, doing something for the health is the burden of lives almost
+innumerable. Very few people are so well that some improvement is not
+desirable.
+
+The literature on what to eat and not to eat, what to do and not to do,
+on medicines that convert human stomachs into drug-stores, is simply
+boundless. If we believe all we read, we must consider the location we
+are in before we can safely draw the breath of life; we must not cool
+our parched throats without the certificate of the microscope. We must
+not eat without an ultimate analysis of each item of the bill of fare,
+as we would take an account of stock before ordering fresh goods; and
+this without ever knowing how much lime we need for the bones, iron for
+the blood, phosphorus for the brain, or nitrogen for the muscles. In
+short, there is death in the air we breathe, death in the food we eat,
+death in the water we drink, until, verily, we seem to walk our ways of
+life in the very valley and shadow of death, ever subject to the attack
+of hobgoblins of disease.
+
+How many lives would go down in despair but for the miracles of cure
+promised in the public prints, even in our best journals and monthlies,
+we cannot know. It is the hope for better things that sustains our
+lives; suicide never occurs until all hope has departed. Even our
+medical journals are heavily padded with pages of new remedies whose use
+involves the most amazing credulity. Perhaps it is well, in the absence
+of a sound physiological hygiene, that the people who are sick and
+afflicted shall be buoyed up by fresh, printed promises. Perhaps it is
+also well for the physician to be able to go into the rooms of the sick
+inspired from the advertising pages of his favorite medical journals.
+
+Are they not new stars of hope to both physician and the people? Why
+should we not hope when new remedies are multiplying in such infinite
+excess over newly discovered diseases? _New diseases?_ What is there
+essentially new that can be treated with remedies, in the coated
+tongues, foul mouths, high temperature and pulse, pain, discomfort, and
+acute aversion to food, that is to be found in the rooms of the sick?
+Are there really specifics for these conditions?
+
+The hygiene to be unfolded in these pages is so new, so revolutionary,
+that its first impress has never failed to excite every form of
+opposition known to language, and yet its practicality is so great that
+it is rarely questioned by those who fairly test it. It has not been
+found wanting in its physiology, nor has it failed to grow wherever it
+has found lodgement.
+
+The origin and development of this new way in health culture seem to
+require something of professional autobiography, that it may be seen
+that it is a matter of evolution and not of chance, not a fad that has
+only its passing hour.
+
+After receiving my medical degree from the University of Michigan, and
+serving a term as house physician to the U. S. Marine Hospital at
+Detroit, Michigan, I entered one of the large army hospitals at
+Chattanooga, Tenn., at the beginning of the Sherman campaign in Georgia,
+where I found a ward of eighty sick and wounded soldiers fresh from the
+battle of Resacea. My professional fitness for duties so grave and so
+large in extent was of a very questionable order, and I did not in the
+least overestimate it.
+
+It had not escaped my notice, even before I began the study of medicine,
+that whether disease were coaxed with doses too small for mathematical
+estimate, or whether blown out with solid shot or blown up with shells,
+the percentage of recoveries seemed to be about the same regardless of
+the form of treatment.
+
+I was reared in a large family in a country home, several miles from a
+physician, where all but the severest sicknesses were treated with
+herb-tea dosage, and this was true of all other country homes. With all
+this in mind I had begun the study of medicine with a good deal less
+than the average faith in the utility of dosage, and it was not enlarged
+by my professor of materia medica.
+
+I entered upon my serious duties as did good, rare, old Bunyan into his
+pulpit, with a feeling fairly oppressive that I was "the least of all
+the saints." My materia medica was in my vest pocket; my small library
+in my head, with its contents in a very hazy condition. With a weak
+memory for details, and marked inability to possess truth except by the
+slow process of digestion and assimilation, my brain was more a
+machine-shop than a wareroom; hence capacity of retail dealing was of
+the smallest. I was not in the least conscious at this time that a large
+wareroom amply stored by virtue of a retentive memory was not the most
+needed as an equipment for all the practical affairs of life. I have
+ever found it necessary to dodge some memories, when there was lack of
+time to endure a hailstorm of details.
+
+That I did not become a danger to the hapless sick and wounded only less
+than their diseases and wounds, was wholly due to my small materia
+medica, to utter lack of pride in knowledge that had not become a power
+with me, and to that lofty ambition for professional success which moved
+me to seize aid from no matter where or whom, as the drowning man a
+straw.
+
+It was my great professional fortune that the medical staff of this
+hospital of more than a thousand cots was of a very high order of
+ability and experience, and that I entered at the beginning of a
+campaign in which for more than three months there was a fitful roar of
+artillery and rattle of musketry every day; hence a continuous influx to
+cots vacated by deaths or recoveries.
+
+In all respects it was the best equipped hospital for professional
+experience of any that I knew anything about. There was one rigid rule
+that I believe was not carried out in any other hospital: post-mortems
+in all cases, numbering from one to a dozen daily, and all made with a
+thoroughness I have never seen in private practice.
+
+The features of my hospital service that impressed me most were the
+post-mortem revelations and the diverse treatments for the same disease.
+I soon found that, no matter what the disease, every surgeon was a law
+to himself as to the quality, quantity, and times of his doses, with the
+mortality in the wards apparently about the same.
+
+Post-mortem examinations often revealed chronic diseases whose existence
+could not have been suspected during life, and yet had made death
+inevitable.
+
+Another advantage in army hospital practice was the stability of the
+position and the absence of the harassing anxiety of friends, thus
+affording the highest possibilities of the judgment and reason. And
+still another advantage was the high social relations existing between
+the medical officers, due to the absence of all causes for jealousy,
+neither the position nor salary depending on superior endowments or
+professional success.
+
+I was aware that, in spite of my lack of experience and the presence of
+a most painful sense of general insufficiency, my sick and wounded were
+about as safe in my hands from professional harm, even from the first,
+as the patients of the most experienced medical officer in the hospital.
+
+With high professional ideals, with no ability to make use of hazy
+conceptions or ideas, having no pride in knowledge that had not become
+my own, I began at once to reinforce myself from the experience and
+wisdom of my brother officers, whose advisory services were always
+readily and kindly rendered.
+
+From the first and all through my military service my severely sick had
+the advantage of all the borrowed skill and experience I could command.
+As for surgical operations, they were all performed in the presence of
+most of the medical staff, some of whom were of great experience.
+
+The surgery of the army hospitals of 1864 was of the highest character
+in skill and in careful attention to all the details involved, and the
+fatalities were generally due to the gravity of the wounds requiring
+operations and lack of constitutional power for recovery, rather than to
+the absence of the germ-killer. At that time the microbe was not a
+factor in the probabilities of life or death. In all else the care of
+the wounds could hardly be surpassed.
+
+As for the medicinal treatment of my sick, it was unsatisfactory from
+first to last. After all the years since I cannot believe that, except
+for the relief of pain, any patient was made better by my dosage; and in
+all fatalities the post-mortem revealed the fact that the wisest dosage
+would have been without avail.
+
+But in the study of the history of disease as revealed by symptoms my
+hospital experience was invaluable. I have since found that my greatest
+service at the beds of the sick is as an interpreter of symptoms rather
+than a vender of drugs. The friends of the sick read indications for
+good or bad with wonderful acuteness, as a rule; and I have rarely found
+myself mistaken in my ability to read the condition of patients in the
+faces of the friends, even before I enter the rooms of the sick.
+
+As my experience enlarged so did my faith in Nature; and, since there
+was no similarity in the quality, sizes, and times of the doses for like
+diseases, my faith in mere remedies gradually declined.
+
+After a year and a half of large opportunities to study the diseases of
+men in the early prime of life, in the care of the simple surgery of
+shot and shell, I left the army with such familiarity with grave
+diseases and death in various forms as to enable me ever after to retain
+complete self-possession in the presence of dying beds in private
+practice.
+
+I began the general practice of medicine in Meadville in the autumn of
+1866. Among the many physicians located in the city at that time were
+men of ability and large experience. There were those who administered
+with sublime faith doses too small for mathematical estimate; those who
+with equal faith administered boluses to the throat's capacity for
+deglutition; those who fully believed in whiskey as nourishment, that
+milk is liquid food, and who with tremendous faith and forceful hands
+administered both until human stomachs were reduced to barren wastes and
+death would result from starvation aggravated by disease.
+
+Most of the cases of disease that fall to the care of the physician are
+trivial, self-limited, and rapidly recover under even the most
+crucifying dosages; Nature really winning the victories, the physician
+carrying off the honors.
+
+This is so nearly true that it may be stated that, aside from the domain
+of surgery, professional success in the general sense depends upon the
+personal qualities and character of the physician rather than the
+achievements of the materia medica.
+
+People have a confidence in the power of medicine to cure disease
+scarcely less than the dusky warrior has in the Indian medicine-lodge of
+the Western wilderness, and a confidence about as void of reason.
+
+The physician goes into the rooms of the sick held to the severest
+accountability in the matter of dosage; and the larger his own faith in
+medicines the greater his task; and, if he is of my own, the so-called
+"old school," or Allopathic, the more dangerous he is to the curing
+efforts of Nature.
+
+With the people the disease is simply an attack, and not the summing up
+of the results of violated laws going on perhaps from birth. With the
+people the symptoms are merely evidences of destruction, and not the
+visible efforts to restore the normal condition. Hence the failures to
+relieve always raise more or less questioning, among friends in painful
+concern, as to the ability of the physician to discharge his grave
+duties.
+
+This unreasoning, unreasonable "blind faith" in remedial means is as
+strong in the most intelligent as in the most ignorant, and it has ever
+given me more trouble than the care of the sick. Another serious
+complication of the sick-room arises from near-by friends who are very
+certain that their own physicians are better fitted by far for the
+serious work of prescribing for the sick.
+
+In addition to the serious work of attacking the symptoms of disease as
+so many foes to life, there is also a care as to what unbidden food
+shall go into unbidden stomachs, that the system shall be supported
+while life seems to be in the hands of its greatest enemy.
+
+The universal conception of disease as a foe to life, and not as a
+rational process of cure; the boundless faith in remedies as means to
+resist the attack, revealed by symptoms, makes the professional care of
+the sick the gravest of all human occupations, and the most trying to
+both head and heart.
+
+With all these taxing conditions confronting me, I opened an office in a
+field which seemed to be more than occupied by men of large experience.
+
+With all my army experience I still had a hazy conception as to Nature
+in disease. That the vital forces needed the support of all the food the
+stomach of the sick could dispose of, was not a question of the remotest
+consideration. That medicine did in some way act to cure disease I could
+not fully question.
+
+I was now to enter a service in which, from the care of infancy in its
+first breathings to old age in its last, every resource of the materia
+medica, of the reason, judgment, and of the soul itself, was to be
+called in in every grave case, and to be held to a responsibility
+measured by preposterous faith in medicines.
+
+I entered upon my duties with a determination to win professional
+success by the most thorough attention to all the details of service
+upon the sick and their friends, and I confined my efforts almost wholly
+to acute cases. None of my professional colleagues were winning laurels
+by the treatment of chronic diseases, and not having faith in drugs for
+such I had my scruples about fees for failures that seemed inevitable.
+
+And yet with the most painstaking service fortune would play with me at
+times in the most heartless manner. At one time four of my adult
+patients were awaiting burial within the radius of a half mile. As they
+were all physical wrecks, and died after short illnesses, there could be
+no question raised in any just sense as to the character of my services,
+but the fatalities were scored against me. Such fortune would be
+annihilating but for the fatalities inevitable with all practitioners.
+
+For full ten years I visited the sick and dosed them according to the
+books, but with far less force of hands and faith than any of my
+brethren, and all were enjoined to take nourishment to keep up the
+strength for the combat with disease.
+
+My doses were confined to only a few Sampsons of the materia medica, and
+these were administered with a watching for favorable results that could
+hardly be surpassed, and yet always with disappointment.
+
+I was innocent enough to believe that a large practice could only be
+built up by the most painstaking and persistent effort; later on I found
+that a large practice was but little dependent upon the skill and
+learning displayed in the sick-room. One physician could immediately
+secure a large patronage because she was a woman; another, because he
+belonged to this or that nationality, or there was something in the
+personal outfit rather than in the professional that incited large hopes
+for the ailing.
+
+In all my cases of acute sickness there was always a wasting of the body
+no matter how much they were fed; a like increase of general strength
+when a normal desire for food occurred no matter how little they were
+fed. I saw this with eyesight only; but I saw with insight that a large
+practice could be carried on by doctors too ignorant to know that there
+was an alphabet in medical science.
+
+I was not then so fully aware of the depths of ignorance among the
+people as to what cures disease, did not know that faith in doses was so
+large, as child-like even with the most cultured as with the ignorant. I
+was not so well aware, as I became later, that the physician himself
+must have such energy of faith in the materia medica as to reveal it in
+every line of his countenance when in the rooms of the sick.
+
+As the years went on, my faith in remedies did not increase; but I had
+to dose to meet the superstitious needs of the people. My practice,
+though far short of what it seemed to merit from the pains bestowed upon
+it, was large enough for all the needs of profitable study had I been in
+a condition for thought and reflection. It was not to my encouragement
+that there were those doing a far larger business with doses simply
+crucifying, and because crucifying, a far larger attendance was the
+direct result.
+
+I now see, as I did not then so clearly, that Nature's victories are
+often won against the desperate odds of treatments that are simply
+barbarous; and yet Nature is so powerful, so persistent in the attempts
+to right all her wrongs, that she wins the victory in the great
+majority of cases no matter how severely she may be taxed with means
+that hinder. The great majority of the severely sick of a hundred years
+ago recovered in spite of the bloody lancet and treatments that are the
+barbarism of to-day.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+I was called one day to one of the families of the poorest of the poor,
+where I found a sick case that for once in my life set me to thinking.
+The patient was a sallow, overgrown girl in early maturity, with a
+history of several months of digestive and other troubles. I found a
+very sick patient, so sick that for a period of three weeks not even one
+drink of water was retained, not one dose of medicine, and it was not
+until several more days that water could be borne. When finally water
+could be retained my patient seemed brighter in mind, the complexion was
+clearer, and she seemed actually stronger. As for the tongue, which at
+first was heavily coated, the improvement was striking; while the
+breath, utterly foul at first, was strikingly less offensive. In every
+way the patient was very much better.
+
+I was so surprised at this that I determined at once to let the good
+work go on on Nature's own terms, and so it did until about the
+thirty-fifth day, when there was a call, not for the undertaker, but for
+food, a call that marked the close of the disease. The pulse and
+temperature had become normal, and there was a tongue as clean as the
+tongue of a nursing infant.
+
+Up to this time this was the most severely sick case I ever had that
+recovered, and yet with not apparently more wasting of the body than
+with other cases of as protracted sickness in which more or less food
+was given and retained. And all this with only water for thirst until
+hunger came and a _complete cure_!
+
+Such ignoring of medical faith and practice, of the accumulated wisdom
+and experience of all medical history, I had never seen before. Had the
+patient been able to take both food and medicine, and I had prohibited,
+and by chance death had occurred, I would have been held guilty of
+actually putting the patient to death--death from starvation. Feed, feed
+the sick whether or not, say all the doctors, say all the books, to
+support strength or to keep life in the body, and yet Nature was absurd
+enough to ignore all human practice evolved from experience, and in her
+own way to support vital power while curing the disease.
+
+I could recall a great many cases in which because of intense aversion
+to food patients had been sick for many days, and even weeks, with not
+enough nourishment taken to account for the support of vital power; but
+the fact did not raise a question with me.
+
+The effect of this case upon my mind was so profound that I began to
+apply the same methods in Nature to other patients, and with the same
+general results. The body, of course, would waste during the time of
+sickness; but so did the bodies of sick that were fed. As for medicines,
+they were utterly ignored except where pain was to be relieved, though
+unmedicated doses were alike a necessity with all. Not a single
+medicine was given except for pain, and occasionally in cases in which I
+had reason to think the entire digestive tract needed a general clearing
+of foul sewage. Thence on, that supreme work, the cure of disease, in my
+hands became the work of Nature only.
+
+In a general practice I was able to carry out the non-feeding plan by
+permitting the various meat teas or the cereal broths, none of which can
+be taken by the severely sick in quantities to do harm. By withholding
+milk I was enabled to secure all the fasting Nature required, while
+satisfying the ever-anxious friends with tea and broth diversions.
+
+This was a line of investigation that I felt ought to be of the deepest
+interest to every thinking, high-minded physician, to every intelligent
+layman; and very early the evidences of the utility of withholding food
+from the sick during the entire time of absence of desire for it, its
+absolute safety, were beyond any questioning.
+
+I had no fatalities that were apparently in any way due to the enforced
+lack of food. In cases of chronic disease in which death was inevitable,
+such as cancer, consumption, etc., patients were permitted to take what
+they could with the least offence to the sense of relish. In every case
+of recovery there was a history of increasing general strength as the
+disease declined, of an actual increase of vital power without the
+support of food that had no more relish than the dose that crucified
+the nerves of taste.
+
+In all America milk is the chief reliance to support vital power when no
+other food can be taken. Milk in one stage of normal digestion gets into
+the form of tough curds ready for the press, and curds should always be
+thoroughly masticated before swallowing.
+
+Sir William Roberts, of England, in his exhaustive work on _Digestion
+and Diet_, asserts that milk-curds are not digested in the stomach
+during sickness, but are forced into the duodenum, where, he asserts,
+they are digested, but he gives no reason for his faith that there is
+power to digest in the duodenum where there is none in the stomach.
+
+It was not difficult to make the mothers in the homes understand that
+taking milk by the drink was equivalent to swallowing green cheese-curds
+without due mastication.
+
+With these hygienic conceptions and methods I continued to visit the
+sick as a mere witness of Nature's power in disease rather than as an
+investigator, yet without being able to understand the secret of the
+support of vital power without food. But whatever risk there might be,
+or how strong my faith when my patrons were the subjects of what might
+be called foolhardy experiments, there came a time when this faith was
+to have the severest of all tests.
+
+An epidemic of diphtheria broke out among my nearest neighbors, and
+after four deaths in as many families within a stone's throw of my
+residence a son of mine aged three years was taken. I had never given
+him in all his life even a cross look, and whatever sin there was in
+making idols of children in this I was the worst of all sinners, and I
+did not quite believe, as some Christian folks would have me, that my
+happiness through him was not the very incense of gratitude to the great
+Author for the gift of such a treasure of the heart.
+
+In my hour of trial two of my ablest and most experienced medical
+friends came to me. Quinine and iron in solution were their verdict--and
+the little throat was not copper-lined; and, in addition, all the strong
+whiskey possible to force into the stomach: all this would have required
+manacled wrists and the prying apart of set jaws. He had never received
+anything from me more violent than caresses, and this abomination of
+dosage was to be sent down a bleeding, ulcerated way, over raw surfaces
+that would writhe and quiver under the added torture. This would not be
+rational treatment for ulcerations on the body, and the loss of strength
+through resistance and structural injury to the throat had no promise of
+redemption except in the minds of my medical friends.
+
+It happened that I left home without getting the prescription filled,
+and, not getting back as soon as expected, the anxious wife procured the
+medicines and succeeded in getting one dose into the stomach, and also
+in raising a nervous hurricane that took an hour to allay. She was then
+informed that such a dose would be cruel even to a horse. Thence on he
+took nothing into his stomach but the water that thirst compelled, and a
+little dosage with it to meet the mother's need; and so I stood beside
+the suffering idol of my heart, with the entire medical world against
+me--strong enough, only rejoicing in my strength to defend him against
+the barbarism of authorized treatment. My only comfort was that in his
+time of supreme need I could give him supreme kindness, and if death
+must come there would not be the additional laceration of avoidable
+cruelty inflicted; and Nature, with every possible aid that could add
+comfort to the suffering body, won the victory.
+
+Since then the medical world has advanced to antitoxin as a specific,
+leaving me nearly alone to plodding ways that are by sight and not by
+faith. That the treatment of my sick son in the absence of the only
+supposed specific was in advance of my time, the medical world cannot
+now question.
+
+As the months and years went on, it so happened that all my fatalities
+were of a character as not to involve in the least suggestions of
+starvation, while the recoveries were a series of demonstrations as
+clear as anything in mathematics, of evolving strength of all the
+muscles, of all the senses and faculties, as the disease declined. No
+physician whose practice has been extensive has failed to have had cases
+in which the same changes occurred, and in which the amount of food
+taken did not explain this general increase of strength.
+
+Believing I had made a most important discovery in physiology, one that
+would revolutionize the dietetic treatment of the sick, if not
+ultimately abolish it, my visits to the sick became of unsurpassed
+interest, I watched every possible change as an unfolding of new life,
+seeing the physical changes only as I would see the swelling buds evolve
+into the leaves or flowers, reading the soul- and mind-changes in the
+more radiant lines of expression.
+
+I saw all these things with the naked eye, and more and more marvelled
+at the bulk of our materia medicas, the size of our drug-stores, and the
+space given to healing powers in all public and medical prints.
+
+For years I saw my patients grow into the strength of health without the
+slightest clue to the mystery, until I chanced to open a new edition of
+Yeo's _Physiology_ at the page where I found this table of the estimated
+losses that occur in death after starvation:
+
+    Fat             97 per cent.
+    Muscle          30    "
+    Liver           56    "
+    Spleen          63    "
+    Blood           17    "
+    Nerve-centres    0
+
+And light came as if the sun had suddenly appeared in the zenith at
+midnight. Instantly I saw in human bodies a vast reserve of predigested
+food, with the brain in possession of power so to absorb as to maintain
+structural integrity in the absence of food or power to digest it. This
+eliminated the brain entirely as an organ that needs to be fed or that
+can be fed from light-diet kitchens in times of acute sickness. Only in
+this self-feeding power of the brain is found the explanation of its
+functional clearness where bodies have become skeletons.
+
+I could now go into the rooms of the sick with a formula that explained
+all the mysteries of the maintenance and support of vital power and cure
+of disease, and that was of practical avail. I now knew that there could
+be no death from starvation until the body was reduced to the skeleton
+condition; that therefore for structural integrity, for functional
+clearness, the brain has no need of food when disease has abolished the
+desire for it. Is there any other way to explain the power to make wills
+with whispering lips in the very hour of death, even in the last moments
+of life, that the law recognizes as valid?
+
+I could now know that to die of starvation is a matter not of days, but
+of weeks and months; certainly a period far beyond the average time of
+recovery from acute disease.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+There fell to my care a very much worn-out mother, who took to her bed
+with an attack of inflammatory rheumatism, with the joints so involved
+as to require the handling of a trained nurse. The agony was such that
+the hypodermic needle was required to make existence endurable, and it
+was used with the idea that the brain would be less injured by the
+remedy than by the agony with its inevitable loss of sleep.
+
+I know of no disease in which treatment has been more savage than in
+this. The remedies in common use at that time were mainly new and of
+supposed specific powers; but they were so violent, and proved to be so
+futile, that they have all been given up since by the majority of the
+profession.
+
+As the days went on the disease declined in spite of the enforced
+comfort through the needle; there were easier movements, a clearing of
+the skin from sallow to a tint of redness, and finally, after a month,
+the armchair could be used for a change.
+
+On the morning of the forty-sixth day there was revealed in the face the
+perfect color of health, and happiness marked every line of the
+expression. There was ability to walk through several rooms of her home.
+But it was not until the afternoon that the first food was desired and
+taken, and never before was plain bread and butter, the supreme objects
+of desire, so relished. In the following few months there was an actual
+gain of forty pounds.
+
+My next marked case is a wonderful illustration of the self-feeding
+power of the brain to meet an emergency, and a revelation, also, of the
+possible limitations of the starvation period. This was the case of a
+frail, spare boy of four years, whose stomach was so disorganized by a
+drink of solution of caustic potash that not even a swallow of water
+could be retained. He died on the seventy-fifth day of his fast, with
+the mind clear to the last hour, and with apparently nothing of the body
+left but bones, ligaments, and a thin skin; and yet the brain had lost
+neither weight nor functional clearness.
+
+In another city a similar accident happened to a child of about the same
+age, in whom it took three months for the brain to exhaust entirely the
+available body-food.
+
+I will now enter upon a study of the brain and its powers along these
+lines, to be enlivened by illustrative evidence. What reason and
+physiology had I with me that I should use methods in the sick-room
+wherein the entire medical world was against me, and with severest
+condemnation?
+
+The head is the power-house of the human plant, with the brain the
+dynamo as the source of every possible human energy. We think, love,
+hate, admire, labor with our hands, taste, hear, smell, see, and feel
+through the brain. Broken bones and wounds heal, diseases are cured
+through energy evolved in the brain or the brain system as a whole. The
+other so-called vital organs and the muscles are only as so many
+machines that are run by the brain power, with the stomach an
+exceedingly important machine. That powers so rare do not originate in
+the bones, ligaments, muscles, or fats, does not need argument; that
+when the nerve-trunks that supply the arm or leg are severed power of
+movement and feeling is lost, is known to all; and equally would the
+power of the stomach be abolished were the nerve-trunks cut off. In a
+general way, then, it may be stated that the strength of the body is
+directly as the strength of the brain.
+
+With this physiology, who in or out of the medical profession can fail
+to see clearly that the digestion of even an atom of food is a tax upon
+the strength of the brain for whatever of power needed by the stomach,
+the machine, for this purpose? Unless it can be proved that the stomach
+has powers not derived from the brain system, this will have to be
+admitted.
+
+How is the strength kept up in the light of this physiology? The
+universal belief is that it is kept up by the daily food. In proportion
+to the prostration of sickness, so are physicians anxious to conserve
+the energies by working the stomach to the limit of its powers.
+
+The impression that there must be something digested to support the
+vitality of the system is a belief, a conviction that has always been
+too self-evident to suggest a doubt.
+
+If the well need food to keep up the strength, the sick need it all the
+more; this is the logic that has been displayed upon this question. Let
+us keep it clear in mind that, if the nerves going to the stomach are
+severed, paralysis will result as in the case of the arm, in order more
+definitely to conceive the stomach as a _machine_ that requires power to
+run it even to a tiringout degree. This is strikingly illustrated by the
+exhausted feeling that invites the after-dinner nap for rest, which,
+however, does not rest overfilled stomachs, overfilled brains. The brain
+gets no rest while getting rid of food-masses with more of decomposition
+than of digestion.
+
+If food really has power to keep up the strength, there should not be so
+much strength lost by the general activities--indeed, it would seem that
+fatigue should be impossible. But the fact remains that from the first
+wink in the morning to the last at night there is a gradual decline of
+strength no matter how much food is taken, nor how ample the powers of
+digestion; and that there comes a time with all when they must go to
+bed, and not to the dining-room, to recover lost strength. The loss of a
+night of sleep is never made up by any kind of care in eating on the
+following day, and none are so stupid as not to know that rest is the
+only means to recover from the exhaustion of excessive physical
+activity.
+
+The brain is not only a self-feeding organ when necessary, but it is
+also a self-charging dynamo, regaining its exhausted energies entirely
+through rest and sleep. There is no movement so light, no thought or
+motion so trivial, that it does not cost brain power in its action--and
+this is true of even the slightest exercise of energy evolved in
+digestion.
+
+Why, then, do we eat?
+
+For two reasons, or perhaps three: we eat because we are hungry. We
+rarely fail to eat excessively to satisfy the sense of relish after the
+normal hunger sense has been dissipated; we may eat to satisfy relish as
+we eat ice cream, fruits, and the enticing extras that beguile us to put
+more food into the stomach after it is already overfilled for its
+working capacity. But our actual need of food, the best reason for
+taking it, is to make up for the wastes from the general activities; and
+this is a process in the order of Nature that actually tires the entire
+brain system, or, in the common phrase, the whole body, unless the
+stomach has powers not derived from the brain system.
+
+Now as we need not, cannot feed the brain in time of sickness, what can
+we feed? In all diseases in which there are a high pulse and
+temperature, pain or discomfort, aversion to food, a foul, dry mouth and
+tongue, thirst, etc., wasting of the body goes on, no matter what the
+feeding, until a clean, moist tongue and mouth and hunger mark the close
+of the disease, when food can be taken with relish and digested. This
+makes it clearly evident that we cannot save the muscles and fat by
+feeding under these adverse conditions.
+
+Another very important, unquestioned fact is that disease in proportion
+to its severity means a loss of digestive conditions and of digestive
+power.
+
+Cheer is to digestion what the breeze is to the fire. It may well be
+conceived that there are electric nerve wires extending from the depths
+of the soul itself to each individual gland of the stomach, with the
+highest cheer or ecstacy to stimulate the highest functional activity,
+or the shock of bad news to paralyze. From cheer to despair, from the
+slightest sense of discomfort to the agony of lacerated nerves,
+digestive power goes down. Affected thus, digestive power wanes or
+increases, goes down or up, as mercury in a barometer from weather
+conditions.
+
+Digestive conditions in their maximum are revealed in the school-yard
+during recess, when Nature seems busy recovering lost time.
+
+How compares the ramble of a June morning, with the blue and sunshine
+all above, the matchless green of the trees, and all the air fragrant
+with the perfume of flowers and alive with music from the winged singer,
+in digestive conditions, with those in the rooms of the sick, where
+there is only distress felt in the body and seen in the faces of the
+friends?
+
+In time of health, if we eat when we are not hungry, or when very tired,
+or in any mental worriment, we find that we suffer a loss of vital
+power, of both physical and mental energy. How, then, can food be a
+support to vital power when the brain is more gravely depressed by
+disease? Yet from the morning of medical history the question of how
+vital power is supported in time of sickness has never been considered,
+because there has never been any doubt as to the support coming from
+food. I assume this to be a fact, since all works on the practice of
+medicine of to-day enjoin the need to feed the sick to sustain their
+depressed energies--all this without a question as to whether there is
+not a possibility of adding indigestion to disease when food is enforced
+against Nature's fiat.
+
+Since vital power is centred in the brain, do we need to feed, can we
+feed, for other than brain reasons? This physiology admitted, there is
+no other conclusion possible than that feeding the sick is a tax on
+vital power when we need all that power to cure disease.
+
+With all this physiology behind me, for more than a score of years I
+have been going into the rooms of the sick to see the evolutions of
+health from disease, as I see the evolutions from the dead wastes of
+March to the affluence of June, and from the first I had the exceeding
+advantage of being able to study the natural history of disease, a
+history in which none of the symptoms were aggravated by digestive
+disturbances.
+
+As there was no wasting of vital power in the hopeless effort to save
+the body from wasting, I had a clear right to presume that my patients
+recovered more rapidly and with less suffering. With no perplexing
+study over what foods and what medicines to give, I could devote my
+entire attention to the study of symptoms as evidences of progress
+toward recovery or death; and in addition to all this there was the
+great satisfaction of being strictly in line with Nature as to when and
+what to eat.
+
+As to the danger of death from mere starvation, the following remarkable
+case reveals how remote it is in the ordinary history of acute diseases.
+The late Rev. Dr. Merchant, of Meadville, Pa., a short time before his
+death, which occurred some months ago, informed me that a brother
+entered the army during the War of the Rebellion with a weight of one
+hundred and fifty-nine pounds. He was sent home so wasted from
+ulceration of stomach and bowels that he actually spanned his thigh with
+thumb and finger. He lived ten days only, to astonish all by the
+clearness of his mind even on the last day of his life, when he could
+think on abstruse questions as he had never been known to do in health.
+At death his body weighed only sixty pounds.
+
+It was Dr. Merchant's opinion, from a history of the case, that no food
+was digested during the last four months of his life; but it is my
+opinion that it took a much longer time than this for the brain to
+absorb more than ninety pounds of the body. That life was shortened by
+the more rapid loss of the tissues from the disease is to be taken into
+account in estimating time in starvation.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+Feeding the sick! Who that rule in kitchens and feed the well do not
+realize with weariness of brain the demands of the stomach that at each
+meal there shall be some change in the bill of fare?
+
+The chief reliance of physicians for the maintenance of strength while
+sick bodies are being cured is milk. As a food, milk was mainly destined
+for the calf, and not for man--certainly not after the coming of the
+molars. It is not a food that will start the saliva in case of hunger,
+as the odors from the frying-pan or from roasting fowl, yet because it
+plays such an important part as a complete food for some months in the
+life of the calf, and because it can be taken without especial aversion
+when the odors of the cooking-stove are an offence to the nostrils; it
+is given by the hour, day after day, and in some cases week after week;
+and there are physicians by the thousands who reinforce this inflexible
+bill of fare by the strongest alcoholics, whiskey being generally
+selected.
+
+In this connection I shall say of alcoholics that they contain not an
+atom that can be converted into living atoms; they congest and irritate
+the stomach, and hence lessen digestive power; and benumb all the brain
+powers and faculties.
+
+As a daily ration without change, this combination, strictly adhered to,
+would prostrate the energies of a giant, and he would find himself
+mustered out of all active service in less time than the hapless sick
+are often compelled to endure such feeding. Does Nature so conveniently
+reverse herself to meet an emergency that the sick can be built up and
+sustained by such feeding as would debilitate the well?
+
+In the city where I live the physicians average well in learning,
+ability, character, and experience. Among them are the extremists in
+dosage: those with a hundred remedies for a hundred symptoms; others
+with such boluses as would writhe the face of an ox. There are some with
+extraordinary force of command in the rooms of the sick, who believe
+that whiskey is nourishing and that milk is liquid food; that doses go
+into human stomachs to travel the rounds of the circulation, and finally
+drop off at the right place for either patchwork or original work.
+
+Whatever there is in drugs to cure disease, whatever in milk and the
+strongest alcoholics to sustain the strength, every protracted case has
+been made to reveal in their forceful hands. I have no reason to believe
+they exceeded authorized treatments. I have no reason to doubt that in
+all countries, in all lands, where there are educated physicians, the
+same appliances are in common use, appliances that will make the next
+short step from the lancet and bolus of a darker age the estimate of the
+time to come.
+
+The treatments of the sick are always changing, while the process of
+cure remains the same. Only in the case of broken bones are we compelled
+to let Nature do all the curing, while we may take pride in some
+progress in the mechanical appliances.
+
+As milk and stimulants are a common, authorized means to sustain the
+sick, and as they are poured into human stomachs with all the faith with
+which lancets were once forced into congested veins, their efficiency
+for good or evil must be studied by comparison.
+
+Treatments must lessen both the severity and the duration of disease to
+be of permanent benefit. For a study by comparison, this opportunity
+came to me. There was a call to attend a case of typhoid fever in a
+young girl. In the same vicinity there had been under the care of one of
+my forceful brethren a woman in middle life, whose stomach was
+habitually rejecting all the milk and alcoholics poured into it, the
+doctor having a theory that good would result no matter how brief the
+time they were retained.
+
+For a month my patient swallowed only the desired water and doses which
+did not corrode, a desire for food coming at the end of the month. The
+only day and night nurse was an overwrought mother, who got into bed
+with the same disease as soon as the daughter got out of it. There was
+another month of severer sickness, when without food and without the
+horror of dosage, as before, the call for food marked the close of the
+disease. My services ended here some days before the undertaker took
+charge of the doctor's case.
+
+A girl in her later teens, with a mild, so-called malarial fever, fell
+into the same forceful care. There was a true history in this case of
+nearly two gallons of whiskey, and daily milk from the quart at first
+down to inability to take the least nourishment at last. Then there were
+more than a month of days when vital power sustained itself without the
+ways of violence, death occurring during the _nineteenth week_.
+
+The ravenous brain had absorbed the lips to such thinness that the
+depressions between the teeth were clearly revealed. From the first dose
+to the last breath this was a case of dying, and the most persistent
+fight for life against immense odds I have ever become aware of in an
+acute case. In this case the stomach had become so seared by the
+alcoholic that digestion was impossible, as would have been the case in
+a body that was not sick.
+
+Near this home there was a more delicate girl of about the same age
+taken with the same fever; but with mild dosage and no food--in Nature's
+care--hunger came at the close of the fourth week.
+
+Later on in the same family there was a case of la grippe, in which for
+several years there had been chronic, ulcerative bronchitis that bid
+defiance to blisters and inhalations, the various specifics of another
+forceful predecessor, who also was a believer in large doses and full
+rations of alcoholized milk.
+
+The coughing was so persistent, so continuous, that only the hypodermic
+needle met the need. To prevent the tearing of a raw surface in the
+bronchial tubes by the cough was as necessary as to apply splints to a
+broken bone. There was no food for six weeks, and Nature made most of
+her opportunity, not only to cure the acute disease, but also the
+chronic disease, which for nearly ten years since has remained cured.
+
+I was summoned to Asheville, N. C., to see a young man in the last stage
+of consumption. I found him nearly a skeleton, though he had been eating
+six times daily for several months by the decree of a really learned
+physician. The belchings from gas were loud and frequent; the sputa by
+actual measure was about six ounces during every twenty-four hours.
+
+A fast was ordered, and on the third day a mass of undigested food was
+thrown up. As soon as the stomach and bowels became empty there was
+comfort all along the line, and the cough was so diminished, that less
+than an ounce of sputa was raised in twenty-four hours.
+
+After a week of fasting there came a natural desire for food, and thence
+on he enjoyed without distress of stomach all he wished to take. Thence
+on he lived with only the least discomfort, and with whispering lips he
+dictated to me his will, conveying large property. He could look with
+meaning when the power to whisper was gone, and life ended as the going
+out of a candle.
+
+For months his sufferings had nearly all been due to food masses in a
+state of decomposition. He saw clearly and mentioned often that his had
+been a case of starvation from overfeeding. Nature finally had to
+succumb because she was not also able to deal with a clearly avoidable
+disease, indigestion; but she kept up a brave fight until the body was
+nearly absorbed.
+
+As soon as the stomach and bowels became empty the friends noticed that
+nervousness largely disappeared. His sleeps were much longer, because
+not broken by coughing as before; and as the brain was not taxed with
+food masses there was an accumulation of power that was clearly revealed
+in the cheer of expression and a calmness as if heavenly rest had come
+at last.
+
+A few years ago an attorney in this city had to endure a course of fever
+to which was added all the known barbarism of the times. Under enforced
+food and stimulants his mind at last became so weak that the dosings
+were forced down his throat. There were many weeks of life at lowest ebb
+before the man of torture (the doctor) was compelled to discontinue his
+evil work, and there were then months, extending to years, during which
+there appeared a colorless ghost of his former self on the streets--and
+this in spite of a wood-chopper's daily eatings, which were far in
+excess of power to digest.
+
+At last he was brought to his couch with a mild fever complicated with a
+variety of other ailings. Not one of his friends who knew him
+intimately expected his recovery, as it was believed by them that there
+were chronic conditions that were beyond cure, and this because there
+had been death in manner, movements, and looks for months. And yet he
+had been able to take a stomach to his office every morning for many
+weeks filled with pancakes, sausage, fried potatoes, etc., only to
+shiver before the stove between his stomach-fillings.
+
+To this possibly hopeless case I was called, and from that time he was
+to suffer only from the disease. For nearly three weeks no food was
+called for; and yet power so increased that he became able to dress
+himself; and on the morning before hunger finally called for food he
+came down from his bedroom with a son on his back who weighed not less
+than seventy-five pounds. Thence on, life, color, mind, muscle, rapidly
+came until there was such regeneration as to reveal a new body and a new
+soul.
+
+Some years before this event an only son was taken sick with a mild
+fever. A young physician and friend of the patient was called whose
+faith in drugs, milk, and whiskey was boundless. He was fresh from his
+university, and therefore Nature had no part, through experience at the
+sick-bed, in the cure of disease. For many weeks these remedies of
+torture were vigorously and persistently enforced. But the time came
+when Nature would bear no longer. The father, a personal friend, came to
+see me simply to unburden himself, and as he was not able to give me the
+case I was unprofessional enough to advise that the attendance should
+go on, but that there should be a complete rest the physician should not
+know of. This was done, and in a few days there was a call for food, the
+first call in more than two months. Of course, there was a recovery,
+which was an exceeding victory for Nature against extraordinarily
+adverse conditions, but it required many months to restore the wrecked
+balance.
+
+As I write this experience the following comes to me as a still stronger
+indictment against authorized medical method. A. B., when in the early
+maturity of his physical manhood, was stricken with a partial paralysis
+that sent him to his bed. It was simply the case of a wound of the brain
+requiring rest as the chief condition for cure. But milk, whiskey, and
+drugs were used with the greatest persistence, and after three months he
+became able to be about, no less feeble in mind than in body, and with
+teeth utterly ruined by the dosage. For fully five years he went about
+his home and along the streets as one in a dream. For ten years there
+was inability to attend to his ordinary business. Life came at last
+through the no-breakfast plan.
+
+The most remarkable fight for life on the part of Nature against the
+adverse conditions of drugs, alcoholics, and milk I have ever known was
+in the following case: A spare woman, of perhaps forty years, came to
+her bed the victim of habitual bromidia and chloral, invited by severe
+headaches. The treatment of this case was as follows: whiskey every
+hour, milk every other hour; corrosive medication and powerful brain
+sedative every night, which would have paralyzed digestive energy for
+many days. There was not an hour during the twenty-four in which there
+was not dosing either to cure the disease or to sustain the system. The
+average quantity of whiskey was six ounces daily, and of milk nearly a
+quart. This treatment was borne for weeks, merging into months. There
+was no disease not caused by the treatments, and the battle went on
+until there was only the shadow of a woman left when Nature rebelled
+against further violence. A few days of peace were granted because hope
+had departed; but it took Nature more than a year to recover from the
+damage.
+
+A man of iron and steel, in the early prime of life, was the victim of a
+severe injury. With the agony of lacerated nerves and the hypodermic
+needle to make the digestion of food impossible, milk and whiskey were
+poured into an unwilling stomach from the first, and both were used
+until neither could be retained; and then the lower bowel was
+extemporized into a stomach. For one hundred and forty-six days, from
+three to seven doses of morphine were put into the arm daily; and
+morphine dries both mouth and stomach and lessens all energies of the
+brain. The body itself was not sick; there was no hint of disease in it;
+yet there were drugs prescribed that cost dollars by the score, and
+there were alcoholics by the gallon. For months the pain, alcoholics,
+and morphine kept the mind in such a daze that there were only the
+imbecilic mutterings of a dreamer in trouble.
+
+The only treatment indicated in this case was the best of surgery for
+the injury, and some easing doses for a short while at first, to relieve
+pain. No food would be desired or digested; so the fast would go on
+until there would be a natural hunger, which would only manifest itself
+when there would be marked relief from pain. The meals, thence on, would
+be so far apart that all would be keenly relished; and there could be no
+loss of weight when meals would be so taken.
+
+It is not surprising when I say that a seared stomach and a brain
+converted into a whiskey pickle had no part in the digestion of milk:
+else why did the weight of one hundred and sixty pounds at the time of
+the accident fall to eighty-five at the time of hunger? And all this
+drugging and alcoholics for a man who was not really sick! and the bill
+of fare that was not changed during one hundred and sixty days! and the
+time lost, and the expense entailed, and the anxious, aching hearts that
+were nearest the bed of horrors--of horrors, torments clearly invited.
+
+By way of contrast the following case is given. During vacation a lad of
+twelve years of one of my families took to his bed with appendicitis in
+severe form. A learned physician was called, and there were many days of
+morphine, with other medication and all the food that could be coaxed
+into an unwilling stomach. Enough morphine was given daily to paralyze
+digestive energy for at least two or three days in one in ordinary
+health. There was a month of this war against Nature, when the violence
+of the acute attack subsided and a partial victory was gained against
+great odds.
+
+On my return I found him under heavy dosage for the recovery of strength
+and lost appetite. Colorless, anaemic, languid--he was barely able to
+walk. He was immediately put under my care, and therefore under a fast
+that ended in a few days in such hunger as had not been felt in several
+months; and color, cheer, energy, weight evolved in a month. But there
+was also a developing abscess deep in the groin, and the time came when
+a grave operation was necessary to save life. He was made ready for the
+surgeon's knife that cut its way down, down many inches to relieve walls
+ready to burst from the tension. The wound remained in the care of the
+surgeon, but the life in my care. Who deny that the anaesthetic, the
+shock of the operation, and the subsequent pain will not abolish all
+power to digest as well as all the desire for food? Here was a patient
+waiting for Nature to rally, which she did on the third day in a call
+for food; and thence on one daily meal was keenly relished, and the
+wound was healed--a wound that was three inches long on the surface and
+six inches deep. On the fifteenth day the lad was able to be dressed and
+able to walk about his room, and with a freshness of color that was
+never observed in him before. What law of body was violated in the
+preliminary treatment intended to prepare Nature for the ordeal and to
+enable her to rally from it?
+
+This fresh tragedy in one human life has become known to me while I
+write. A man, a giant, in his eighty-eighth year, lost his appetite, and
+was put to death by the following means: A pint of whiskey and from one
+to two quarts of milk daily to keep him nourished. Five months passed
+without any change in the bill of fare--five months of delirium, of
+imbecilic muttering before the last breath was drawn. These tragedies
+are common the world over. Do I cry against them with too loud a voice?
+Would that I had a voice of thunder!
+
+I have given a few examples of the crucifixions of the sick and the
+afflicted, whereof I have many, and they are the real history of cases
+known, and are constantly occurring in every community.
+
+The cure of disease and injury by fasting--the mode of Nature--made the
+greatest impression in families in which there was intelligence enough
+to comprehend it; but the victories of Nature were complicated by cases
+in which death was inevitable. With a feeling that I must give the new
+hygiene to the world in printed form, I did not enlarge in public over a
+method that would be certain to be suggestive of starvation, where food
+was supposed to be of the greatest importance.
+
+My sick-room success failed to enable me to draw larger checks; but the
+satisfaction of going into the rooms of the sick and not having to rack
+my mind over what medicine to give, what food to be taken, was a great
+compensation for the absence of a large bank account. Professional
+attainments and abilities play only a small part in the mere business
+side of the medical profession. An innocent public believes with intense
+convictions in the efficacy of dosage; and with distorted vision, as the
+famous knight of La Mancha, sees giants in professional healers who are
+really only windmills, with whom personal contact in the sick-room is
+only too often a danger measured by its closeness.
+
+Think of the wasting of the body during sickness; of the brain system,
+which is life itself, that does not waste: think of the cases of
+recovery in which for weeks no food is possible for stomach reasons; of
+the more frequent cases in which recoveries take place after weeks of
+such scant food as not to be taken into account as a support to vital
+power by minds governed by reason. Think how disease, in proportion to
+its severity, is a loss of digestive power, and with cure energy
+entirely of the brain, how serious a matter it is to lessen it by waste
+of energy in forcing decomposing food masses through a digestive channel
+nearly two rods long, food masses that the brain will have none of, and
+that do not save the fat and muscles; think of all this physiology, and
+raise this question: "Is this man alone in his faith and practice, or
+is Nature so in line with him that the entire medical profession is
+wrong in their dosings and feedings?"
+
+I conclude these cases with an illustration. Think of all this enforced
+feeding, of the doses to relieve, of the wasting of brain power, and
+compare with the following illustration, in which case no food was taken
+for thirty-six days, and yet it was possible for the patient to be about
+during the greater part of the time.
+
+    NOTE.--In this case severe indigestion and nervous troubles and
+    almost daily headaches had been a torture for years. On the
+    morning of the thirty-sixth day, on which the photograph was
+    taken, a visit to the dentist for the extraction of a tooth
+    revealed no fear, as had formerly been the case. Eating was
+    resumed on the thirty-eighth day with no inconvenience. Since
+    then (over six months ago) no trace of the former troubles has
+    reappeared. Loss of weight about twenty pounds.
+
+[Illustration: Photograph, by Henry Ritter.
+
+MRS. A. M. LICHTENHAHN,
+
+THIRTY-SIXTH DAY WITHOUT FOOD.]
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+"Physician, heal thyself!" There is a world of sarcasm in these three
+words; for about the only advantage the physician has over the laity is
+that he can do his own dosing. As a general fact, he does no more to
+prevent bodily ailings than other people, and is just as liable to
+become the victim of bad habits.
+
+It is my impression that, in proportion, as many physicians become the
+slaves of tobacco, opium in some form, and alcoholics as are to be found
+in any other class of people; they are quite as likely to be the victims
+of various chronic ailings as other people, and with equal impotency to
+relieve. Every day I see physicians going to the homes of the sick with
+cigars on fire, signals of the brain system in distress undergoing the
+lullaby of nicotine; going into rooms where the purest air of heaven
+ought to prevail, as animated tobacco-signs.
+
+Where is there virtue in this world that is of any practical good whose
+vital force is not to be found in example rather than in precept? Who
+has more need to go into the room of the sick with the purest breath,
+the cleanest tongue, the brightest eyes, the purest complexion, the most
+radiant countenance, and with a soul free from the bonds of ailings or
+habits that offend and disable, than the physician? Where is the logic
+of employing the sick to feed the sick? Is not that a sick doctor whose
+nerves are so full of plaints as to need the frequent soothings only
+found in a cigar, that also sears the nerves of taste? Is he not very
+sick when those nerves require the stronger alcoholic?
+
+There is contagion in good health and sound morals, when daily
+illustrated, no less than in courage and fear. No physician can be at
+his best in the rooms of the sick if he be under any bondage from
+disease or habit.
+
+"Physician, heal thyself!" Physician, how does it happen that you have
+need to be healed, and of what worth are you if you can neither prevent
+disease nor cure yourself with your dosings? What availeth it to a man
+to talk righteously when virtue is not in him?
+
+Ailings, habits blunt all the special senses and the finer instincts and
+tastes, and impair the power to reason clearly, to infer correctly, to
+conclude wisely. Only the well have that hopefulness that comes from
+power in reserve, power that is not wasted through acquired disease and
+acquired habits. The contagion of health is a power no less than courage
+or fear.
+
+That man, self-poised, void of fear, General Grant, crushed the
+Rebellion with a single sentence, "I will fight it out on this line if
+it takes all summer." That sentence made every man in his army a Grant
+in courage and confidence. Grant in his prime could puff his cigar while
+commanding all the armies of his country; but the cigar ultimately
+destroyed his life, and there was no physician to interpose to prevent
+one of the most torturing of deaths.
+
+Where is the logic of the sick trying to heal the sick? This question
+will be more frequently asked in that time to come when the drug-store
+annex to the sick-room will be much smaller than is now thought
+necessary.
+
+Human expression is studied in the rooms of the sick as nowhere else;
+and if the lines are not obscured by the fogs and clouds of disease the
+signs can be much more clearly distinguished.
+
+A man is now under my care whose soul is of the largest mould, and who
+is so supremely endowed by reason of intellect, varied tastes and
+acquirements, as to make life on earth well worth living. His long
+chronic local ailment has not impaired his power to read me for signs of
+hope as it seems to me I have never been read before; and never before
+have I so felt the need to enter a room of the sick with a larger stock
+of general health. For the time I seem to him to be holding before his
+eyes the keys of life or death.
+
+The physician should be able to go into the room of the sick to see with
+clearest vision whatever is revealed to the natural eye; and no less to
+see with eyes of understanding that he may be an interpreter of
+conditions that indicate recovery or death. He is the historian of
+disease, and therefore before he can write he must see clearly all that
+can be known about the process of cure as revealed by symptoms.
+
+The eye is at its best only in perfect health no less than the reason,
+the judgment, and the spirits. A few years ago a drouth of many weeks
+occurred; in some meadows and pastures the grass seemed dead, beyond the
+possibility of growth. Every shade of the green had departed; but warm
+rains came, and in a few days there was a green carpet plush-like in its
+softness and delicacy.
+
+So the progress of cure may be read on the tongue, on the skin, in the
+eyes, where there are both eyesight and insight to see and to study.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+For many years I entered the rooms of the sick a sick man myself; I was
+the victim of that monster of hydraheads, dyspepsia, or, to call it by a
+more modern title, indigestion.
+
+In my later teens my stomach began seriously to complain over its tasks,
+and a pint of the essence of bitterness was procured to restore it to
+power. My mouth was filled with teeth of the sweet kind; hence my horror
+for the doses far exceeded the milder protests of the stomach. Not the
+slightest benefit came from my medicinal sufferings, and this ended all
+routine treatment of my stomach. My intense aversion to the flavor of
+strong medicines caused me to inflict them as rarely as possible upon
+other mouths during the drug period of my practice.
+
+Mine seemed to be a weary stomach, in which the tired sense was a close
+approach to acute pain for hours after each meal. When a medical student
+I found nothing in the books, in the advice of my preceptor, nor in the
+lectures at the university, but what proposed to cure me through drugs
+that were abhorrent. As I never encountered any cures nor received the
+slightest benefit from my experiments, I was deterred from injuring
+myself through persistent dosage.
+
+In the early part of my student career I was behind a drug-counter,
+where I had ample experience in putting up prescriptions, and had an
+excellent opportunity to measure medical men as revealed in their
+formulas and the results in many cases in which failure was the rule in
+chronic ailings; and I was not encouraged to abuse myself through the
+results as revealed by any form of medication.
+
+For the benefit of those who suffer from complainings of the stomach I
+give a condensed summing-up of myself. I was born with a wiry
+constitution, but of the lean kind, and a weak stomach, the chiefest
+ancestral legacy. With ability to see with intense sense very much to
+enjoy in this world, my resources in this way were boundless, hence I
+was always full of hope and cheer.
+
+All the senses of my palate were of the acute kind, and so were a
+continual source of the penalties of gluttony. Whatever else there might
+be alack with me, there was never a lack of appetite. I was able to eat
+at each meal food enough which, if fully digested, would have redeemed
+the wastes of any day of labor; and not only this, but also enough of
+sugar-enticing foods to anticipate the wastes of the following day.
+
+Growing up in the country and with an intense fondness for the tart
+sweetness of apples, pears, and peaches, and the harmlessness of eating
+them no matter how full the stomach with hearty food, without question
+my stomach was never void of pomace during the entire fruit season.
+
+Whenever I sat down to eat there was an onrush of all the senses of the
+palate as the outrush of imprisoned children to the ecstatic activities
+of the school-yard; hence over-eating always, with never a sense of
+satiety. The penalties were realized in painful digestion, with the
+duodenum the chiefest of protesting voices.
+
+A time came when gas would so accumulate as to make the heart labor from
+mere pressure, the inevitable insufficiency of breath causing a lack of
+aeration of the blood. With a constant waste of power in the stomach
+there was always a sense of weariness; hence I was never able to know
+the luxury of power in reserve. All through life my best efforts were
+the result of intellectual inebriation, with always corresponding
+exhaustion as the direct result. This weakness compelled me to waste the
+least time on people who could not interest me, and to spend much time
+alone to recharge my exhausted batteries.
+
+For such a case as mine there is not to-day to be found an intelligent
+hint in any medical text-book as to the physiological way to recovery.
+
+The breakfasts in my house were of a character that, without ham,
+sausage, eggs, steaks, or chops, they would not have been considered
+worth spending time over. I had reached a time when a general collapse
+seemed to be impending; but it was stayed for a few years by the new
+life that came to me through the evolutions of health in the rooms of
+the sick that seemed to portend possible professional glories: but as
+the years went on I suffered more and more from nervous prostration
+through waste of power in the stomach.
+
+My friends began to enlarge upon my wretched looks, and with no little
+concern; but none were wise enough to realize that my need was for words
+that reminded of life and not of death.
+
+By chance I met an old friend on the street when he happened to be
+thinking about ways in daily food in Europe, from which he had just
+returned, and at once he began to talk, not about my wretched looks, but
+about the exceedingly light breakfasts customary in all the great
+centres where he had been. They consisted only of a roll and a cup of
+coffee. I was impressed just enough not to forget the fact, but without
+there being a hint in it to set me to thinking.
+
+But the time came, "the fulness of time." There came a morning when for
+the first time I remembered that when in ordinary health I had no desire
+to breakfast; but there was a sense of such general exhaustion from
+power wasted over an unusual food mass not needed at the previous
+evening meal that my morning coffee was craved as the morning dram by
+the chronic toper. Only this, and a forenoon resulted of such comfort of
+body, such cheer, and such mental and physical energy as had never been
+realized since my young manhood was happy in the blessed
+unconsciousness of having a stomach that, no matter how large or how
+numerous the daily meals, never complained.
+
+As for the dinner that followed, it was taken with an acuteness of
+relish and was handled with a power of digestion that were also a new,
+rich experience; but the afternoon fell far short of the forenoon. The
+experience was so remarkable that I at once gave up all eating in the
+morning, and with such reviving effects upon all my powers that the
+results began to be noticed by all friends.
+
+So originated the no-breakfast plan. Up to this time I had never had a
+thought of advising anyone to do without food when desired; much less
+that any of the three daily meals should be given up. My war was against
+feeding when acute sickness had abolished all desire for food, and this
+I had been able to conduct many years without exciting suspicion of a
+general practice of homicide.
+
+The improvement in my own case was so instant and so marked that I began
+to advise the same to others, and with the result that each would make
+known the redeeming work to suffering friends, and so the idea spread in
+a friend-to-friend way.
+
+Now the American breakfast, in point of sheer necessity, is believed to
+be the most important meal of the day, as the means for strength that is
+to be called out for the forenoon of labor, and believed with a force of
+insistence that warrants a conclusion that a night of sleep is more
+exhausting to all the powers than the day of labor.
+
+To go into the fresh air, to do anything with an empty stomach, is to
+invite a fainting by the way, is the general impression; but there were
+scarcely any cases in which there was not sufficient improvement to
+prevent all possibility of a return to the heavy breakfasts that had
+been abandoned.
+
+How did this scheme affect me in a professional way, that is, in the
+reputation as a physician of average balance of brain functions? Some of
+my professional brethren of strong conviction and ready command of
+language began at once to try to abolish the dangerous heresy by
+suggesting that on this one subject I was absolutely crazy. Of course,
+their patrons took up this idea with avidity; and so there was a babble
+of tongues, with myself the central point of attack as crank-in-chief of
+all cranks. This is not the language of exaggeration; for whatever the
+law and modern civilization permitted to abolish me professionally was
+inflicted with tongues by the thousands, the war being made all the more
+exciting and interesting by the enthusiasm of new recruits to the heresy
+from the professional domains of my medical brethren.
+
+What did I gain by this professionally? Mostly the odium of heresy
+during the first few years; but with it was the supreme satisfaction
+that came from seeing more additions to bright eyes and happy faces than
+medicine ever gave, and in a way that would redound to my own good at
+some time. The fact is, that as a means to better health, no matter what
+nor where the disease, there is no limit to its application. As a
+universal panacea its powers are matchless.
+
+For a time I saw no farther than a cure of stomach condition and
+resulting general comfort. That any disease was to be cured otherwhere
+than in the stomach by means so simple, did not occur as an original
+conception; but the fact that giving up the morning meal was attended
+with improvement of all local diseases set me to thinking. Many of my
+patients became thin under the regime; but as this was attended by an
+increase of strength, not even the alarm of anxious friends without
+faith was ever able to induce a return fully to the old ways.
+
+But how explain the loss of weight? A clue came from the following case:
+The first-born of a young mother had an habitual diarrhoea from birth
+lasting many months; and yet it seemed well nourished, for it was
+unusually fat and heavy for its age; but the days and nights were long
+in the care of this apparently well-nourished child. The symptoms were
+heedless to the every-hour dosing of pellets, or from the tumblers of
+apparently purest water.
+
+Now this mother, young as she was, was a woman of convictions, and with
+courage to follow each to an ultimate conclusion. She had heard of
+miracles resulting from only three feedings per day during the nursing
+period; and so, notwithstanding a storm of opposition from a vast
+circle of relatives, she put this first-born rigidly on the three-meal
+plan, with the result of immediate cessation of the bowel trouble, but
+with rapid decline in weight.
+
+This caused anxiety, and I was called upon for advice. In every respect
+except the weight-loss the improvement was wonderful. After much thought
+there was a sudden flash of the truth: there were an abnormal weight and
+bulk, due to the general dropsy of debility, similar in character to the
+swelling of the feet and limbs in the old and feeble. The thickened
+walls of the bloodvessels, toned with health, caused absorption; but the
+eyes of the friends would not open to the miracle for a very long time,
+and so render justice to the heroine, the young mother. As an aider and
+abettor of such a flagrant system of starvation, I had my full share of
+opprobrium; but, aided by the strong-minded, sensible mother, Nature
+gained a sweeping victory, and thus this case cleared my mind from
+confusion as to the anomaly.
+
+One of my medical friends with whom calomel was as a sheet-anchor often
+asserted that babies would actually get fat on it. That bulk would
+actually increase by use of the forceful medicine is likely; but that
+the increase would be dropsical I think is unquestionable.
+
+The dropsy of debility is due to a loss of tone of the vascular system;
+the walls of the vessels become thinner and therefore dilate. In the
+feet and limbs of the old and greatly enfeebled by disease the veins
+become distended to abnormal size by the force of gravity, resulting in
+effusion of water into the cellular tissues, which increases when in the
+upright position during the day and decreases when in the horizontal
+position at night.
+
+A toning up of the entire vascular system, by which a reverse current
+from the tissues into the bloodvessels is made possible, is the only
+means for relief.
+
+This flash-light upon the part physics plays in the cure of disease put
+me upon the true lines of investigation, and furnished a key for the
+solution of many problems. From this time on I was to be kept busy, not
+in winning victories, but in studying them.
+
+This new physiology was not fully apprehended until long after the
+no-breakfast plan was taken up. It came to me link by link; but the
+missing link was the fact that food only restores waste, that lost
+strength is only restored by sleep; and it now seems to me that I was
+very dull not to have found it out long before I did. It seems to me
+that no method of health culture, none in the treatment of disease can
+have any physiological basis where these facts are not taken into
+account.
+
+For a time I failed to look beyond the ailments of the stomach for
+curative results, until really surprising news began to reach me from
+many sources. There would come to me those who had to tell about clearer
+vision, acuter hearing, a stronger sense of smelling, etc., senses that
+were not thought to be affected by disease; or there would be news that
+chronic, local ailings, as nasal or bronchial catarrhs, skin diseases,
+hemorrhoids, or other intractable disease, in some mysterious manner,
+were undergoing a decline under the new regime.
+
+In the domain of drugs we have medicines that vivid imagination has
+endowed with presumed affinities for locations that are diseased. They
+enter the circulation and happily get off at the right spot, to act
+curatively; but no theories are advanced as to how they aid in the
+construction of new cells or atoms, or how they aid in the disposal of
+the old ones.
+
+Construction, destruction! There is no death of atoms: really nothing is
+generated, nothing destroyed: the change is but the rearranging of
+ultimate elements; and how is a drug to influence any more than would be
+in case of the affinities of chemistry?
+
+Hazy conceptions, crude means! The ultimate cell multiplies by division
+to become bone, nails, hair, ligaments, muscles, fat, the brain, the
+whole body. Where along the line in the reconstructive work called by a
+disease or injury is a medicine to apply with power to aid? In what way
+the need to be expressed, in what operative way the helpful assistance
+made clear, that faith without works that are seen can be made strong?
+
+The chemist never rushes into print with news that another element has
+been discovered until demonstrative evidence has placed the matter
+beyond all question. If anything new is discovered in the firmaments,
+adequate means to an end will be able to reveal it to all interested
+eyes.
+
+The impressions of science are quite different from the impressions of
+the materia medica; and the miracles of cure that are displayed by the
+column in even the highest class public prints are never in reach of
+scientific explanation.
+
+A new element is announced; we know instantly that it has been actually
+discovered. A new cure is announced; we instantly may know that the
+evidences will never be displayed along the lines of science.
+
+I now unfold a theory of my own of the origin and development of
+disease, and the development of cure, in which the physical changes
+involved in some of the processes are in reach of the microscope.
+
+It is my impression that, with rare exceptions, people are born with
+actual structural weaknesses, local or general, that may be called
+ancestral legacies. These are known as constitutional tendencies to
+disease.
+
+In parts structurally weak at birth the bloodvessels, because of thin
+and weak walls, are larger than in normal parts, and because of
+dilatation the blood circulates slower. There is an undue pressure upon
+all between-vessel structures, a pressure that must lessen the nutrient
+supply more or less, according to its degree. The death of parts in
+boils and abscesses is due, I believe, to strangulation of the
+nerve-supply. The bloodvessels are elastic, and capable of contraction
+and dilatation, a matter regulated by the brain.
+
+Now in these weaknesses always lie the possibilities of disease; they
+may be supposed the weak links in the constitutional chain, and can no
+more be made stronger than the constitutional design than can the body
+as a whole. By whatever means brain power is lessened abnormality is
+incited in the weak parts; hence gradually from the original weakness
+there is a summing up, as a bronchial or nasal catarrh, or other acute
+or chronic local or general disease.
+
+The first step in any disease is the impression that lessens brain
+power; the slightest depressing emotion, the slightest sense of
+discomfort, lessens brain power, and to a like degree the tone of all
+the bloodvessels; hence dilatation in degree. That the stomach, as the
+most abused organ of the body, plays the largest part in over-drafts
+upon the brain is not a matter of doubt.
+
+Let us develop a chronic disease along these lines, with nasal catarrh
+for an illustration. As tone is regulated entirely by the brain system,
+all taxing of the brain increases the debility of the nasal structures.
+In course of time the debility so increases through whatever also
+debilitates the brain, that a stage is reached when water in the blood
+begins to escape through the thin walls of the vessels and mingles with
+the natural secretion of the membrane, and a catarrhal discharge is the
+result. In severe cases a time may be reached when death of parts from
+the strangling pressure may occur, and then we have an ulcerative
+catarrh.
+
+This evolution will go on as determined by the gravity of the ancestral
+weakness, by the natural strength of the dynamo, the brain, and the
+severity of the debilitating forces to which it may be subjected.
+
+No one is ever attacked by a nasal or any other catarrh, nor by any
+other chronic ailings. They all start from structural weaknesses that
+are inherited, and they are the evolutionary results of brain-wearying
+forces.
+
+If a specialist were asked to express the actual condition of a diseased
+structure that seems to call for medicinal aid, and to tell just how
+medicated sprays, washes, and douches are to reach all the parts
+involved, with healing power, and in what way that power is
+exercised--in other words, what work actually is to be done, and how
+medicine is to do it--he would not be able to enlighten his questioner
+no matter how fertile his conception, how dexterous his use of language.
+In fact, the healing power of drugs exists in fertile imaginations
+rather than among those ultimate processes where disease is cured, where
+disease destroys.
+
+As the care moves by the power evolved in the dynamo, so do the
+bloodvessels contract and relax as determined by brain conditions.
+Dilating bloodvessels, effusion of water from thinning walls, the
+between-vessels starving pressure, increasing general debility of all
+the structures involved--this is the gradual evolution of catarrh and of
+all other chronic diseases.
+
+From this it was seen that no form of local treatment can avail to
+relieve the operative cause in cases of this kind. Tone must be added to
+all the weakened, dilated vessels, in order to contract and thicken
+their walls so as to stop the leakage, and to relieve that pressure upon
+the between structures that have become anaemic through lack of
+nourishment.
+
+That an evolution in reverse is the one need scarcely calls for
+argument. It is the brain that needs our attention, and we meet its need
+by saving its rare powers from wasting.
+
+We will do this by cutting down, as far as possible, all the activities
+for which it furnishes power, even as we would diminish the number of
+cars where power in the dynamo had become deficient; we will either
+sever the wires that connect with the stomach, or make a marked
+reduction in the labor to be performed in the stomach. With power
+accumulating in the brain, power will reach the utmost recesses of
+debility and disease, with Nature to do all the healing.
+
+To reinforce this physiology, this statement may be made with the
+strongest emphasis: the medical treatment of chronic disease fails
+inevitably because it fails to consider the vital force involved. The
+brain has no part in the treatment of chronic disease by the specialist,
+where drugs are a means to an end never reached: there are only a
+disappointment and an interchange of pocket-books.
+
+In all parts suffering with pain there is congestion, swelling. The
+bloodvessels are distended; hence the nerves suffer violence in
+stretching or from pressure. The pain simply adds to the abnormal
+conditions by causing an active determination of the blood to the
+involved parts. To relieve pain, then, is curative, because it lessens
+the abnormal congestion.
+
+The no-breakfast plan with me proved a matter of life unto life. With my
+morning coffee there were forenoons of the highest physical energy, the
+clearest condition of mind, and the acutest sense of everything
+enjoyable.
+
+The afternoons were always in marked sluggishness by contrast, from the
+taxing of digestion.
+
+Without realizing that the heavy meals of the day were a tax upon the
+brain, I would scarcely get away from the table before I began to feel
+more generally tired out than the severest taxing from a long forenoon
+of general activity ever made me. With the filled stomach, fatigue,
+general exhaustion, came as a sudden attack rather than as an evolution
+from labor, and there would be several hours of unfitness for doing any
+kind of service well.
+
+In the application of this method to others I had the great satisfaction
+of good results without any exceptions; and the missionary work was
+begun by friends among friends, fairly spreading better health and
+adding thereby more and more disaster to my name.
+
+More and more I became a focus of adverse criticism in all matters where
+level-headedness was deemed important. My acute cases began to be
+watched with hostile interest, as if homicide from starvation were the
+inevitable result in all cases. My country had become the country of an
+enemy.
+
+Not being able to give my patients clearly defined reasons for the
+general and local improvements resulting from a forenoon fast as a
+method in hygiene, it had to be spread from relieved persons to
+suffering friends; and according to the need, the sufferers from various
+ailings would be willing to try anything new where efforts through the
+family physician or patent medicines had completely failed; it was
+spread as if by contagion, among the failures of the medical profession.
+
+Among those to become interested at an early date was a prominent
+minister who wore the title of D. D., and for a time his interest was
+intense. He came to me one day with word that a member of his household,
+well known to me as a young woman of unusual ability and culture, had
+not been able to take solid food at his table for a year, and he
+believed that my treatment would avail in her case. To this she was very
+averse, since every treatment her hapless stomach had received had only
+added to the debility, until disability had become the result. She
+finally came to me to be relieved from the forceful importunity of her
+reverend friend, who had excited my eager interest with a prophecy that
+unusual literary distinction would follow a cure, as there were
+abilities of the very highest order, in his estimation.
+
+She came, and I had no difficulty in securing such a vacation for the
+worn-out stomach that it could begin with solid food when the time to
+eat arrived. The vacation was so brief and power had accumulated so
+rapidly that almost any food could be taken without discomfort, and no
+trouble ever came not invited by a relapse from the better way of living
+that had really created a new stomach.
+
+This case caused more notoriety over the no-breakfast plan than any that
+ever occurred in the city. As a writer of biographies and of articles in
+high-class journals and magazines, this talented woman has been a
+miracle of patient, persistent study and investigation.
+
+This endorsement in high places greatly added to my reputation as a
+physician with distorted mind, for the idea that any good could come
+from a short fast, to be followed by the giving up of that needed
+morning meal, was too absurd for sober reflection, too violently
+revolutionary to be even patiently considered.
+
+The no-breakfast plan was not so very long in becoming known over the
+entire city; a bridge had been crossed, and every plank taken up and
+destroyed; thence the ways into new families were nearly closed.
+
+I am enlarging a little upon the opposition that met me from all points,
+because all who are to be convinced that these are the true ways in
+health culture will begin at once to enlighten their ailing friends, and
+will, therefore, encounter the same opposition. "Sir, you have not had
+enough opposition," said bluff, old Samuel Johnson. There will be no
+need to complain of any lack of this kind in the efforts to render
+suffering friends the only aid possible, that will be in persistent
+efforts of Nature.
+
+My medical brethren considered the scheme only as they would consider an
+invasion of smallpox or a heresy whose methods were a danger to life.
+One physician, a woman specialist, informed me that she was continually
+importuned as to her professional opinion of the new craze that had
+invaded the city. That all other physicians were equally called upon,
+that they would condemn, was inevitable; and I permitted them the
+largest liberty without the least resentment; but there was the
+sustaining cheer of seeing the happiest faces that only increased as the
+heresy spread.
+
+My attendance upon the severely sick became more taxing because of the
+exceeding concern in the immediate environment, that the pangs of
+starvation were being added to the pangs of disease.
+
+As none of my professional brethren ever manifested any desire to be
+enlightened on this subject, I did not volunteer, since I felt the wiser
+way would be to wait an adequate amount of evidence before making any
+public announcements of presumed important discoveries in practical
+hygiene.
+
+My experiences in the rooms of the sick had convinced me, long before I
+gave up my morning meal, that death from starvation was so remote as
+practically to exclude it from consideration; hence with the great
+improvement that was the immediate result in my own case I could from
+the first speak with a "thus saith the Lord" emphasis on the safety of
+going through a forenoon "on an empty stomach."
+
+As no one could come into my office without my being able to give the
+assurance of at least some relief that would be immediately realized,
+that would be felt even to the finger-ends, my office became more and
+more a lecture-room, a school of health culture for the education of
+missionaries, for a friend-to-friend uplifting into higher life.
+
+All I needed for my own sake was that missing link to clothe my words
+with all the desired power. With so much to enliven, to encourage, it
+was as if I were sitting at the very feet of Nature, so thrilled by her
+wonderful stories that I was utterly unconscious of the storm of
+ridicule and epithet to which I was subjected.
+
+Once in a while Nature would favor me with a miracle in the way of an
+inspiring change. A man in the early prime of life had reached a
+condition in which he habitually rejected every breakfast. Two trips to
+Europe and a year in the hands of a Berlin specialist for the stomach
+failed to relieve; and yet he was not so disabled as to prevent him
+attending to his ordinary business affairs; the stomach seemed to be
+eccentric in being merely irritable without structural disease.
+
+I asked him if he felt that the breakfasts which would not stay down
+were doing him any good. To this he had to assent that they were not. I
+told him if the breakfast only to result in a heave-offering were
+omitted he would be better able for his duties of the forenoon. He began
+at once to raise his brows.
+
+It was not difficult for him to see that if no breakfasts were put into
+his stomach none would have to be thrown up with sickening effort, and
+hence he could not but be better for the forenoon services if the sick
+spell were omitted. The fact was, the breakfast would soon be rejected,
+and then the hours of rest would enable the stomach to handle the dinner
+without the repetition of the morning sickness.
+
+Only a few words from me of this kind, and thence on there were no
+breakfasts; and from the first all the complaints from the stomach
+ceased, and he used to remark that he began to get well as soon as I
+began to talk to him.
+
+Now this man with his family was a recent arrival in this city, and his
+first intimate acquaintance was one who had been relieved of weekly
+headaches of a skull-bursting kind through the no-breakfast plan--thus
+the missionary contagion.
+
+For many years I was content to allow people to have the morning coffee
+or tea as desired, with the largest liberty of dinner gluttony; and this
+was really the only means possible for the introduction of an innovation
+so radical. To have given nothing to relieve the morning want for
+something in the stomach to set the wheels of life in motion would have
+been a failure from the first. With all the coffee break of the fast was
+attended by so marked an increase of cheer and general strength, and the
+enjoyment of the general meal at or before noon was so immeasurably
+increased, that the method spread as a contagion against which
+professional denouncement and ridicule were in vain.
+
+And with all converts I found that the experiences in the penalties of
+gluttony were so enlightening, so restraining, that there was apparently
+little need to say much more as to the quantity or quality of food, what
+and how to eat.
+
+The enthusiasm of all over the forenoons of power and comfort, to be
+followed by a luxury of meals never before realized, fully satisfied my
+pride in professional success; and all the more because the penalties of
+gluttony were seldom charged to my account.
+
+It was only after the missing link was found and added to the chain that
+I could fully realize the enormous waste of strength and the mental and
+moral degradation from eating food in excess, because the enticements of
+relish are taken for the actual needs of the body. Think of it! Actual
+soul power involved in ridding the stomach and bowels of the foul sewage
+of _food in excess_, _food_ in a state of decomposition, to be forced
+through nearly two rods of bowels and largely at the expense of the soul
+itself!!
+
+Oh, gluttony, with its jaws of death, its throat an ever-open gate to
+the stomach of torment!
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+When I finally arrived at a point of vision where I could see the
+stomach as a mere machine, that it could no more act without brain-power
+than brawny arms with their nerves severed could wield a sledge, I began
+a study of digestion with new interest, with a view to save power from
+undue waste.
+
+It is the _sense of relish_, of flavor, that is behind all the woes of
+indigestion, and not the sense of hunger. The sweetened foods; the pies,
+cakes, puddings, etc., that are eaten merely from a sense of relish
+after the sense of hunger has become fully sated, and generally by far
+more of the plainer foods than waste demands, is the wrecking sin at all
+but the humblest tables.
+
+_Rapid eating_, by which there is imperfect solution of the tougher
+solids and a filling of the stomach before the hunger sense can
+naturally be appeased, is the additional evil to insure serious
+consequences to the stomach and brain.
+
+For merely _practical purposes_, all that is necessary to know about the
+digestive process is that by a peculiar arrangement of the muscle forces
+of the stomach the food is made to revolve in such a way as to wipe the
+exuding digestive juice from the walls; that, therefore, the finer the
+division of the solids by mastication the more rapid the solution to the
+absorbing condition. That meat in finer particles will sooner dissolve
+than meat in large, solid masses is clearly seen.
+
+It will be recalled that digestive conditions are really soul
+conditions, as if there were actual wires extending from the very depths
+of the soul itself to each individual gland, with power to ebb and flow
+as the mental condition shall determine.
+
+It may be presumed that _power_ to digest is the power to revolve food
+in the stomach and the power to generate the gastric juice as determined
+by the power of the brain, the glands themselves not holding their juice
+in mere reserve, but power to generate in reserve. Thus it is seen that
+food in excess is in every way exhaustive as the immediate result.
+
+These may be called the subjective conditions of digestion. Now let us
+consider some of the objective conditions from the standpoint of moral
+science. What the sunshine of a warm day is to all growing things on the
+earth, so is that shining seen in other faces that reaches the depths of
+the human soul with brightness and life.
+
+_Overeating_ is so universal from the general ignorance of practical
+physiology that few stomachs have a time for a full clearing with the
+needed rest before the time of another filling arrives. It is therefore
+a matter of sheer necessity not only to attain and maintain the utmost
+possible cheer of soul, but it is also a necessity to have cheer in
+other souls with whom relations are intimate.
+
+As a matter of extraneous _digestive aid_, a cheerful soul in a family
+is an abiding source of digestive energy to all in social contact. It
+affects the digestive energy of all, as the breeze the fire, as the
+clearing sky the low spirits from the gloom of chill and fogs. The eyes
+that do not glisten with higher life, the lines upon the face that are
+not alive with cheerful, kindly emotions, the frowning look, the word
+that cuts deeply, have their repressive effects upon digestive energy
+within their remorseless reach.
+
+The _moral science_ of digestive energy is a new study; it is not known
+as a factor in the process of digestion; but the time is coming when
+cheer of soul will become a study as of one of the finer arts, and then
+human homes will not be so much like lesser lunatic asylums without the
+restraining hands of a wise superintendent.
+
+Life will be different in homes when all within the age of reason shall
+realize that their words without kindness, their looks without cheer,
+are forces that tend to physical and moral degradation, really nothing
+less than death-dealing energies upon all lives within their reach. The
+power of human kindness has ever been a favorite theme with the
+moralist, but it has not been considered with reference to its power
+upon digestion.
+
+_Anger_ is mental and moral chaos; it is insanity; it is revenge in the
+fury of a hurricane; and sensitive natures have the greatest need for
+the largest measure of health in order that these human tempests shall
+be under larger restraint.
+
+The gloomy, the irritable, the dyspeptic Christian is a dispenser of
+death and not of the higher life, and his religious faith does not
+spread by the contagiousness of example: and because of the solemnity,
+of the exceeding importance of his sense of the possibilities of the
+life beyond death he has all the more need to have that physical and
+moral strength that his daily walk, conversation, and mien may be
+consistent, forceful, and uplifting.
+
+To this great end study, study to see _cheer_ everywhere, and above all
+things to possess it. Good health is also contagious, and, no less than
+disease, has a reflex impression. Only above the chill dampness, the
+fogs, and clouds is the clear sky with the blazing sun. There are
+undreamed-of possibilities of getting above the worriments of life
+through an intelligent understanding and application of the physiology
+of cheer as the chief force in the life of the body, mind, and soul.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+Having finally arrived at the conviction that from the first wink in the
+morning until the last at night strength departs, not in any way to be
+kept up by food, that from the last wink at night until the first in the
+morning strength returns, I became fully endowed to tell all the sick
+and afflicted in the most forceful way that with the strength of the
+brain recharged by sleep is all the labor of the day performed, and that
+no labor is so taxing upon human muscles that it cannot be performed
+longer without fatigue when the breakfast is omitted.
+
+That this is possible came to me as a great surprise and in this way: a
+farmer with a large assortment of ailments came to me for relief through
+drugs. He was simply advised to take coffee mornings, rest mainly during
+forenoons, and when a normal appetite and power to digest would come he
+would be able to work after resuming his breakfasts. This man, who was
+more than fifty years old, was the first manual laborer to be advised to
+observe a morning fast.
+
+Several months after, he came to me with news that his ailing had all
+departed, and that he had been able to do harder work on his coffee
+breakfasts than ever before with breakfasts of solids. And if he so
+worked with power during forenoons, why not others? Why not all?
+
+This no-breakfast plan was so contagious that I was not long in finding
+that farmers in all directions were beginning to go to their labors with
+much less food in their stomachs than had been their wont, and in all
+cases with added power of muscle.
+
+Only recently three farmers went into the field one hot morning to
+cradle oats, the most trying of all work on the farm; two of them had
+their stomachs well filled with hearty foods. With profuse sweating and
+water by the quart because of the chemical heat arising from both
+digestion and decomposition, these toiled through the long hours with
+much weariness. The third man had all his strength for the swinging of
+the cradle, the empty stomach not even calling for water; with the
+greatest ease he kept his laboring friends in close company and when the
+noon hour came he was not nearly so tired as they.
+
+A man who had been a great sufferer from indigestion, a farmer, found
+such an increase of health and strength from omitting the morning meal
+that he became able to cradle rye, a much heavier grain than oats,
+during an entire forenoon "on an empty stomach." Later he went from one
+December to the following April on one daily meal, and not only with
+ease, but with a gain in weight in addition. During these months this
+man did all the work usual in farm-houses, besides riding several hours
+over a milk route during the forenoons.
+
+In this city resides a carpenter, formerly subject to frequent
+sicknesses, who for the past five years has walked nearly a mile to the
+shop where he is employed without even as much as a drink of water for
+breakfast; and this not only without any sicknesses, but with an
+increase in weight of fifteen pounds also.
+
+More than a dozen years ago a farmer who was not diseased in any way,
+but who had been in the habit of eating three times a day at a
+well-spread table, and at mid-forenoon taking a small luncheon for
+hunger-faintness, omitted his breakfast and morning luncheon, and has
+been richly rewarded since then in escaping severe colds and other
+ailings. He conclusively felt that his forenoon was the better half of
+the day for clear-headedness and hard labor; he has added nearly a score
+of pounds to his weight, and his case has been a wonder to all his
+farmer friends, who see only starvation in cutting down brain and
+needless stomach taxing.
+
+I must now ask the reader to bear with me while I apply the principles
+of this new hygiene with a good deal of reiteration, trying to vary them
+in utterance as far as possible. The need of daily food is primarily a
+matter of waste and supply, the waste always depending upon the amount
+of loss through the general activities, manual labor being the most
+destructive.
+
+Across the street from where I live a new house is being built: for
+many days during the chilly, windy month of March several men have been
+engaged high in the air, handling green boards, studs, and joists for
+ten hours each day; and yet these men are not eating more food daily
+than hundreds of brain-workers who never have general exercise. The
+workmen across the street eat to satisfy hunger; the brain-workers, to
+satisfy the sense of relish; and the meals of the latter are habitually
+in excess of the real demands because of wasted bodies.
+
+In spite of the apparent overeating of the brain-worker, I believe the
+farmer and the manual laborer break down at an earlier age, for the
+reason that they overwork and generally eat when too tired to digest
+fully: the farmer is rarely content to do one day's work in one day when
+the crop season invites him to make the most of fair days.
+
+With successes rapidly multiplying in all directions within my circuit,
+the desire became urgent for some way to make my new hygiene known to
+the public. My first thought was to get some eminent divine interested
+through a cure that would compel him to a continual talk as to how he
+became saved.
+
+At a great denominational meeting in Chicago I chanced to hear a
+splendid address from a sallow-faced professor of a divinity school, the
+Rev. Dr. G. W. N.; and after a great deal of reflection I resolved,
+without consulting him, to write him a series of letters on health
+culture, hoping that he would become so immediately interested as to
+permit me a complete unfolding of my theory and practice.
+
+I began the series, taking all the chances to be considered a crank;
+they were continued until the end without response, when later I
+received a brief note with sarcasm in every line. At least my letters
+had been read; for he informed me that he had no confidence in my
+theory, giving me a final summing up with his estimate that there were
+more "cranks" in the medical profession than in any other. I was not in
+the least cast down at this long-range estimate, since I had become
+quite used to close-at-hand ridicule.
+
+There was before me the unknown time when a still more eminent D. D.
+would both accept and practise my theory, and also give the world his
+estimate in an elaborate preface to a book that in the fulness of time
+the ways opened to me to write and have published.
+
+I was sent for by a man who had become a moral and physical wreck, his
+body being reduced to nearly a skeleton condition from consumption. As
+he was taking an average of two quarts of whiskey per week, I accepted
+the charge of his case with reluctance.
+
+I was not able in any way to change his symptoms for the better; there
+had been no hint of hunger for many weeks, and the mere effort to
+swallow or even taste the most tempting dainties was painful to witness.
+He was taken with a severe pain in his side, which was fully relieved
+with the hypodermic needle, and there followed several hours of general
+comfort and no desire for the alcoholic. Seeing this I was strongly
+impressed that by continuing the dosings for a time the seared stomach
+might get into a better condition and the fast be followed by a natural
+hunger.
+
+This is what actually followed: in about a week the dosings were reduced
+to mere hints, and without any desire for stimulants there came a desire
+for broiled steak and baked potatoes, which were taken with great
+relish. Thence on this was mainly the bill of fare, and the half-filled
+bottle remained on his table _untouched_, undesired; and in time there
+were added more than a score of pounds to his wasted body.
+
+Now it chanced that this regenerative work was seen day after day by his
+friend, who was badly in need of an all-round treatment to meet the
+needs of his case; he was a man of keen intellect, of real ability of
+both mind and muscle. Becoming deeply interested in the theory behind
+the miracle he saw unfolding day after day, and all the more because of
+a total extinction of the drink-habit that was deep seated through long
+duration, he began to omit his morning meals.
+
+He saw more than his own case. He had been a manager of book agencies,
+and when he found also his desire for the cigar undergoing a rapid
+decline, he became possessed with the idea that a book might be written
+on the subject. The time came when he could sit down in the office of
+the Henry Bill Publishing Company, Norwich, Conn., a picture of health,
+to interview Mr. Charles C. Haskell on the subject of publishing a
+book. Mr. Haskell had known him in less healthful years, and he
+marvelled at the change.
+
+I had duly suggested, and with great emphasis, that no publisher would
+listen to him unless he were sick enough to be interested in the theory
+and would give a test by actual trial. He found Mr. Haskell in very low
+health. Experts had sent him on a tour through Europe in search of that
+health he failed to find; his body was starving on three meals a day
+that were not digested, and he began to arrange his affairs with
+reference to a near-at-hand breakdown.
+
+To this man was made such an appeal as men are rarely able to make,
+because a regenerated life was also vocal in utterance. To him a miracle
+seemed to have been wrought, and he listened to each word as if to a
+reprieve from a death seemingly inevitable.
+
+As there was no disease of the stomach, it required only a few days for
+Mr. Haskell to acquire so much of new life that he felt as one born
+again, and a week had not passed before I had his earnest request to put
+my hygiene into a book, he taking all chances of failure.
+
+He began to advise all ailing friends to give up their breakfasts or to
+fast until natural hunger came, getting many marvellous results. One of
+his first thoughts was to have the forthcoming book introduced by some
+eminent divine who could write through the inspiration of experience.
+
+In a visit to Norwich of that evangelist of world-wide eminence, George
+F. Pentecost, D. D., then of London, Eng., the opportunity came, and
+for a case of "special conversion" he was made the guest of Mr. Haskell.
+He was easily persuaded to the system, and his need is expressed in the
+following from the introduction of _The True Science of Living_, which
+was actually written without his having read a single line of the
+manuscript.
+
+"Taking the theory upon which this system of living is based into
+account--and even to my lay mind it seemed most reasonable--and the
+testimony which I personally received from both men and women, delicate
+and biliously strong, workingmen, merchants, doctors, and preachers,
+delicate ladies for years invalided and in a state of collapse, and some
+who had never been ill, but were a hundred per cent. better for living
+without breakfast, _I resolved to give up my breakfast_. I pleaded at
+first that it might be my luncheon instead, for I have all my life
+enjoyed my breakfast more than any other meal. But no! it was the
+breakfast that must go. So on a certain fine Monday morning I bade
+farewell to the breakfast-room. For a day or two I suffered slight
+headaches from what seemed to me was the want of food; but I soon found
+that they were just _the dying pains of a bad habit_. After a week had
+passed I never thought of wanting breakfast; and though I was often
+present in the breakfast-rooms of friends whom I was visiting, and every
+tempting luxury of the breakfast was spread before me, I did not desire
+food at all, feeling no suggestion of hunger. Indeed now, after a few
+months, the thought of breakfast never occurs to me. I am ready for my
+luncheon (or breakfast if you please) at one o'clock, but am never
+hungry before that hour.
+
+"As for the results of this method of living, I can only relate them as
+I have personally experienced them:
+
+"1. I have not had the first suggestion of a sick headache since I gave
+up my breakfast. From my earliest boyhood I do not remember ever having
+gone a whole month without being down with one of these attacks, and for
+thirty years, during the most active part of my life, I have suffered
+with them oftentimes, more or less, every day for a month or six weeks
+at a time, and hardly ever a whole fortnight passed without an acute
+attack that has sent me to bed or at least left me to drag through the
+day with intense bodily suffering and mental discouragement.
+
+"2. I have gradually lost a large portion of my surplus fat, my weight
+having gone down some twenty pounds, and my size being reduced by
+several inches at the point where corpulency was the most prominent; and
+I am still losing weight and decreasing in size.
+
+"3. I find that my skin is improving in texture, becoming softer, finer,
+and more closely knit than heretofore. My complexion and eyes have
+cleared, and all fulness of the face and the tendency to flushness in
+the head have disappeared.
+
+"4. I experience no fulness and unpleasantness after eating, as I so
+often did before. As a matter of fact, though I enjoy my meals (and I
+eat everything my appetite and taste call for) as never before, eating
+with zest, I do not think I eat as much as I used to do; but I am
+conscious of better digestion; my food does not lie so long in my
+stomach, and that useful organ seems to have gone out of the
+gas-producing business.
+
+"5. I am conscious of a lighter step and a more elastic spring in all my
+limbs. Indeed, a brisk walk now is a pleasure which I seek to gratify,
+whereas before the prescribed walk for the sake of exercise was a
+horrible bore to me.
+
+"6. I go to my study and to my pulpit on an empty stomach without any
+sense of loss of strength mentally or physically--on the other hand,
+with freshness and vigor which is delightful. In this respect I am quite
+sure that I am in every way advantaged."
+
+Rev. George Sherman Richards, after more than fifteen years of frequent
+severe headaches that were supposed to be due to heredity, has had
+entire freedom during the five years of the No-breakfast Plan. He can
+hardly be surpassed as a picture of perfect health.
+
+One of the first prominent converts who finally surrendered to Mr.
+Haskell, whose persistence was beyond fatigue, was the editor of the
+Norwich, Conn., _Bulletin_, a special friend. There was no want of
+conviction on his part, but the evil day to begin the morning fast was
+continually postponed. Finally, one morning when he was specially busy
+and charged with impatience, the beaming and hopeful face of Mr. Haskell
+appeared. Said the busy man, "Mr. Haskell, if you will walk right out
+of that door, I will promise you to begin tomorrow morning to do without
+breakfasts." Mr. Haskell walked out--the breakfasts were given up, and
+some years later I was personally informed that he believed that his
+life had been saved thereby.
+
+[Illustration: REV. GEORGE SHERMAN RICHARDS,
+
+Rector of Christ Church, Meadville, Pa.]
+
+One of the expedients was to send a circular about the book to every
+foreign missionary of every denomination, and as a result one of these
+fell into the hands of Rev. W. E. Rambo, in India. He had become a mere
+shadow of his former self from ulcerated bowels, the sequel of a badly
+treated case of typhoid fever. For seven months there had been daily
+movements tinged with blood; the appetite was ravenous, and large meals
+were taken without any complainings from the stomach. Before a
+well-spread table his desire to eat would become simply furious, and it
+was indulged regardless of quality and quantity. His brain system had
+become so exhausted that reason and judgment had no part in this
+hurricane of hunger.
+
+There were seven successive physicians in this case, some of them with
+many titles. The first one he called on reaching New England cut his
+food down to _six bland meals daily_. All of them had tried to cure the
+offending ulcers by dosings. Think whether bleeding ulcers on the body
+would get well with their tender surfaces subjected to the same
+grinding, scratching process from bowel rubbish!
+
+He was in condition on his arrival to lose six pounds during the first
+week of six "bland" daily meals. After reading the _True Science of
+Living_ he discharged his physician and came under my personal care.
+These ulcers were treated with the idea of giving them the same rest as
+if each had been the end of a fractured bone. To relieve pain, to hold
+the bowel still, and to abolish the morbid hunger, a few doses with the
+hypodermic needle were a seeming necessity.
+
+In less than two weeks this starving man of skin and bones was relieved
+of all symptoms of disease, and there seemed a moderate desire for food
+of the nourishing kind. Less than two weeks were required for all those
+ulcers to become covered with a new membrane: but for full three weeks
+only those liquid foods were given that had no rubbish in them to prove
+an irritant to the new, delicate membrane covering the ulcers. For a
+time after the third week there was only one light daily meal, with a
+second added when it seemed safe to take it.
+
+In a little more than three months there was a gain of forty-two and a
+half pounds of flesh, as instinct with new, vigorous life as if freshly
+formed by the divine hand. My last word from this restored man was after
+he, his wife, and four children had been back in India for a year and a
+half, where they were all living on the two-meal plan without any
+sicknesses, and he had a class of one hundred and sixty native boys on
+the same plan.
+
+Who can fail to see the science and the sense to relieve all diseases
+of the digestive tract? There are no cases of hemorrhoids not malignant
+in character, in which total relief will not be the result if fasts are
+long enough; no cases of anal fistula that will not finally close if
+they can have that rest from violence that is their only need; and
+equally all ulcers and fissures that make life a history of torture.
+
+No case with structural disease of any part of the digestive tract not
+malignant has yet come under my care in which there has not been a cure,
+or in which there has not been a cure in sight. Through a fast we may
+let the diseased parts in the digestive tract rest as we would a broken
+bone or wound on the body.
+
+Several missionaries have regained health on these new lines, who have
+returned to preach and practise a larger gospel than before. One
+returned from the Congo region of Africa with such wreckage of health as
+to make any active service impossible. Mr. Haskell met him in New York,
+and in time he returned with twenty-four missionaries, all as converts
+to the new gospel of health, and to have that sustained health only
+possible through a larger obedience to the laws of God "manifest in the
+flesh"--obedience that takes into account the moral science, the physics
+and the chemistry of digestion.
+
+These and those others who have had their lives redeemed from lingering
+death through the simple, easy ways of Nature never suffer their
+enthusiasm to wane. Not to volunteer aid when unintentional suicide is
+going on seems nothing less than criminal.
+
+As a means to better health the utility of the morning fast is beyond
+estimate. In all other modes of health culture there is a great deal of
+time consumed in certain exercises that are certain to be given up in
+time. What the busy world requires is a mode to gain and maintain the
+health that requires neither time nor thought--one that is really
+automatic.
+
+We arise in the morning with our brain recharged by sleep, and we go at
+once about our business. If we take a walk or go to the gymnasium, we
+simply waste that much time, and we also lessen the stored-up energy by
+whatever of effort is called out. We can skip the dumb-bells and perform
+any other kind of exercise that is good for the health; and always with
+the certainty that we shall have more strength for the first half of the
+day if none is wasted in this way. As a matter of mere enjoyment, walks
+in fresh air are beneficial, but not as an enforced exercise for the
+reason of health.
+
+For the highest possibilities for a day of human service there must be a
+night of sound sleep; and then one may work with muscle or with mind
+much longer without fatigue if no strength is wasted over untimely food
+in the stomach, no enforced means to develop health and strength. When
+one has worked long enough to become generally tired there should be a
+period of rest, in order to regain power to digest what shall be so
+eaten as to cause the brain the least waste of its powers through
+failure to masticate.
+
+One need not always wait until noon to eat the first meal. Those in good
+health have found that they can easily go till noon before breaking the
+fast; but in proportion as one is weak or ailing the rule should be to
+stop all work as soon as fatigue becomes marked, and then rest until
+power to digest is restored. To eat when one is tired is to add a burden
+of labor to all the energies of life, and with the certainty that no
+wastes will be restored thereby.
+
+For the highest efforts of genius, of art, of the simplest labors of the
+hands, the forenoon with empty stomach and larger measure of stored-up
+energy of the brain is by far the better half of the day; and, more than
+this, it is equally the better for the display of all the finer senses
+of the tastes, the finer emotions of soul life. In addition to
+these--and what is vastly more important--it is by far the better half
+of the day for the display of that energy whereby disease is cured. All
+this with no power lost in any special exercise for the health!
+
+The time to stop the forenoon labor is when the need to rest has become
+clearly apparent; and there must be rest before eating, to restore the
+energy for digestion. This always determines Nature's time when the
+first meal shall be taken, and not the hour of the day.
+
+This is especially important to all who are constitutionally weak or
+have become disabled through ailings or disease. Disappointments have
+come to hundreds who have given up breakfasts, because of the mistaken
+idea that they must wait till noon before breaking the fast, and hence
+had become too tired to digest; and therefore experienced a loss rather
+than a gain from the untimely noon meals.
+
+The desire for morning food is a matter of habit only. Morning hunger is
+a disease under culture, and they who feel the most need have the most
+reason to fast into higher health. They who claim that their breakfasts
+are their best meals; that they simply "cannot do one thing" until they
+have eaten, are practically in line with those who must have their
+alcoholics before the wheels can be started.
+
+Now it has been found by the experience of thousands that by wholly
+giving up the morning meal all desire for it in time disappears, which
+could hardly be the case if the laws of life were thereby violated; and
+the habit once fully eradicated is rarely resumed.
+
+To give up suddenly the use of alcoholics or of tobacco in any of its
+forms is to call out loudest protests from the morbid voices that have
+been kept silent by those soothing powers; and yet no one would accept
+those loud cries as indicating an actual physiological need. The
+difficulties arising from giving up the morning meals--even as those
+from giving up the morning grog--are an exact measure of the need that
+they shall be given up in order that health, and not disease, shall be
+under culture.
+
+I once heard a Rev. Mrs. tell a large audience of ministers that for
+more than a week she spent most of her forenoons in bed to endure better
+the headaches and other angry, protesting voices that were averse to the
+no-breakfast plan. She won her case, and thence on a hint of headache or
+other morbid symptoms was a matter of humiliation and fasting, with
+prayer for forgiveness and for greater moral strength against the
+temptations of relish.
+
+With many people the breaking of the breakfast habit costs only less of
+will-power than is called out by attempts to break the alcoholic or
+tobacco habit; but by persistence a complete victory is certain for all,
+and the forenoons become a luxury of power in reserve.
+
+Now, I must warn all that very many persons who adopt the No-breakfast
+Plan are disappointed, because they have become chronic in the ways of
+unwitting sin: they are like thin-soiled farms long-cropped without soil
+culture. Harvests in either case can only come by the study and practice
+of the laws of nutrition.
+
+The besetting sin against all such ailing mortals, the lines of whose
+lives are frequently of the hardest, is that the friends all oppose
+cutting down the daily food from the dreadfully mistaken impression that
+weakness and debility from disease are the measure of the need to eat,
+not the measure of the inability to digest.
+
+Scores of times I have been written to by this class of patients as to
+their troubles from friends in this way. Scores of times I have been
+consulted as to the safety of this method in daily living for the old,
+as if it were a tax upon the constitutional powers to stop sinning
+against them! As well ask whether one may get too old as to make it
+dangerous to cut down daily whiskey or daily labor that is clearly
+beyond the reasonable use of the powers.
+
+Those who are the victims of chronic diseases and have become greatly
+enfeebled by overwork of body, mind, or stomach, will have to work out
+their salvation with most discouragingly slow progress; but not to work,
+not to try, is to invite the processes of disease culture.
+
+Now, as to the time when that first meal of the day shall be taken.
+Since the best meal of the day in all America with the great majority of
+the people is at noon, this time may well be selected as the most
+fitting. Since the man of muscle loses no time in taking his breakfast,
+he should be able with good sense to rest an hour before this noon meal.
+
+Those whose general energies give out earlier in the morning and do not
+care to have general meals prepared in advance of the usual hour, can
+put in the time in the best possible way by resting into power of relish
+and digestion, the evil of eating when tired being that the exhausted
+feeling is only increased.
+
+Now think what forenoons may be had with no time lost over breakfasts,
+none in thinking about the health or in doing anything for it, and not
+only to have the best and strongest use of the reason, judgment, and
+muscles, but also to have the best possible conditions for the cure of
+ailings! Think, too, what it would be to the mothers of the land not to
+have any need to go into their kitchens until the time to prepare the
+noon meal arrived!
+
+Can children while growing rapidly do without breakfasts? They certainly
+can without a hint of discomfort, and be all the better for it in every
+way.
+
+A few months ago I spent some hours in Illinois, where the no-breakfast
+plan had been practised for two years. When the plan was begun there was
+a pale, delicate mother of four children, who was enduring a life that
+had no cheer. During the first year the battle was a severe one, not a
+little aggravated by the assurance of all sympathetic friends that
+resulting evil was making its mark on all the lines of expression; but
+health with its life and color finally came to silence the uttered
+disapproval.
+
+There was a boy in the home who was subject to the severest headaches
+every week, and who was much wasted in his body when he began: he had
+become robust and wholly relieved of all his ailings. There was a plump,
+rosy-cheeked girl of fourteen who for a year had taken only one daily
+meal, and yet a better nourished body I never saw.
+
+Now in this family the only warm, general meal, and this a plain one,
+was at noon. The evening meal was entirely of bread and butter taken
+without even a sitting at the table. What happy, healthy children they
+were! And the mother was in a great deal better health to do all the
+work of the kitchen: work, she strongly asserted, which was not nearly
+half of what it formerly was. For her there was a cure, a great increase
+of strength, and a great reduction of the most taxing of all the duties
+of the home-life.
+
+If there is such a thing as an attack of disease, it cannot occur in the
+forenoon when there is an empty stomach and all the powers are at their
+best for resisting disease; and where children are fed as these are,
+disease, acute or chronic, is only a remote possibility.
+
+I belong to a family of seven; the oldest is beyond seventy, the
+youngest beyond fifty. This No-breakfast Plan has been very closely
+adhered to with all for not less than twelve years, and during this time
+not one of us has had any acute sickness; and I am not aware that any
+have diseases of the chronic kind.
+
+    The accompanying illustration is that of Mrs. E. A. Quiggle,
+    sister of the Author, after twelve years' trial of The
+    No-breakfast Plan.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. E. A. QUIGGLE,
+
+Chicago, Ill.]
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+The utility of eating with thoroughness is strongly illustrated in the
+following cases:
+
+Mr. Horace Fletcher, the author and traveller, took to the
+one-daily-meal plan to cut down his abnormal weight, having the patience
+to masticate all sense of taste from each mouthful before swallowing. I
+saw him after he had been on this plan for some months: there had been a
+weight loss of some forty pounds; a nasal catarrh of many years had been
+cured, and he strongly asserted that in every way he felt himself
+twenty-five years younger.
+
+He had been living a week on baked potatoes for experimental reasons
+when I met him, and without experiencing any morbid sensations: a more
+perfect specimen of physical health I never gazed upon. To all
+dyspeptics who are willing to work for their health through pains and
+patience, his little work, _Glutton or Epicure_, is strongly
+recommended.
+
+A dyspeptic from Vermont came to me who for ten years had eaten three
+hearty meals daily, none of which had ever satisfied his hunger. He was
+in a very low mental state when he came, and feeble in body: for fully
+ten years both himself and physician had held the stomach accountable
+for all its complainings, and with no thought of avoidable cause.
+
+I put him on one meal a day, as there was still some power of digestion,
+and with the following list for the daily bill of fare: baked potatoes
+well buttered, bread and butter, beans dressed with butter, fish or lamb
+chops, and rice or oatmeal only if strongly desired; all sugar foods
+debarred, and no drinks except water as thirst called for it between the
+meals. The constipated bowels were permitted their own times for action.
+The mouthfuls were small and far apart--like dashes between words--not
+less than forty-five minutes were spent in masticating. Very soon there
+was a general rousement of new life in every way. His first surprise was
+in an unwonted sense of relish and a complete sating of hunger long
+before he had eaten the old-time amounts.
+
+There was a fresh revelation to me in this, as I had not before been so
+impressed that by slow eating the hunger-spell is also dissipated in
+part by time, and hence there is much less danger of eating to excess.
+Hunger comes in part from habit, and it is appeased, with or without
+eating, with equal completeness. The hunger-habit can be trained to come
+at almost any fixed time.
+
+Not long since I read of a farmer who kept his horses in apparently
+perfect condition on one feeding, and only at night: they had become so
+trained that they had no desire for food until their labors were over.
+At night they both ate and rested, and made good the waste of the day;
+they were fully nourished and rested by morning, and could labor all the
+forenoon without loss of energy diverted to digestion: at noon they
+would rest--become strong for the labors of the day.
+
+There can be no doubt, I think, that the strongest sense of hunger at
+the regular eating-time could be dissipated by a fast not longer in
+duration than that of an ordinary meal-time.
+
+My patient's bowels gave no hint of their locality until the eighteenth
+day, when they acted with little effort; on the twenty-fourth day again
+in a perfect way, and thereafter daily. The mind became ecstatic through
+perfect relief from mental and physical depression; there were no wants
+for other than those simple foods, and at the end of a month he left me
+with new views as to Nature's power of selection to meet her needs and
+of the vast utility of using both time and food to dissipate hunger.
+
+The waste with most people is so small that the cost of the food, the
+cost of time in preparation, could be reduced to a startling fraction if
+the need could be actually known, and the pleasures of the palate
+increased by an inverse ratio. There is no redemption for women on the
+earth who have the care of kitchens except through simpler, smaller
+meals--meals so very far apart that there shall be a maximum of the
+hunger-sense of relish and the resulting maximum of power to convert
+them into tissues instinct with life.
+
+It may be that the waste is so very trifling, especially with
+brain-workers, that one may be a vegetarian, fruitarian, or even an
+eater of pork, without positive violence to practical physiology. There
+is this further very practical consideration, that when Nature is so
+fairly dealt with that she can speak in natural tones she will call only
+for those foods easily available along geographical lines.
+
+There is this to be said about fruits, that all those containing acids
+decompose the gastric juice, as they all contain potash salts in union
+with fruit acids. As soon as they reach the stomach the free
+hydrochloric acid of the gastric juice unites with the potash, setting
+the fruit acid free to irritate the stomach. There is never any desire
+for acid fruits through real hunger, especially those of the hyperacid
+kinds: they are simply taken to gratify that lower sense--relish.
+
+The tropical fruits are without acids, and therefore are well adapted to
+a class of people who have only the least use for muscle and brains.
+Acid fruits can only be taken with apparent impunity by the young and
+old, who can generate gastric juice copiously. Because of the general
+impression that they are healthful and no tax, human stomachs are
+converted into cider-mills at will, regardless of between meal-times. By
+their ravishing flavor and apparent ease of digestion apples still play
+an important part in the "fall of man" from that higher estate, the
+Eden without its dyspepsia.
+
+What shall we eat? The fig-leaved savage under his bread-fruit tree, the
+fur-clad Eskimo in his ice-hut, need not be asked: the needed food is in
+all due supply with little cost of muscle and less of mind--and he has
+no mental condition that can disturb the digestion.
+
+The simpler waste-restoring foods have a flavor of their own that needs
+little reinforcement if developed by due mastication and with adequate
+hunger. In my own case butter duly salted seems to be my only natural
+appetizer aside from hunger; and yet I must own that at times new honey
+has a wonderful effect on the mouth-glands.
+
+The difference between eating from hunger and mere relish, as fruits and
+the various sweetened foods are eaten, is a new study in dietetics, and
+one more important can scarcely be conceived. It can hardly be
+intelligently studied without taking into due account this new
+physiology. With rarest exceptions the need of food is estimated by the
+mere pleasure that comes from relish--that kind of relish that is
+evolved from the pies, puddings, ice creams, the last course in Sunday
+dinners, never taken until the limits of stomach expansion are nearly
+reached.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+
+Some of the external evidences of that general regeneration which comes
+through Nature will now be given. We will study the human face as we
+study the earth when the favoring conditions of Spring rouse all Nature
+to newness of life. The face shall be our human landscape.
+
+I select a face in which the eyes are dull from debility, in which there
+is no sparkle of soul, and beneath are the dark venus-hanging clouds.
+The face has a dull, lifeless cast; the veins are all enlarged from
+debility, and cover the larger arteries as with a mourner's pall, save
+where there are patches as of clouds on fire, where disease of the skin
+enlivens the drear landscape. There are pimples large and small, some
+with overflowing volcanoes; there are no lines of expression: these are
+changed to lines of morbid anatomy. We listen, and there are no echoes
+of departed joys; look as we will, and we see no evidence of the
+existence of a soul.
+
+The ultimate of this picture is death from unrecognized suicide; death,
+a slow dying to every sense that made life worth living. There is this
+about these deaths that go on through the months and years: they
+exaggerate the worst instincts of the soul as it is dragged down--down
+through brain-wasting largely avoidable if only understood.
+
+The instant result of a total suspension of the use of the brain power
+in the digestive tract is the evolution of life: new life is sent to the
+remotest cell as by an electric charge. The nutrient vessels of the eye
+tone down in size, and there is polish, sparkle where there was only
+dimness; and on the face the venus clouds, black and red, begin to
+disappear; the toning of the veins condenses the skin, and thereby the
+ruddy arteries are uncovered, and a color that has life appears; the
+pimples, the hillocks, even have a brighter look as they slowly shrink
+from sight. Finally, the skin becomes of a plush-like texture, soft,
+condensed, and with tints that compare as the tints of flowers with the
+faded colors of the house-painter, or as the matchless tint and plush of
+the perfect peach to the spotted, colorless, wilted, degenerated
+representative awaiting the garbage-barrel; and the cherry lips, the
+cherry gums, and the whiter teeth--Nature does not match them
+otherwheres.
+
+Landscape gardening upon the human face has the largest, most inspiring
+possibilities; and there are no eyes so dull, no faces so void of light
+and life, no skin degraded to a parchment, for a public display of an
+assorted collection of evidences of physical poverty, in which these
+changes to a higher life are not in some degree easily possible.
+
+Face culture becomes of the profoundest interest when it is realized
+that whatever there is in eyes and lines of expression that reveals a
+soul in higher life, whatever there is in softness and delicacy of
+texture, in color that is alive with life, is only the external
+revelations of the higher life within. Nature is always at work over her
+waste places, whether about the roots in the mouth, or in the depths of
+the organs; and the aches, the pains of the living, and the agonies of
+the dying are only evidences of the earnestness and persistence of her
+efforts to right all her wrongs.
+
+In what ways are drugs available in this kind of landscape culture; how
+sent through the crystalline structures of the eye with clearing effect;
+how to polish the retina and the surfaces to a sparkle? What drugs for
+such culture? And yet the materia medica needs a hoist to place it on
+the shelf. These external changes that become clearly apparent to even
+dull eyes are the changes that also go on in the very depths of diseased
+structure, in all the special senses, in all those higher instincts and
+tastes that make man the best for self, for home, State and Nation--the
+image of his Creator. Is this high estate ever reached through dosage?
+
+Let this matter be again considered. In the days of the lancet, roots
+and herbs, of bleedings and sweatings, of fevers without water for
+parched tongues, throats, and stomachs, Nature had no part in the cure
+of disease in the professional or lay mind, except in rare instances in
+which there were those specially gifted with insight as well as
+eyesight.
+
+Now such barbarism was inflicted with intense force of conviction, and
+it was patiently endured with the largest faith. When a mere child I was
+a witness of the bleeding treatment upon my mother of saintly memory,
+and my child hands carried into the back yard nearly a quart of blood
+drawn for a bilious attack that lasted but a few days.
+
+There is this to be taken into account in the dose treatment of
+diseases--that most cases recover regardless of the time of treatment,
+even whether it is the most crucifying or whether there is no dosing.
+Therefore, the good effect of dosing is at best a matter of hazy
+inference, where real evidence is not possible. The lack of uniformity
+in the character and times of doses for similar diseases is a burlesque
+on science. What would a text-book on chemistry be worth with nothing
+more in the way of demonstrative evidence than we find in our materia
+medica in the summing up of the "medical properties" of drugs.
+
+In modern times homoeopathy has come in as a protest against the drawing
+of blood and the administration of drugs that corrode. For a form of
+skin disease sulphur has been given by the teaspoonful by my brethren of
+the "regular" school; with equal faith, my brethren of the homoeopathic
+school will give the fraction of a grain whose denominator will cross an
+ordinary page: at which extreme is the science of dosage, if any; or
+where between? I can hardly resist the conclusion that faith in dosage
+is, by as much, inability for the deduction of science.
+
+"I know whereof I believe," is the language of Science. "I believe," is
+the language of credulity--with all the ways back to cause too hazy for
+the perception of even the assuring guide-boards. Said that prince of
+American humorists, Artemus Ward, "I have known a man who drank one
+drink of whiskey every day, and yet lived to be one hundred years old;
+but do not believe, therefore, that by taking two drinks a day you will
+live to be two hundred years old." "I have known a man who had not a
+single tooth, and yet he could play a bass drum better than any man I
+ever knew;" but do not infer that the pulling of sound teeth will aid in
+bringing out all the possibilities of harmony, melody, and delicacy of
+tone of this particular instrument of song without words. I have seen a
+man seemingly in perfect health at one hundred years old who had eaten
+three meals a day; but may I infer that on four meals a day he would
+have lived to be one hundred and thirty-three and a third years old? A
+hundred times I have been told by physicians that they have had the best
+results from certain drugs; but in not one instance was any reason for
+their faith advanced.
+
+If I am to be governed by impressions as to the utility of what I may do
+for the sick, what is more impressive than to draw blood as they of old
+did, with recovery in most cases? Have we reduced the mortality of
+disease by a change in dosage? If so, how much, apart from the better
+sanitary conditions of living and from those involved in the care of the
+sick?
+
+I can easily see or believe there is utility in clearing the digestive
+tract at an early date in the case of severe sickness; I know that
+stomach and bowels are as machines run by brain power; but beyond this
+the materia medica is summed up in this way, "I dose my sick: they get
+well: therefore my treatment is successful; or if they die, it is the
+providence of God"--and with no thought that it may have been the
+providence of bad treatment.
+
+Men and brethren of the medical profession, you believe me a heretic in
+all my professional modes, and only endure me because I do not carry
+violent hands; but you would bar the sick-room from the bleeder of old.
+I may attack the lancet, the herbs, the ground-roots, whose doses were
+only as kindling-wood and sawdust a little more refined, and you will
+say "Amen" with emphasis. "But we, we live in a more enlightened age:
+our doses are more refined"--yes, but you administer them with the same
+force of conviction as to their utility in the cure of disease, and with
+little thought as to just why they are given and how they act.
+
+It is my present conception that feeding the sick as now very generally
+practised will be held, in a more enlightened age, as we now hold the
+lancet of a darker age--a twin relic of barbarism; and there will be
+only wonder that attempts were ever made to convert the lower bowel
+into a temporary stomach _thirty feet away_.
+
+How discriminating this deputy stomach that it selects the predigested
+food-ration from its unutterable lower bowel involvements; sending it
+pure and undefiled as ready-made flesh into the blood, only requiring it
+to be placed as bricks to a wall. Fortunately, these lower stomachs are
+not subject to nausea no matter how capable of otherwise rebelling, as
+they so often do.
+
+Predigested foods! If they nourish the sick, why not feed the well; why
+not abolish our kitchens at an immense saving in the time, expense, and
+worry of cooking, and live on them at an immense saving of the tax of
+digestion and the indigestive processes? Brethren of the medical
+profession, make haste to let the world know when you have found a case
+in which you have made use of the lower bowel so to nourish the sick
+body that it did not waste while the cure was going on.
+
+
+
+
+THE FASTING-CURE.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+NOTES AND PRESS COMMENTS ON VOLUNTARY FASTS.
+
+
+The first voluntary protracted fast for the cure of chronic ailing to
+reach the public prints as a matter of interesting news occurred in the
+case of Mr. C. C. H. Cowan, of Warrensburg, Ill., early in 1899. He had
+been on the two-meal plan for a time, and wishing for something more
+radical wrote to me as to his entering upon a fast. I probably wrote him
+as I now find it necessary to write all who feel that fasts are
+necessary and cannot have my personal care, "Go on a fast and stick to
+it until hunger comes or until your friends begin to suffer the pangs of
+sympathetic starvation; then compromise with the sin of ignorance by
+eating the least that will bring peace to their troubled souls."
+
+The results were summed up by the _Morning-Herald Dispatch_, Decatur,
+Ill., April 16, 1899:
+
+    "A few years ago Dr. Tanner, in New York City, fasted for forty
+    days and forty nights, and all the world wondered. Up to that
+    time the feat was considered impossible. From day to day the
+    papers told of his actions and his condition, and the entire
+    people became deeply interested in the performance. Medical men
+    and scientists became interested in the performance, and the
+    laity watched the faster through curiosity. Tanner's
+    accomplishment was considered marvellous by the medical
+    profession and laymen alike, but Dr. Tanner has long since been
+    a back number, and his performance is not now regarded as
+    remarkable, although there are not many persons who would care
+    to attempt the fast. Tanner was simply trying to prove that the
+    thing could be done. He did it, and within a year the man who
+    held the attention of the people of the country for forty days
+    was a visitor to this city. What Tanner did has been more than
+    accomplished by a Macon County man, but he went about his
+    undertaking quietly, and the fact that he was fasting was known
+    to only a few of his friends. The man is C. C. H. Cowan, of
+    Warrensburg, and for forty-two days and nights he abstained from
+    the use of food in solid or liquid form. He began his fast on
+    March 2 and broke it on the evening of April 13 at supper-time.
+    With the exception of the loss of thirty pounds of flesh, which
+    materially changed his personal appearance, Mr. Cowan shows no
+    ill-effects of his undertaking. When he began he weighed one
+    hundred and sixty-five pounds, and when he quit he weighed one
+    hundred and thirty-five pounds. Before his fast he was inclined
+    to be fleshy, and now, while still in fairly good flesh, his
+    clothing manifests a desire not to hold close communion with his
+    body. Mr. Cowan was in the city Saturday, and some of his
+    friends did not know him. He related his experience to some of
+    them, but he did this cautiously, and with the oft-expressed
+    hope that the papers would not devote any attention to the
+    affair, because he was not seeking and did not want notoriety.
+    At different times during his fast the _Herald-Dispatch_ has
+    referred to the fact in short items. Cowan is a disciple of a
+    Dr. Dewey, living at Meadville, Pa., who is an advocate of
+    fasting as a means of curing many of the ills to which the body
+    is heir. Dr. Dewey has many pamphlets touching the subject, and
+    has also written some books for his belief, and his reasons have
+    been made so plausible that a number of persons have coincided
+    with him. Cowan says the efficacy of the treatment has been
+    established in many instances, a fact that he can prove by ample
+    testimony. During his long abstinence from food he had numerous
+    letters and telegrams from Dr. Dewey, encouraging him in the
+    undertaking. When asked why he had fasted, Cowan explained that
+    for years he had suffered from chronic nasal and throat catarrh
+    which would not yield to medical treatment. His appetite was
+    splendid, and he ate many things that he really did not want. He
+    read Dr. Dewey's ideas, and became convinced that his system
+    needed general overhauling, and that this could be accomplished
+    through faithful adherence to the theory of Dr. Dewey. One of
+    these theories is to the effect that fasting rests the brain,
+    which is ofttimes overworked as a result of heavy feeding. It is
+    also supposed that the body throws off old mucous membrane of
+    the stomach and bowels, and that these are immediately
+    supplanted by new lining. Believing that he could get rid of his
+    catarrhal trouble and get the new lining referred to, Cowan
+    decided to fast, and without noise about the matter he
+    commenced, and up to Thursday evening he did not allow a bite of
+    food to pass his lips. The only thing that he took was water. Of
+    this he did not drink much, and he claims that he suffered no
+    pain or pangs of hunger. Looking at the matter now, it does not
+    seem to have been much of an accomplishment. After he once got
+    started he said it was an easy matter to carry out his plan
+    except for the worry of his family and some of his friends. They
+    thought that he was losing his mind and tried to induce him to
+    relinquish his idea, but he took some of them under his wing and
+    reasoned with them on the beauties of the treatment, expounded
+    the strong points, gave them reasons, showed them testimony of
+    others, and kept on fasting. When he began he had no idea that
+    he would continue for forty days; but as he progressed he had no
+    desire for food, and therefore did not desist. Thursday evening
+    he began to feel hungry, and that night he ate a reasonably good
+    supper. The return of hunger, according to his theories, was the
+    signal of the return of health. He feels confident that his
+    stomach has been relined, and for the present he knows that his
+    catarrh has left him. He is a firm believer in the new method of
+    curing bodily ailments, and says that during his fast he was
+    able to be around the village of Warrensburg every day, and was
+    able to perform his duties. His abstinence from food apparently
+    has not weakened his constitution. Since breaking his fast he
+    has partaken sparingly of food. Cowan's friends are very much
+    interested in the recital of his experience."
+
+It so chanced that during this fast much more than his ordinary business
+came to him, and without the least inability to perform it. I saw him
+several months later, and found his physical condition seemingly
+perfect. He had found out that for the best working conditions a nap at
+noon was better than even a light luncheon, and that one meal a day
+taken after his business was over was the best practice. This fast was
+not in the right locality to excite the attention it deserved.
+
+The second voluntary fast was destined to reach the ends of the earth
+through the public prints. The following appeared in the _New York
+Press_ of June 6, 1899:
+
+    "Twenty-eight days without nourishment and without letting up
+    for a moment on the daily routine of his business is the
+    unequalled record of Milton Rathbun, a hay and grain dealer at
+    No. 453 Fourth Avenue, and living in Mount Vernon. He is a man
+    of wealth, has many employes, and has been in the same business
+    in this city for thirty-nine years.
+
+    "He fasted because he wanted to reduce his weight, fearing that
+    its gradual increase might bring on apoplexy. He succeeded in
+    his efforts. He weighed two hundred and ten pounds when he
+    stopped eating; when he resumed he tipped the scales at one
+    hundred and sixty-eight pounds, a loss of forty-two pounds of
+    flesh.
+
+    "Mr. Rathbun's description of how he felt as the days and weeks
+    wore along and the pounds of avoirdupois slipped away one by one
+    is interesting. The remarkable point about it is that he
+    continued his work and kept well. He gave his account of it
+    yesterday to a reporter for _The Press_. Mr. Rathbun is known by
+    the business men for blocks around his own place of business,
+    and they all know of his fast.
+
+    "Every day his friends would come in and talk to him about it.
+    At first they told him he was foolish; that nobody could fast
+    that length of time, much less continue his work without
+    interruption. Then as the days went on and he kept up without a
+    break they began to be frightened.
+
+    "A crowd would gather about him every night at 6.30 o'clock,
+    when he would leave his office, for that was his hour for
+    weighing. Some days he would lose two or three pounds from the
+    weight of the day before; some days only one, but always
+    something. And as the record was scored up on the book each
+    night his friends would shake their heads and warn him to
+    beware.
+
+    "Finally, on the fifteenth day, his friends and employes got
+    together and made up their minds that something had to be done.
+    They were afraid that Rathbun would die. They appointed a
+    committee to wait on him in his office and beg him to eat
+    something. The committee took dainties to Mr. Rathbun, told him
+    their fears, and offered the good things to tempt him, but all
+    to no purpose.
+
+    "It was the night of April 23 that Mr. Rathbun took his last bit
+    of nourishment. He made no attempt to eat a large meal in
+    preparation for his fast. He ate his regular supply just as if
+    he had meant to continue eating on the following day. Then for
+    twenty-eight days he absolutely abjured all food. He drank
+    water, but that was all. Before going to bed he would take a
+    pint of Apollinaris.
+
+    "Had he remained at his home in bed or taken perfect rest, his
+    achievement would have been less remarkable. That is the course
+    which always has been adopted by the professional fasters. Dr.
+    Tanner, and the Italian, Succi, in their fasts were surrounded
+    by attendants who allowed them scarcely to lift a hand, so that
+    every ounce of energy might be conserved.
+
+    "Rathbun pursued a course diametrically opposite to this. He
+    worked, and worked hard. He came down earlier to his office and
+    went away later than usual. He made no effort to save himself.
+    On the contrary, he seemed determined to make his task as hard
+    as possible. On four of his fast days he spent the afternoons in
+    a dentist's chair, at which times his nerves were tried as only
+    dentists know how to do it.
+
+    "It was his idea to continue the fast until he began to feel
+    hunger. After the first twenty-four hours his hunger
+    disappeared, and he had no desire for food until the end of the
+    fourth week, when the craving set in, and he immediately set
+    about satisfying it in a moderate and careful manner. He
+    consulted two physicians while the fast was going on, to see that
+    he was suffering no injury that he could not appreciate himself.
+    One was Dr. F. B. Carpenter, of Madison Avenue and thirty-eight
+    Street, and the other, Dr. George J. Helmer, of Madison Avenue
+    and Thirty-first Street. He saw Dr. Carpenter on the eighteenth
+    and the twenty-first days, and Dr. Helmer on the twenty-fifth
+    day. Both expressed surprise at his long fast and astonishment at
+    his excellent condition.
+
+    "Mr. Rathbun is fifty-four years old, and five feet six inches
+    in height. He does not look more than forty years old, and he is
+    as active as a man of that age. He says he never felt better
+    than when he was fasting, and that he has experienced no bad
+    effects of any kind, while, on the other hand, he has reduced
+    his weight to a normal limit and removed all danger of apoplexy.
+
+    "He got the idea of the fast from the new theory exploited by
+    Dr. Edward Hooker Dewey, a practising physician of Meadville,
+    Pa., who recommends fasting as a cure for many ailments, and
+    advises all persons to go without breakfast and eat only two
+    meals a day.
+
+    "'I became intensely interested in this new system,' said Mr.
+    Rathbun yesterday, 'and I decided to put it to a practical test.
+    Dr. Dewey had said that he had many patients fasting all the way
+    from ten to thirty and forty days, and I concluded that if it
+    did them so much good it would be just the thing for me. So I
+    tried it.
+
+    "'On April 23 I ate my last meal, and from then until May 24 I
+    had absolutely nothing to eat. I drank water, of course, for
+    that is a matter of necessity. One cannot do without drink; but
+    I took no nourishment. For the first twenty-four hours I was
+    very hungry, and would have liked very much to take a square
+    meal; but I resisted the temptation, and after the expiration of
+    one day I had no desire to eat.
+
+    "'I had been in the habit of getting to my office about 8; now I
+    get there at 7. I generally had left at 5.30; I now stayed until
+    6.30. I had been in the habit of taking an hour or an hour and a
+    quarter for luncheon. The luncheon was now cut off, so I stayed
+    in the office and worked. I sat there at my desk and put in a
+    long, hard day's work, constantly writing.
+
+    "'At night I drank a bottle of Apollinaris, and went to bed at
+    8.30 and slept until 4 in the morning. I never enjoyed better
+    sleep than in those four weeks. And I was in excellent condition
+    as far as I could see in every other way. My mind was clear, my
+    eye was sharper than usually, and all the functions were in
+    excellent working order.
+
+    "'I had many amusing experiences. I went to a dentist on the
+    first day. I had some work requiring several hours' labor on the
+    part of the dentist. I said nothing to the doctor on the first
+    day. Four or five days afterward I kept a second appointment
+    with the dentist, and he asked me how the teeth worked which he
+    had fixed before. I said to him: "I haven't tried them yet."
+
+    "'You can imagine the look of surprise on his face. When I told
+    him that I was fasting, and had been since he had seen me
+    before, he showed the greatest concern, and said he did not
+    think I could go on with the dental work on account of the
+    weakness of my nerves. He solicited me to go out and have just a
+    bite of something. I refused, of course, and he continued the
+    work. I visited him on two days after that until he had finished
+    the work.
+
+    "'The men in my employ were greatly concerned about me, and
+    thought I would break down. I used to weigh every night before
+    leaving the office, and as they saw my constant wearing away
+    they became more and more frightened, and finally appointed a
+    committee to wait on me. The committee was headed by my manager,
+    who begged me to eat. He brought along some fine ripe cherries
+    to tempt me. I told him I would not eat them for one thousand
+    dollars, for I was interested thoroughly in the fast by that
+    time and would not have stopped.
+
+    "'After that they made no more attempts to stop the fast; but my
+    friends all shook their heads, and said that when I started in
+    to eat again I would find I was without a proper stomach.
+
+    "'On the twenty-eighth day the hunger began to come on again,
+    and I began to eat under the advice of Dr. Carpenter. On the
+    twenty-ninth day I drank a little bouillon, and afterward from
+    day to day increased the amount of food to the normal. I
+    suffered no inconvenience.'
+
+    "Mr. Rathbun says he is a firm believer in the no-breakfast
+    system of hygiene advocated by Dr. Dewey, and that neither
+    himself, his wife, nor any of the servants in his house eat
+    breakfast, and as a result all are remarkably well. His two
+    sons, one of whom was graduated at Harvard in 1896, and a
+    second, who is still at Harvard, practise the no-breakfast
+    system.
+
+    "Just before beginning his fast Mr. Rathbun ordered a suit of
+    clothes at his tailor's. He did not go for it until the end of
+    his long fast. Being something of a practical joker, besides a
+    man of great nerve, he walked into the tailor-shop and let the
+    tailor try his new suit on to see if it was all right.
+
+    "When he slipped on the coat the tailor stood aghast. There was
+    apparently the same man he had measured twenty-eight days
+    previously standing before him in perfect health, but as to
+    dimensions not at all the same man.
+
+    "'It doesn't fit any part of you,' said the tailor, after the
+    suit had been tried on. In the tailor's book Rathbun's
+    measurement was entered: 'Forty-three inches around the waist
+    and forty-two around the chest.' When he went for his suit his
+    measurements were thirty-eight around the waist and thirty-eight
+    around the chest.
+
+    "Dr. Dewey's theory, which led Rathbun to make his long fast, is
+    that the brain is the centre of every mind and muscle energy, a
+    sort of self-charging dynamo, with the heart, lungs, and all the
+    other parts only as so many machines to be run by it; that the
+    brain has the power of feeding itself on the less important
+    parts of the body without loss of its own structure, and that as
+    the operation of digestion is a tax on the brain, a long period
+    of fasting gives the brain a rest, by which means the brain is
+    able to build itself up, which means the upbuilding of the whole
+    body.
+
+    "In this way, it is asserted, the alcohol habit is cured and
+    other diseases eradicated.
+
+    "Dr. F. B. Carpenter said yesterday to a reporter for _The
+    Press_ that he had not recommended Mr. Rathbun to take the fast,
+    but had advised him while it was going on and after it was over.
+    The doctor said he was inclined to believe there might be
+    something in the no-breakfast system, as a great many persons
+    eat and drink altogether too much.
+
+    "Dr. Helmer said he had examined Rathbun on the twenty-fifth
+    day, and had found him in surprisingly good condition."
+
+Mr. Rathbun had been on the no-breakfast plan for several years, and he
+was one of the first to write me after my book came out. It was not
+without reason he feared apoplexy, for Ex-Gov. Flower, an over-weighted
+man, had gone down to instant death though seemingly in perfect health
+and in the prime of business energy and mental capacity. During his fast
+my only trouble with him was in his drinking so much water without
+thirst, thus greatly and needlessly adding to the work of the kidneys.
+
+Mr. Rathbun was so disappointed over the skepticism of New York
+physicians as to the reliability of the fast that he determined to
+undergo a longer one under such surveillance as would enforce
+conviction. He was mainly actuated, however, to go through the ordeal in
+the interests of science.
+
+Again I had trouble with him on the water question, wishing him to drink
+only as thirst incited. He was differently advised by an eminent Boston
+physician, who, taking a great interest in the case, wrote him that he
+should have great care to drink certain definite amounts for the
+necessary fluidity of the blood. I had to respond that thirst would duly
+indicate this need; that in my cases of protracted fasts from acute
+sicknesses not one had been advised to take even a teaspoonful of water
+for such reasons; that at the closing days before recovery of such cases
+there was only the least desire for water, and this with no indication
+of need from the blood. Mr. Rathbun did not escape some trouble from
+overworked kidneys, and he became convinced that my theory and practice
+were more in line with physiology.
+
+This fast was made a matter of daily record by the leading New York
+journals, and he became such a subject of general interest that in
+addition to his ordinary business he was greatly overtaxed, and was
+compelled to give up the fast on the thirty-fifth day, in part from the
+exhaustion of over-excitement.
+
+This case was summed up as follows by the _New York Press_, February 27,
+1900:
+
+    "Milton Rathbun has ended his long fast.
+
+    "After thirty-five days, in which solid food or any liquid other
+    than water was a stranger to his palate, he became extremely
+    hungry on Sunday night. At first he resisted the longing to eat
+    and tried to sleep it off. But he awoke in a few hours hungrier
+    than ever, and then he decided he had fasted as long as was good
+    for him.
+
+    "He ate a modest, light meal and went back to bed, only to awake
+    still hungry. Then he ate an orange, and was asleep again in a
+    jiffy. A bowl of milk and cream and crackers sufficed for his
+    breakfast, and at noon yesterday he enjoyed his first hearty
+    meal.
+
+    "As he walked around the parlor of his home in Mount Vernon,
+    lighter by forty-three pounds than he was on January 21, this
+    man of fifty-five years and iron will said:
+
+    "'I feel like a boy again. I think I could vault over a six-foot
+    fence.'
+
+    "Mrs. Rathbun herself knows what it is to fast. For five years
+    such a thing as breakfast has been an unknown quantity in her
+    house, save when guests were present or for the servants. To
+    this abstinence Mrs. Rathbun attributes the curing of catarrh,
+    from which she had suffered previously. And as she and her
+    husband do, so do their two sons.
+
+    "After the first few days of abstinence he had felt no desire to
+    eat until Sunday evening. Then he became hungry--ravenously so.
+    His first fast of a year ago--it was twenty-eight days then--had
+    taught him that sleep took away the longing for food, and, too,
+    he had said he would make his fast last forty days this time. So
+    he went to bed and to sleep.
+
+    "But he awoke at 11 o'clock; he was hungrier than ever, and he
+    decided not to resist his inclination for food. Calling his wife
+    he asked her for an orange, and ate it; then he took another.
+    His next demand was for oysters, and a dozen large, juicy ones
+    disappeared rapidly, to the accompaniment of five soda crackers.
+    Then he drank about two-thirds of a cup of beef-tea, and some
+    Oolong tea. His appetite was not sated by any means, but he knew
+    the danger of overloading his stomach, so he stopped.
+
+    "He soon was slumbering again, but he was wide awake at 2
+    o'clock in the morning. And his hunger was with him still. He
+    ate an orange to appease the craving, and again sought his
+    pillow. He slept again until 6 o'clock, and then, breaking some
+    crackers in a bowl of milk and cream, he ate again.
+
+    "At noon a meal was served to the still hungry man. He began
+    with a little clam-broth; then came half a dozen steamed clams,
+    followed by a small portion of mock-turtle soup. Of a squab he
+    ate one-half, and with it some canned pease and fried potatoes;
+    while for dessert he had a little lemon ice.
+
+    "'That was good,' he exclaimed, as he finished. The remark was
+    unnecessary; the relish with which he had eaten was convincing
+    testimony of his enjoyment. Asked why he had decided not to fast
+    for the full forty days, he said:
+
+    "'I ate just because I was hungry.'
+
+    "Asked how the weather affected him, he said:
+
+    "'When I began there was a spell of cold weather, and I found
+    it rather hard to keep warm at night. But it soon passed away,
+    and I made it a point to wear the same underclothing and outer
+    garments as usual. Oh, yes; I did wear a different pair of
+    trousers. I had them made five years ago, but they were so tight
+    around the waist I could never wear them. They are as loose as
+    can be now, however.'
+
+    "'From a scientific standpoint,' said Professor R. Ogden Doremus
+    yesterday, 'it is the most interesting and valuable experiment I
+    have known. Mr. Rathbun is a man of great nerve force. The very
+    fact that he attended to his business was what saved him, in
+    keeping his mind away from the thought of food. He could not
+    have done it had he been on exhibition or if he had remained at
+    home. If he had been at sea, in an open boat, he could not have
+    lasted more than ten days. He would have had nothing to think of
+    but his hunger.'
+
+    "Dr. George J. Helmer, who has given no little attention to Mr.
+    Rathbun, said:
+
+    "'I have examined him several times; I did so when his thirty
+    days were up. Well, it was remarkable. It's a wonderful
+    exhibition, that will attract the attention of the medical
+    world. His heart is as clear as a bell and his kidneys are
+    perfect. He is in absolutely rugged health. His temperature was
+    normal, his eye clear, and to-day, upon examination, any
+    insurance company would rate him as an A1 risk.'
+
+    "Following is from the diary kept during his fast, and furnished
+    by Milton Rathbun to _The Press_:
+
+      "_First Day_, Jan. 22, 8.45 A. M.--Weight, 207 pounds; height, 5
+      ft. 6-1/2 inches; chest measure, 43-1/2 inches; waist measure,
+      43-1/2 inches; hip measure, 46-1/2 inches; calf measure, 17
+      inches; biceps measure, 14 inches; forearm, 12 inches. 3 P. M.,
+      feels well, but hungry. In the evening felt well, not being
+      hungry or thirsty. Have taken no water.
+
+      "_Tuesday_, Jan. 23.--Slept well until 6 A. M. Rested a while,
+      then took sponge bath and rubdown. At 8.45 weighed 200 pounds.
+      Feel good, but a little weak. 12 o'clock M., no appetite and
+      feverish. 4 P. M., weighed 199 pounds; went home; drank one pint
+      of water during the evening.
+
+      "_Wednesday_, Jan. 24.--Slept well for nine hours. Got up at 6
+      A. M., drank one glass of water and took train to the city. 8.30
+      A. M., weighed 198-1/2 pounds; only half pound lost, which
+      shows how greedily the tissues absorb moisture and add to
+      weight. 12 o'clock M., have no appetite nor thirst, and no
+      fever. Retired at 9 o'clock, feeling comfortable but a little
+      feverish.
+
+      "_Thursday_, Jan. 25.--After having slept seven and one-half
+      hours took a sponge bath and brisk rubdown. Came to the city,
+      and at 8.25 A. M. weighed 195 pounds. Feeling good, with no
+      fever nor appetite. 4.45 P. M., weighed 193 pounds. At home
+      during the evening drank two and one-half glasses of water.
+
+      "_Friday_, Jan. 26.--Slept eight hours. No appetite and feeling
+      stronger. Examined by Professor Doremus and Dr. Carpenter.
+      Retired at 9 o'clock, feeling first class.
+
+      "_Saturday_, Jan. 27.--Came to the city on the 7.45 A. M. train.
+      Weighed 191 pounds. Feeling good. No fever and no appetite.
+
+      "_Sunday_, Jan. 28.--Drank one glass of water when I got up.
+      During the day and evening drank three more glasses of water.
+      Retired feeling first class.
+
+      "_Monday_, Jan. 29.--Slept eight hours last night, and came to
+      the city on the 7.45 A. M. train. At 8.25 weighed 189 pounds. 4
+      P. M., was examined by Dr. F. B. Carpenter, who found the
+      temperature 98-1/2 deg. F., pulse regular, tongue clean.
+      Measurements were: waist, 41 inches; chest, 41 inches; hip, 45
+      inches; calf, 16 inches; biceps, 13-1/2 inches; forearm, 11-1/2
+      inches. 5.15 P. M., weighed 188 pounds.
+
+      "_Tuesday_, Jan. 30.--Slept eight hours; weighed 188 pounds,
+      same as the night before; feeling good. 5.30 P. M., weighed
+      185-1/2 pounds.
+
+      "_Wednesday_, Jan. 31.--Slept 7-1/2 hours, drank one and
+      one-half glasses of water; weighed at 8.25 A. M. 187 pounds; Dr.
+      Carpenter found temperature 98 deg. F., and pulse 88; Professor
+      Doremus called a little later; weighed 184-1/2 pounds.
+
+      "_Thursday_, Feb. 1.--Rested quietly when not asleep; drank only
+      one and three-quarters glasses of water all day; weighed 184
+      pounds; retired feeling good.
+
+      "_Friday_, Feb. 2.--Not feeling any hunger; was examined by F.
+      B. Carpenter; temperature, 98 deg. F.; pulse, 84; weighed 183
+      pounds; retired feeling well, but tired.
+
+      "_Saturday_, Feb. 3.--Somewhat wakeful during the night. 5.45 P. M.,
+      weighed 182 pounds.
+
+      "_Sunday_, Feb. 4.--Read all day and felt well.
+
+      "_Monday_, Feb. 5.--2 P. M., temperature, 98.4 deg. F.; pulse, 82;
+      tongue clean. Measurements were: waist, 41 inches; chest, 41
+      inches; hip, 43 inches; calf, 14-1/2 inches; biceps, 13-1/2
+      inches; forearm, 11-1/2 inches; went to bed feeling a trifle
+      feverish.
+
+      "_Tuesday_, Feb. 6.--Wakeful during the night. 11 A. M., had my
+      eyes examined by Dr. L. H. Matthez, oculist, and found a marked
+      improvement in my sight over same tests of two months previous,
+      being 7 degrees stronger; felt a little weak, but no fever or
+      appetite; weighed 180 pounds; feeling somewhat exhausted from
+      the day's labor and in entertaining guests.
+
+      "_Wednesday_, Feb. 7.--Slept about seven hours during the night;
+      when I awoke felt rested; temperature, 98.2 deg. F.; pulse, 80; have
+      felt well all day; went to bed at 9.30; some fever.
+
+      "_Thursday_, Feb. 8.--Woke up two or three times during the
+      night. Drank water during the night and first thing this morning
+      when I got up. Came to the city, and at 9 o'clock weighed 182
+      pounds, showing a gain of two pounds over last night. Not
+      feeling so well owing to the amount of water I drank last night,
+      which was induced by feverishness.
+
+      "_Friday_, Feb. 9.--Feeling first rate. At 8.25 A. M. weighed
+      180 pounds. Heart action normal. No enlargement of the spleen or
+      liver.
+
+      "_Saturday_, Feb. 10.--Lost nothing in weight during the day and
+      have felt well all the while.
+
+      "_Sunday_, Feb. 11.--Passed the day in reading and drank
+      frequently of water.
+
+      "_Monday_, Feb. 12.--This being a holiday, did not go to the
+      city. Passed the day in entertaining callers. Have not felt
+      quite so well owing to a slight cold settling in my left kidney.
+
+      "_Tuesday_, Feb. 13.--Measurements: waist, 38-1/2 inches; chest,
+      40 inches; hip, 43 inches; calf, 14-1/2 inches; biceps, 12-1/2
+      inches; forearm, 11 inches; weight, 177-1/2 pounds.
+
+      "_Wednesday_, Feb. 14.--I attribute the cause of loss of sleep
+      to a hard day's work and in reading too long last evening.
+
+      "_Thursday_, Feb. 15.--Somewhat wakeful during the night.
+      Retired at 7.30 o'clock, after a hard day's work.
+
+      "_Friday_, Feb. 16.--3.30 P. M., temperature, 98.5 deg. F.; pulse,
+      74; tongue clean; weighed 172-1/2 pounds. During the evening
+      drank one cup of hot water.
+
+      "_Saturday_, Feb. 17.--After a restful night felt well all day.
+
+      "_Sunday_, Feb. 18.--Retired at 9 o'clock and have rested a good
+      deal during the day.
+
+      "_Monday_, Feb. 19.--Weighed 169-1/2 pounds, and retired feeling
+      well.
+
+      "_Tuesday_, Feb. 20.--Weighed 168-1/2 pounds; was examined by
+      Dr. Helmer, who found me in excellent condition; 4.30 P. M.,
+      weighed 169-1/2 pounds, a gain of one pound during the day, on
+      account of drinking a little more water than usual.
+
+      "_Wednesday_, Feb. 21.--Temperature, 98.5 deg. F.; pulse, 69; 4 P. M.,
+      weighed 168-1/2 pounds; have not felt quite so well during
+      the day.
+
+      "_Thursday_, Feb. 22.--Occupied the day--holiday--in reading and
+      reclining, and went to bed feeling pretty well.
+
+      "_Friday_, Feb. 23.--At 8.30 A. M. weighed 166 pounds; 3.30 P. M.,
+      temperature, 99 deg. F.; pulse, 98; lung expansion, 2-3/4
+      inches; went home and to bed, feeling considerably exhausted
+      owing to a hard day's work and too many callers.
+
+      "_Saturday_, Feb. 24.--Did not rest very well from overtaxing
+      the brain yesterday. Do not feel quite so well this morning
+      owing to that fact and from drinking too much water during the
+      past twenty-four hours. At 8.25 A. M. weighed 166 pounds; went
+      home not feeling well to-day on account of some stomach
+      disturbance, which probably comes from drinking too much water;
+      did not drink any water during the evening; feeling quite tired
+      at bedtime.
+
+      "_Sunday_, Feb. 25.--Slept nine hours and rested well, and did
+      not drink any water during the night. Kept quiet all day, lying
+      down most of the time, and felt the coming of hunger about 6
+      o'clock.
+
+      12 o'clock noon, pulse regular; tongue clean; temperature,
+      98.2 deg.F.; weighed 164 pounds. Measurements were: waist, 36-1/2
+      inches; chest, 38 inches; hip, 40-1/2 inches; calf, 14 inches;
+      biceps, 11 inches; forearm, 10 inches.
+
+      Was in bed at 8 o'clock, still feeling hungry, and after a short
+      sleep woke up at 11 o'clock with a sharp appetite, and ate a
+      dozen raw oysters, two oranges, two-thirds cup of beef-tea, five
+      crackers, and part of a cup of Oolong tea.
+
+    I insert a photograph of Mr. Rathbun taken shortly after his
+    second fast. There had been five years' trial of the No-Breakfast
+    Plan before these fasting demonstrations."
+
+One of the hardest things on earth as a mental operation is to be fair
+to the opposition. Now lest I have beguiled my readers overmuch by the
+force of my convictions even to the point of danger, I will give an
+estimate of the danger of fasting by one of the most eminent physicians
+of New York City, Dr. George F. Shrady. I quote from an interview
+reported in the New York _Sun_:
+
+    "The strange case of Milton Rathbun, of Mt. Vernon, who, to
+    reduce his flesh and generally tone up his system, is said to
+    have gone without food of any sort for thirty-six days, still
+    continues to be the subject of more or less discussion among the
+    medical men of the city. Dr. George F. Shrady, in speaking last
+    evening of Mr. Rathbun's remarkable exploit, said:
+
+[Illustration: MR. MILTON RATHBUN,
+
+SHORTLY AFTER HIS FAST.]
+
+    "'There are three things to say about it. In the first place,
+    the fact, if it be a fact, as it seems to be, is astonishing;
+    secondly, it was very foolish; and thirdly, it would be a very
+    unfortunate and dangerous thing to popularize such experiments.
+    Now as to whether the gentleman in question actually did go
+    thirty-six days without taking nourishment of any sort is a
+    matter I will not discuss. If he were a professional faster, I
+    would hardly hesitate to say his claim was fraudulent, for I am
+    fully convinced that all the professional fasters are frauds.
+    They are simply adept sleight-of-hand men. They work out some
+    adroit trick by which they may get nourishment into their
+    systems in spite of the always more or less negligent or
+    suspicious watchers, and then advertise for a forty days' or
+    sixty days' 'fast.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "'Now, mind you, I do not say this Mt. Vernon case is anything
+    of this sort. I only say that if it is true it is most
+    astounding. It is in flat contradiction of all the authorities
+    on the subject of a human being's ability to do without food.
+    The extreme limit of all well-authenticated cases of total
+    abstinence from nourishment is from nine to ten days. Imprisoned
+    miners have been known to go that time and survive.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "'But at all events it was a very foolish thing for Mr. Rathbun
+    to do. About that there can be no manner of doubt. What will be
+    the future effect upon him--upon his heart action, upon his
+    impoverished blood, upon his nervous system, upon his organs of
+    nutrition, necessarily paralyzed for days? These are grave
+    questions, the answers to which may be unpleasant to Mr. Rathbun
+    as they reveal themselves to him in the future. You cannot fly
+    in the face of Nature and ignore all her laws in that way with
+    impunity. She exacts her penalties and there is no court of
+    appeals in her realm.
+
+    "'When I say that the extreme limits of abstinence from
+    nourishment in clearly authenticated cases is from nine to ten
+    days, you must not get the impression that all persons can last
+    that long.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "'It is a question of environment, of mental condition--whether
+    buoyed by hope or stimulated by ambition to do a great feat--and
+    above all, of course, of the physical condition of the faster.
+    Without food the body absorbs its own tissues. Mr. Rathbun, I am
+    told, was a very heavy man with a superabundance of tissue.
+    Naturally he could go longer without nourishment than a weak,
+    attenuated, thin-blooded man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "'Yet Mr. Rathbun was exercising daily and about his usual
+    avocations, and he abstained from food for thirty-six days!
+    Well, it's remarkable!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "'But I sincerely hope Mr. Rathbun will have no imitators. It
+    would be a very unfortunate thing, fraught with grave
+    possibilities, if the newspaper accounts of his reduction in
+    weight and general improvement in health were to move others to
+    follow his example. Many persons would be injured for life,
+    physically wrecked, and perhaps actually killed if they
+    conscientiously did the fifth part of what he is said to have
+    done.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "'And right here it may be said that there is a great deal of
+    exaggeration in the sweeping statements made about people eating
+    too much. If a man sleeps well, goes about his business in a
+    cheerful frame of mind, and does not get what is called
+    "out-of-sorts," he may be pretty sure he is not eating too much,
+    even though he eat a good deal. My observation is that the
+    average man who works and gets a proper amount of exercise does
+    not eat too much. If you want to get work done by the engine,
+    you have got to stoke up the furnace. If a man wants to keep his
+    vital energies up to par he has got to put in the fuel--that is,
+    the food.
+
+    "'Of course, there are those who lead sedentary lives who get
+    too much absorbed in the pleasures of the table and overfeed.
+    There are a sufficient number of these, to be sure, but I think
+    they are the exception. But it will be a sad mistake if even
+    they seek a road to health by Mr. Rathbun's starvation
+    methods.'"
+
+The doctor is astonished, and so am I that he is astonished. This would
+seem to imply that he has never had cases of acute sickness in which the
+amount of food taken during many days or even weeks was too small to
+play any part as a life-prolonging factor.
+
+"It was a foolish, even dangerous experiment." How foolish or dangerous?
+What vital organs suffered? Was there evidence of a loss of anything but
+fat? What organs were "necessarily paralyzed" during the fast? Evidently
+not the brain, else longer days of labor would not have been possible;
+and the grave future possibilities in heart action, impoverished blood,
+nervous system, upon organs of nutrition "necessarily paralyzed" for
+days; and the extreme limit of nine or ten days before death from
+starvation; and that without food the _body_ lives on its own tissues!
+
+One can easily see that the earnest doctor is full of strong impressions
+that have little of the flavor of science: truth that is not
+self-evident should have the instant logic in easy reach. I may here say
+that my hygienic scheme has from the first been subject to similar
+attacks by physicians from the standpoint of impressions, but no
+physician has ventured into print against it after becoming aware of its
+physiologic basis.
+
+I am happy to assure all readers that in all the involuntary fasts of my
+cases of acute sickness or in the voluntary fasts in chronic disease,
+has there been any other than improved general health as the result.
+Notably was this the case in a man who fasted ten years ago for forty
+days for an ulcer of the stomach, and who had been troubled with
+indigestion for more than forty years. He had become nearly a mental and
+physical wreck when he took to his bed with an abolished appetite. There
+have since been some ten years of nearly perfect health, and now in his
+seventy-seventh year he is the youngest-looking man for his age I have
+ever seen. He walks the streets with the gait of a youth of twenty. To
+do without food without hunger does not tax any vital power, as Dr.
+Shrady may yet become aware.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+
+The next fast to have a brief notoriety as the "most remarkable on
+record" occurred in Philadelphia, the medical center of America, and
+beneath the very shadow of its great medical schools; in Philadelphia, a
+city that surpasses all other cities for the wisest conservatism, for
+all-around level-headedness. Its journals are rarely equalled for their
+clean, winnowed columns; there is no "yellow" journalism in that great,
+fair city, known as the "Quaker City."
+
+Miss Estella Kuenzel, a lady of twenty-two years, of acutest, finest
+sensibilities, born to live in June and not in March, lost her mental
+health to a degree that death became the final object of desire.
+
+She had a friend in a bright young man of the name of Henry Ritter,
+chemist and photographer at the Drexel Institute, a born scientist, and
+who possesses the very genius of the pains and persistence of science.
+Well versed in the science of the morning fast, he believed that a fast
+which would merely end with hunger would result in all-around
+improvement. A fast was instituted which he thought would not last more
+than a few days, but went on until the days merged into weeks: it went
+on because only general improvement attended it.
+
+I first heard of it in a letter written by him on the thirty-eighth day
+of the fast, during which there had been a walk of seven miles. On the
+forty-second day of the fast I had a brief letter from Miss K., in which
+every line was radiant with cheer.
+
+At the Asylum five feedings per day were ordered, and at first were
+rejected; but finally she accepted them as a means to end her unhappy
+life; took them in bed, and in the last weeks seemed to be fleshing up,
+as there was a gain of seventeen pounds above the normal, of water--she
+had become dropsical. The last professional expert in her case advised a
+half-gallon of milk daily in addition to the three regular meals--making
+a five-meal plan.
+
+To carry out an unopposed fast it was necessary to take her to a home
+where the parents would be ignorant of this radical means to a cure.
+
+The following is from Mr. Ritter's letters:
+
+    "I had made my views known to the parents and daughter when the
+    case commenced, and after the failure of these methods they
+    decided to let me have charge of the case, which was on Sept.
+    30, 1899. I at once requested them to send her to the house of
+    some friends to whom I made my views known. We then discharged
+    the nurse who had gone with her. With doctor and nurse gone
+    there was free room for Nature's victory (the young lady being
+    as deeply interested as any). We put her upon the rest, which
+    was the only needed sign since her first signs of breakdown
+    appeared Oct. 2, at the supper table, being the last meal she
+    has taken up to to-day, Nov. 9, this being, as you will see, the
+    thirty-eighth day of her fast, with cheerfulness and strength
+    holding full sway. I put her to bed on the first day, to which
+    she kept, with an occasional day in the rocker, until the
+    eleventh day, when she took a walk of about one mile. Then she
+    rested indoors until the twentieth day, when we went to church,
+    walking a little over two miles, with no fatigue or tired
+    feelings. I forgot to mention that we had been out driving in
+    the bracing air for over three hours in the afternoon. On the
+    twenty-first and twenty-second days, indoors, walking and
+    working around the house, reading, etc. On the twenty-third day
+    walked through the country for three miles, stopping at friends
+    to enlighten them upon 'Nature's Laws;' twenty-fourth day, eight
+    miles, no fatigue; twenty-fifth day, between seven and eight
+    miles, no fatigue; twenty-sixth day, walked one and a half
+    hours; twenty-ninth day, rainy, no walks; thirtieth day, walked
+    in the evening for two and a half hours; thirty-first day,
+    walked seven miles, no fatigue; thirty-second day, rainy, no
+    walks; thirty-third day, went to the Exposition, walked all day
+    from 2 P. M. until 11.30 P. M. (with rest while at the
+    performance we attended of not over one and a quarter hours),
+    this being the only resting, possibly two hours, during the
+    whole time.
+
+    "Weight taken at the start, one hundred and forty pounds; at the
+    Exposition one hundred and twenty-five and three-quarters
+    pounds; no sense of tired feeling, but hunger started to assert
+    itself for a period of about three hours, after which it passed
+    over.
+
+    "On the thirty-fourth day went driving; thirty-fifth day, walked
+    one mile, then went to the asylum to show the results. The
+    physicians in charge were simply astounded, and would hardly
+    believe it possible for one to be so active while taking no
+    food. I believe we have done quite a little good there, as they
+    have expressed the desire to try the same on others. They
+    examined the tongue and took the pulse, finding both in good,
+    normal state; in the evening walked another mile, visiting the
+    other doctors whom her parents called in. On the thirty-sixth
+    day walked one and a half miles; thirty-seventh day, walked
+    seven miles, hunger sensation becoming decided.
+
+    "I have given you a sketch of this case because it seems to me
+    an unusual one owing to the great activity."
+
+
+                                                 "November 18, 1899.
+
+    "Miss Kuenzel's hunger arrived as per Nature's demand on the
+    forty-fifth day at noon. One poached egg and two slices of
+    toast (whole wheat). There was an intense relish for her simple
+    fare, but not the least sign or desire for haste in eating. She
+    was amply satisfied for the day, and relished the same bill of
+    fare and quantity for the forty-sixth day, with a very slight
+    luncheon in the evening. We had been to the Exposition the night
+    of the forty-fourth day, when the tongue again started cleaning
+    and a most distinct craving for food presented itself. It
+    persisted on retiring, and also on the next morning, when she
+    felt that Nature again was ready for her wonderful chemistry of
+    digestion. I had her weight taken after her first meal, which
+    revealed a loss of twenty pounds. We called to see the professor
+    under whom she was last placed, and he was surprised with the
+    clearness of her mental condition and good general appearance,
+    though he observed she had gotten a trifle thinner, but which he
+    had also in view to accomplish upon a five-meal plan per day. He
+    tried his best to confuse and trouble her with questions, etc.,
+    but found her too intensely awake, and she won the victory by
+    cornering him in his own set traps. We received his
+    congratulations and were made to promise to call again. I have
+    now been with her to seven physicians who were interested, and
+    have shown them Nature's own unhampered work.
+
+    "Miss Kuenzel has now an intense desire to help others. You are
+    at liberty to make use of Nature's work in her case for the
+    benefit of others, and I shall be only too glad to give you any
+    desired information that may be of use. The good work you have
+    started will, I am sure, never end; and it will prove a pleasure
+    to me indeed to work with added interest for the benefit of
+    those in need of the same in the future."
+
+The forty-fourth day of the fast was the busiest of all with her. She
+arose at 8.30 A. M. to attend to her affairs until the late afternoon,
+when she and her friend met a sister, by appointment from her home, at
+the Exposition. Several hours were spent there, and when they took the
+street car for return the only vacant seat was accepted by the sister,
+because she was tired, and not knowing that there were forty-four days
+without food with her sister, who was not tired. A striking feature of
+these daily walks was that they did not cause marked fatigue. Miss
+Kuenzel retired near midnight without unusual fatigue, and so ended the
+forty-fourth day of the fast.
+
+I quote from the _Chester County Times_ of Feb. 12, 1899:
+
+    "'Conclusive evidence is being multiplied as to the wonderful
+    power of fasting in the restoration of health, but it is only
+    more recently that its power in the case of insanity is even yet
+    more wonderful. A recent case is as near home as the city of
+    Philadelphia, and those interested are very willing that others
+    may know of it, so that its usefulness may be extended and its
+    value appreciated. The discovery was made by Dr. E. H. Dewey, of
+    Meadville, Pa., and tidings of the good work are being spread by
+    Charles C. Haskell & Son, of Norwich, Conn. The editor of this
+    paper knows somewhat the value of the discovery by an experience
+    of several years. We give a letter from the lady who was cured.
+
+
+                                 "'PHILADELPHIA, PA., Dec. 12, 1899.
+
+    "'_My Dear Mr. Haskell:_
+
+    "'I have received your letter of the 9th inst., and at last find
+    time to fulfil the request for a statement. In regard to my
+    _wonderful cure_ through "The New Gospel of Health," I would
+    state that the second week after Christmas, 1898, I first had a
+    paralyzing effect which affected the right side of face, body,
+    and limbs, also tongue, which nearly prevented my speaking. This
+    passed over and I again began working at my position as milliner
+    in a large establishment, and after a short while became so
+    dizzy and confused that I was compelled to ask my friends to
+    direct me home. (This was around Easter, 1899.) I was then taken
+    to a doctor, who at once requested me to stop working, and to
+    take a _complete rest_, but not for the stomach, as he
+    prescribed a severe and exacting master to stimulate the _tired
+    and overworked stomach_ to _renewed life_, and so give the
+    nerves plenty of pure food, as they were in need of same. I
+    then, after getting a ravenous hunger, weakened myself still
+    more and became worse. My stomach felt numb and paralyzed, as
+    did also my other internal organs, but this was put down against
+    me as an illusion. So a _professor of nervous diseases_ was
+    called in consultation, owing to my many desires to die (as life
+    had no sunshine, flowers, or music for me); I was simply living
+    a living death of torture which these professors would have were
+    illusions. My parents were then informed that I must be sent to
+    an asylum, where I was for ten long weeks. _They_ also told me
+    that my feelings were illusions, and proceeded to banish the
+    same by giving the _tired-out nerves a little rest_ and _plenty
+    of nourishment_ on a _five-meal_ plan per day. If refused (owing
+    to a loss of appetite), I was threatened to have nature helped
+    by the aid of a stomach or nasal tube. I lost none of my
+    illusions while there, as I could not feel any improvement in my
+    feelings. I left the institution June 28, 1899, feeling no
+    better; in fact, worse than when I arrived there. I was then
+    taken from one doctor to another, the one wishing to operate,
+    the other not; one advising me to go to the seashore, country,
+    etc., but _none_ to give my stomach the needed vacation.
+
+    "'It was then that my friend, Mr. Ritter, stepped in, as he saw
+    the failures of professors and specialists, and begged my
+    parents to let him have a chance to demonstrate what Dr. Dewey's
+    method would do for melancholy illusions and tired-out stomachs
+    and nerves. I then went to friends, and, in entire ignorance of
+    my parents, began under directions of Mr. Ritter the most
+    natural, sensible, and cheapest of all cures. I began my fast on
+    Oct. 3, and broke the same on Nov. 16. During the first week of
+    my fast I was in bed; during the second (excepting the eleventh
+    day, when I took my first walk of seven-eighths of a mile) I was
+    in bed, in rocker, reading, etc. On the twentieth day, after a
+    drive of three hours, went to church, walking two and
+    one-sixteenth miles. I then stayed indoors again on the
+    twenty-first and twenty-second days, and then started taking
+    daily walks (weather permitting). I went out walking
+    twenty-three out of the forty-five days of my fast, and during
+    that time walked one hundred and twelve miles. This was besides
+    the carriage-drives, Exposition, and evening gatherings (walking
+    to same included). I did not in the least feel tired or weak,
+    but happier and brighter each day of the fast, as I could feel
+    the effects of a new life throughout my whole body. My mind also
+    became clearer and dizziness became a thing of the past. This
+    was indeed _joy supreme to me_, and life became once more a joy
+    instead of a burden. Sunshine, trees, flowers, etc., again made
+    an impression, and my parents, sisters, and friends are rejoiced
+    to see me in my happy normal state of health.
+
+    "'I have gone through a year of unspeakable torture brought on
+    by overwork and _human-wise professors_; but at last, through
+    the wonderful teachings Dr. Dewey has given to mankind, and
+    through a friend, who was able to preach the "New Gospel of
+    Health," am now well, strong, and happy. May God only help and
+    bless the many sufferers throughout the world (especially in the
+    asylums) with the rays of this Gospel. I have been saved, no
+    doubt, from a gloomy future, and may such be the realization of
+    many more unfortunate souls is the sincere wish through
+    experience of
+
+        "'Yours very sincerely,
+
+            "'ESTELLA F. KUENZEL.'"
+
+This case was summed up in the Philadelphia _Public Ledger_ of Dec. 25,
+1899, whose columns are guarded with unsurpassed care, as follows:
+
+    "One of those cases which a judicious editor ponders in no
+    little perplexity is that of a young lady who was taken out of
+    an insane hospital and subjected to a protracted fast, without
+    medical supervision, and with results that appear to have been
+    quite successful. On the one hand, there is the benefit that may
+    be derived by having the attention of the profession called to
+    the subject, with possibly good results; on the other hand,
+    there is the danger of having a lot of ignorant or impulsive
+    people risking their lives by starving themselves for this or
+    that real or fancied disease, forgetting the adage that a little
+    knowledge is a dangerous thing, especially in therapeutics.
+
+    "The mind of the young lady referred to became affected about a
+    year ago, and after what was regarded by her parents as an
+    unprofitable period of treatment for two and a half months in a
+    hospital for the insane she has been apparently cured by
+    fasting--some would call it starvation. The case has been
+    attracting attention and discussion lately in a growing circle
+    that has included a few physicians.
+
+    "The subject is a Miss K., aged twenty-two years. Henry Ritter,
+    who has charge of the Photography Department of the Drexel
+    Institute, and who is better acquainted with the matter than any
+    one else, furnished a _Ledger_ reporter with the particulars as
+    they are here given, the name and address of the young lady, for
+    obvious reasons, being omitted. Mr. Ritter was at first loath to
+    have any publicity given the case, but felt upon reflection that
+    the results were properly a subject matter for inquiry by
+    physicians, at least, not to speak of others who may be
+    interested.
+
+    "Miss K., by the advice of specialists who had treated her at
+    home, was put under treatment for melancholy in an institution
+    for the insane. Mr. Ritter, being an intimate friend of the
+    family, visited her, and, he says, found her retrograding. She
+    was receiving three meals a day, with two luncheons between
+    them. Having built up his own digestive powers by following the
+    tenets laid down by Dr. Dewey, a Crawford county physician, he
+    had become a student and advocate of the latter's theory,
+    briefly stated, that no food should be given to a patient except
+    in response to a natural call or appetite for it. Believing that
+    no improvement could result from the course Miss K. was
+    receiving in the hospital, he prevailed upon her parents to
+    permit him to have her placed in the home of a friend, and
+    suggested the fasting process. This was the more readily done as
+    the physicians in whose care she had been advised her parents to
+    leave their daughter as much as possible among strangers.
+
+    "This young lady, according to Mr. Ritter, was absolutely
+    without food for forty-five days, beginning October 3 and ending
+    November 16. He says he did not fear, as others did, that she
+    would starve, as the authority he depended on had never fed a
+    sick patient during a practice covering twenty-two years, no
+    matter how protracted the case might have been, and claimed to
+    have had only the best results. 'This,' said Mr. Ritter, 'is on
+    the theory that, since all bodily energy is the result of the
+    brain, by abstaining from feeding in the absence of appetite
+    there is all the energy of cure undiverted by needless waste in
+    the stomach. Feeding the sick, this physician contends, is a tax
+    on their vital power, adding indigestion to whatever other
+    troubles exist: because the brain has the power in sickness to
+    absorb nourishment from the body, as predigested food, so that
+    it never loses weight, even in death from starvation.'
+
+    "The patient herself became interested, Mr. Ritter says, and
+    evidenced great relief from abstinence from enforced periodic
+    feeding. Gradually a numb feeling of which she had complained as
+    affecting her internal organs, and which had been ascribed to
+    her illusions, left her, and she appeared to gain daily in
+    strength and brightness. Mr. Ritter's narrative proceeds:
+
+    "'On the eleventh day of her fast a walk was suggested, and she
+    covered about seven-eighths of a mile; on the twentieth day she
+    was taken for a carriage drive of three hours in the afternoon,
+    and in the evening she walked to church and back, a distance of
+    something more than two miles. From the twenty-third day she
+    took walks daily, excepting on October 31 and November 3, when
+    rain prevented. She visited friends and the theatre and the
+    Exposition, went to church several times, to the hospital where
+    she had been a patient--this on the thirty-fifth day of her
+    fast--and to the Drexel Institute on the thirty-ninth and
+    forty-second days. A table of dates shows that she walked from
+    two or three to six and eight and as high as nine miles a day
+    during the period of forty-five days that she abstained from
+    food, with a general increase of strength and cheer and no sign
+    of fatigue. Hunger sensations were marked on the forty-fourth
+    day and night, and on the morning of the forty-fifth day Miss K.
+    broke the fast by eating a poached egg and two slices of
+    buttered whole wheat toasted bread.
+
+    "'During her fast she was seen by seven physicians and medical
+    professors, President MacAlister and professors of the Drexel
+    Institute, and many others.'
+
+    "The young lady's weight at the beginning of the fast, Mr.
+    Ritter says, was one hundred and forty pounds, and just after
+    the meal with which she broke the fast she weighed one hundred
+    and twenty pounds. By December 15 she had regained nine pounds,
+    meanwhile eating one meal daily and sometimes two, with an
+    occasional light luncheon.
+
+    "Dr. Chase, medical director of the institution above referred
+    to, was visited on Saturday by a _Ledger_ reporter in regard to
+    the case of Miss K. He had been informed of her long fast and
+    of its results, and had seen Miss K. herself when she called at
+    the asylum on the thirty-fifth day of the fast. He said that
+    when she was first brought to the asylum she was suffering from
+    melancholia, and was put under the treatment which all the
+    leading alienists had found most beneficial for persons
+    suffering from nervous disorders, viz., quiet, rest of mind and
+    body, and full, nourishing diet, carefully selected to produce
+    the best results. During the time she remained at the asylum she
+    improved both in bodily and mental health.
+
+    "Referring to the treatment she had received under Mr. Ritter's
+    supervision since leaving the asylum, Dr. Chase said he had
+    first heard of the system through a work published two years ago
+    by Dr. George S. Keith, of London, from which he first learned
+    of Dr. Dewey, who also uses the fasting cure. In all the cases
+    cited by Dr. Keith none had been afflicted with any mental
+    disorder. He looked upon the cases, however, as showing some
+    remarkable results, warranting a careful study. But it would not
+    do to adopt such a system without a most thorough examination.
+    As 'one swallow does not make a summer,' neither will one case
+    nor half a dozen cases cured by such a method prove anything. No
+    universal method can be adopted for treating disease. Hardly two
+    cases are alike. Cures also may be brought about in different
+    ways if the exact condition of the patient is understood.
+
+    "'Mr. Ritter says the patient lent herself very willingly to the
+    treatment, which was a great deal to start out with in her case.
+    But I am surprised that a young man with no medical knowledge
+    would do a thing like that. The treatment might easily have
+    resulted differently. If he had been a doctor, he would have had
+    that fact to sustain him in case he got into trouble. The case
+    might very well have resulted fatally, because the treatment was
+    so contrary to what would naturally be pursued by physicians in
+    nervous cases.
+
+    "'I do not ridicule the system. There have been cases which were
+    cured by ways not recognized by the general practitioner after
+    they had been given up. I am a firm believer that in selected
+    cases the fasting method would be efficacious, but I do not
+    believe in its general application.
+
+    "'Mr. Ritter is evidently an enthusiast, and apt to overstate
+    the points in favor of the method, neglecting those which tell
+    against it. It is too early yet to say what the outcome of Miss
+    K.'s case will be. I think the matter ought to be looked into
+    more fully. Mr. Ritter could not have been with the patient at
+    all times. It is a remarkable thing that she should have kept up
+    and had the strength reported, unless she had some food. He may
+    have been deceived in that.'"
+
+During several months since the fast there have been the best physical
+_health_ and mental condition, the weight having increased several
+pounds above the former average.
+
+Mr. Ritter conducted this case in a blaze of publicity. He showed it to
+no less than seven physicians, some of whom were college professors, and
+one of them at near the close of the fast suggested that if food were
+not soon taken a sudden collapse would be the result. There seemed to
+have been less danger of this calamity on the forty-fourth day than on
+any other.
+
+The reliability of the fast was so clearly evident that the leading
+papers of the city accepted it as authentic news and of the most
+startling kind. _The Times_ gave several columns of its first page to an
+illustrated article.[1]
+
+    The accompanying illustration shows Miss Kuenzel on the
+    forty-first day of her fast. She walked seven miles on this day
+    without any signs of fatigue.
+
+[Illustration: Copyrighted 1900, by Henry Ritter.
+
+MISS ESTELLA F. KUENZEL,
+
+FORTY-FIRST DAY OF FAST.]
+
+The following table of miles walked were measured from exact diary notes
+with bicycle and cyclometer after the fast was broken. The table gives
+the total sum of each day, walks being taken both afternoon and evenings
+of same day.
+
+       Date.          Miles.
+
+    October  3
+       "     4
+       "     5
+       "     6
+       "     7
+       "     8
+       "     9
+       "    10
+       "    11
+       "    12
+       "    13          7/8
+       "    14
+       "    15
+       "    16
+       "    17
+       "    18
+       "    19
+       "    20
+       "    21
+       "    22        2-1/16
+       "    23
+       "    24
+       "    25        3
+       "    26        6-5/8
+       "    27        5-7/8
+       "    28        4-1/2
+       "    29        4-1/8
+       "    30        5-5/8
+       "    31, rain
+    November 1        6-3/4
+       "     2        8
+       "     3 rain
+       "     4        9
+       "     5        6
+       "     6        3-3/4
+       "     7        1-1/2
+       "     8        7-1/4
+       "     9        7
+       "    10        4-1/4
+       "    11        2-5/8
+       "    12        7
+       "    13        2-1/4
+       "    14        3-1/4
+       "    15        5
+       "    16        5-3/4
+                    --------
+                    112-1/16
+
+The next fast, under the care of Mr. Ritter, still holds the record as
+being the most remarkable for its number of days and the miracle of
+results. The following account of it appeared in the _North American_,
+one of whose editors had personal knowledge of its history:
+
+    "Leonard Thress, of 2618 Frankford Avenue, has learned how to
+    live without eating. By physical experience he has proved not
+    only that food is not a daily necessity of the human system, but
+    that abstinence therefrom for protracted periods is beneficial.
+    Indeed, it saved his life. He has just finished a fifty days'
+    fast. When he began it he was on the brink of the grave and his
+    physicians had abandoned hope. When he ended it he was in better
+    health than he had enjoyed for years, although in the meantime
+    he had lost seventy-six pounds, falling away from two hundred
+    and nine to one hundred and thirty-three pounds.
+
+    "Thress, who is about fifty-seven years old, was attending the
+    Grand Army Encampment at Buffalo in the fall of 1898, when he
+    caught a violent cold, which settled in his bronchial tubes. It
+    proved so stubborn that his general health became affected, and
+    a year later dropsy developed. His condition grew steadily
+    worse, and at Christmas time, 1899, it was such that he could
+    neither walk nor lie prostrate, but was compelled to sit
+    constantly in an armchair. His doctors exhausted their skill in
+    the effort to bring relief, and eventually, in the early part of
+    last January, they told him that their medicines refused to act,
+    and that his death was a question of only a few days.
+
+    "Up to this time Thress had been subsisting on the meagre diet
+    permitted to a man in his condition, but his stomach rebelled
+    even at that. He had heard of the Dewey fasting cure and its
+    boasted efficacy against all human ills, and, though he had
+    little faith, death was already looming before him, and he knew
+    that he could lose nothing by the experiment.
+
+    "He began to fast on January 11 by taking in the morning a
+    portion of Henzel's preparation of salts in a glass of water and
+    the juice of two oranges, and in the evening a hot lemonade. For
+    twenty-five days he also drank a teaspoonful of a tonic
+    consisting chiefly of iron, but the rest of the diet he
+    continued until two weeks ago, when he discontinued the salts
+    and orange juice and confined himself to a hot lemonade at
+    morning and evening. This was his only sustenance until last
+    Thursday.
+
+    "According to Thress's own recital, the effects of this course
+    of treatment were amazing. He says that the natural craving for
+    food was gone after the first day. Three days later he had
+    regained so much strength that he was able to go upstairs to
+    bed and enjoyed a good night's sleep. From that time on,
+    although he steadily lost in weight, his vitality grew greater,
+    and on January 22 he left the house and took a half-mile walk.
+
+    "Before three weeks of his fast had elapsed his dropsy had
+    disappeared, and thereafter he took almost daily walks,
+    increasing the distance with his strength. Some days he covered
+    as many as five miles, and never less than two, even while he
+    was growing thinner and thinner, as the accompanying table
+    shows.
+
+    "For the first time since the beginning of his fast he became
+    hungry last Thursday, March 1, and he felt that he should like
+    some pigs' feet jelly. It is one of the prescriptions of the
+    fasting cure that when hunger finally comes the patient shall
+    eat whatever he craves, so Thress consumed two slices of the
+    jelly and one piece of gluten bread, with butter. He says he
+    enjoyed it and felt well afterward.
+
+    "He ate no more that day, but at noon yesterday he became hungry
+    again, and this time his appetite was for something more
+    substantial. He disposed of a dish of mashed potatoes, some red
+    cabbage, another portion of pigs' feet jelly, apple sauce, and a
+    cream puff for dessert. He even smoked a cigar after the meal,
+    enjoyed it, and felt still better. He says he will eat no
+    regular meals, but only when he becomes hungry.
+
+    "While he looks haggard and worn from the loss of flesh, Thress
+    declares that all his ailments have left him and that he never
+    felt healthier and heartier in his life."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "The following table shows how Thress grew stronger and walked
+    miles while he was constantly losing weight from a fifty-days'
+    fast:
+
+                     Weight.
+    January 11         209
+       "    12         207
+       "    13         205
+       "    14         202
+       "    15         201
+       "    16         200
+       "    17         199
+       "    18         196
+       "    19         192
+       "    20         190
+       "    21         188
+       "    22         186 Walked 1/2 mile.
+       "    23         180   "    2 miles.
+       "    24         177   "    2   "
+       "    25         172   "    3   "
+       "    26         167   "    3   "
+       "    27         165   "    3   "
+       "    28         162   "    2-1/2  "
+       "    29         160   "    3   "
+       "    30         157
+       "    31         155   "    3   "
+    February 1         154
+       "     2         153
+       "     3         152   "    3   "
+       "     4         151
+       "     5         149   "    3   "
+       "     6         147   "    3   "
+       "     7         146   "    3   "
+       "     8         145
+       "     9         145   "    4   "
+       "    10         145   "    4   "
+       "    11         145
+       "    12         145   "    4   "
+       "    13         145
+       "    14         145   "    3   "
+       "    15         144   "    2   "
+       "    16         142
+       "    17         140
+       "    18         140
+       "    19         140
+       "    20         138   "    2    "
+       "    21         137   "    4    "
+       "    22         135 Walked 3 miles.
+       "    23         135   "    3   "
+       "    24         135
+       "    25         135
+       "    26         135
+       "    27         133   "    2   "
+       "    28         133
+    March    1         133
+
+A. H. Potts, Editor of the _Chester County Times_, a man who has the
+largest faith in eating only to restore the wastes of the body, thus
+gives vent to his emotions after seeing the case by invitation of Mr.
+Ritter:
+
+    "On January 10 there sat in his home, at 2618 Frankford Avenue,
+    Philadelphia, Mr. Leonard Thress, with dropsy, hopelessly given
+    up to a speedy death by the many physicians he had vainly sought
+    and paid well for relief. His weight was two hundred and nine
+    pounds. His limbs were at the bursting point, and the water was
+    close up to the top of his chest. He could not lie down nor even
+    lay his head back without choking, and to walk across the room
+    completely exhausted him. At that critical moment a friend of
+    his heard of Miss Kuenzel's miraculous cure, and told him of it.
+    He at once sent for Mr. Ritter, who thought that a cure was in
+    his reach, and on January 11 Thress commenced a fast that has
+    been absolute up to yesterday, the only things passing his lips
+    being water, a little lemonade, and rarely the juice of an
+    orange. Learning through the _Chester County Times_ that we were
+    interested in Dr. Dewey's discovery, he invited us to come and
+    see the cases now under his care, and on Friday of last week we
+    gladly availed ourselves of the opportunity to see the living
+    proof of what we believed but had never seen. We were very
+    cordially received at Mr. Ritter's home, and instead of meeting
+    a pompous, egotistic, big man, as we might expect, we met a
+    young gentleman of small stature, like ourselves, modest,
+    retiring, and claiming no credit for his own part in these
+    remarkable cures; but insisting that he is only observing the
+    progress of cases, following in the line of truths discovered
+    only by Dr. Dewey, giving such advice as he is enabled to do
+    from his thorough knowledge of chemistry, anatomy, and hygiene.
+    He took us to the house of Mr. Thress, and the startling
+    impressions we received can never be effaced. We seemed to be in
+    the presence of one who had arisen from the dead, and could not
+    realize the truth of what we saw and heard from him and his
+    estimable wife, who shows the happiness she feels in receiving
+    her husband back to life. Impossible as it seems, yet on the
+    previous day, as well as many other days, that man had walked
+    three miles after six hours given to his business as a baker,
+    which he now attends to personally. All traces of dropsy have
+    disappeared, and his weight is now less than one hundred and
+    thirty-five pounds, having lost this nearly seventy-five pounds
+    of water through the natural channels at the rate of five or six
+    pounds per day at times. His eyesight has grown younger and his
+    hand is firm. He sleeps soundly several hours out of each
+    twenty-four, and is almost a cured man, although the curative
+    action is still going forward throughout his system, and his
+    many friends are now awaiting the arrival of his normal healthy
+    appetite, which in these cases does not arrive until the cure is
+    entire, and then it comes in such a way as not to be mistaken.
+    On Monday of this week we again visited him, taking a friend who
+    has long suffered similarly to what he did, that she might see
+    results for herself. We found him looking even better than on
+    Friday, and it is very interesting to hear him tell his
+    experience, which he will be glad to impart to those who are
+    seeking after the truth, and interested in the cure of disease
+    of themselves or their friends by this natural and without price
+    (but priceless) means. We also visited two other of the five
+    cases over which Mr. Ritter is at present keeping watch, and
+    every one bore evidences of the great truth. No one should
+    undertake the fast on their own responsibility, as certain
+    conditions may arise requiring the eye of one who has made the
+    matter a study, and no one should pass an opinion on the matter
+    until they read Dr. Dewey's _New Gospel of Health_, wherein the
+    reasons are made so plain that all can understand."
+
+[Illustration: Copyrighted 1900, by Henry Ritter.
+
+MR. LEONARD THRESS,
+
+FIFTIETH DAY OF FAST.]
+
+Mr. Thress has regained his normal weight and has been in the best of
+health in the several months since the fast.[2]
+
+The following case was deemed a miracle by all friends: Mrs. H. B., a
+woman of seventy-six, became exceedingly breathless, due, it was
+supposed, to defective heart action that had been chronic for many
+years. The final result was general dropsy. The eyelids had become so
+heavy that reading could be indulged only a short time because of their
+weight; the throat was also charged with water so as to make swallowing
+difficult. Beneath the eyes and jaws were pockets of water--in short,
+the skin of the entire body was distended, a condition that had deceived
+the friends as revealing only an increase of her natural stoutness. The
+real condition became known through a call to treat a bad cold.
+
+What had authorized medical art to promise in such a case? Absolutely
+nothing, as she had become too old and weak to be subjected to the
+ordinary means for such a general condition. As for a fast for one so
+old, that was the last thing that would have been thought of: her age
+and debility would only have seemed to invite more daily food than she
+had been taking.
+
+She was put on a fast, or rather the fast was continued, the cold
+having abolished her appetite. It went on until the fifteenth day, with
+increasing general strength and diminishing weight. The last days before
+hunger came she was able to go up a long flight of stairs without the
+aid of the railing and without marked loss of breath, the heart-murmur
+had nearly disappeared, and water by the gallon seemed to have been
+absorbed.
+
+On the fifteenth day there was a desire for food, that was taken with
+relish through the enlarged throat without difficulty; the water pockets
+had become emptied, and the lids so thin and light as to reveal no
+fatigue in reading. Thence on one meal a day became the rule; and since
+there have been five years without any recurrence of the
+conditions--five years of remarkable general health and girl-time relish
+for her daily food.
+
+How often has the cutting down of the daily food by the old and weak
+been condemned as too severe an ordeal to be safe! For this woman there
+have been these acquired years of nearly perfect health, and the end
+will be in the natural, easier death of old age.
+
+The following is inserted as additional evidence of Nature's power over
+disease, and that brain-workers may go on with their labors with
+increasing power while waiting for natural hunger in cases in which
+hunger is possible:
+
+    Rev. C. H. Dalrymple, of Hampden, Mass., has just completed a
+    fast, of which he says, February 5, 1900: "My fast continued
+    thirty-nine and one-half days. My appetite came on me about 9
+    o'clock at night, and I thought I would wait until the next
+    day; but two boiled eggs and some dry toast would not retire
+    before my presence. I have never had such an assault upon my
+    will power as that imagined egg and toast made on me. I was
+    finally compelled to surrender. My tongue had been clearing up
+    that day, and the next day I was hungry at noon. I have not
+    missed a first-class appetite at noon since. My tongue has kept
+    clear and my taste has remained sweet. I have had no chills nor
+    fevers this winter, nor cold in any form. I have made no
+    allowance for my sickness and have never worked harder. My flesh
+    came back rapidly, and now I think I must weigh about fifteen
+    pounds more than last summer. _I gained strength beyond all
+    question about three weeks before my appetite returned. I would
+    work all day long finally._ It was good to get well."
+
+Mr. Ritter conducted over twenty cases, some being able to carry on
+their usual avocations. I give the most important ones: Mr. A. H.,
+forty-five days; Miss B. H., forty-two days; Mrs. L., thirty-eight days;
+Mr. L. W., thirty-six days; Miss L. J., thirty-five days; Mrs. M.,
+thirty-one days; Miss E. S., twenty-six days; Mr. G. R., twenty-five
+days; Mr. P. R., twenty-four days; and Miss E. Westing, forty-two days,
+who, on the fortieth day, was able to sing with unusual clearness and
+power, and ended her fast without losing a day from her duties as a
+teacher of music.[3]
+
+Wonderful are these fasts? Not in the physiological sense. These fasts
+went on with only increasing comfort by day and more refreshing sleep
+at night. It is quite another thing to endure the fasts of acute
+sickness, for such they all are. That life is maintained for days and
+weeks, even months, under pain, discomfort--under all the torturing
+conditions of such diseases as pneumonia, typhoid fever, or inflammatory
+rheumatism, is far more a matter to wonder over.
+
+I may well wonder that Nature is powerful enough to cure the sick at all
+even under the wisest aid; but with me the abiding wonder is that
+physicians do not see that acute sickness is a loss of all the natural
+conditions of digestion, with the wasting bodies the clearest evidence
+that food is neither digested nor assimilated. I wonder with only
+increasing impatience that the stomach is not understood as a machine
+that Nature wills shall not be run to tax her resources when life is in
+the throes of disease.
+
+[Illustration: Copyrighted 1900, by Henry Ritter.
+
+MISS ELIZABETH W. A. WESTING,
+
+FORTIETH DAY OF FAST.]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] The fasts conducted by Mr. Ritter constitute performances of the
+most impressive kind as demonstrative evidence of the practical
+physiology I have been teaching for many years. For the copyrighted
+photographs he has kindly furnished I am very thankful, and to all who
+have been willing to enhance the value and interest of this volume by
+such eyesight illustrations.
+
+[2] The accompanying illustration shows Mr. Thress on the fiftieth day
+of his fast; weight loss, seventy-six pounds. Does the picture reveal
+any skeleton condition?
+
+[3] The accompanying illustration is a reproduced copyrighted picture of
+Miss E. Westing. This picture was taken on the return home from her
+duties at church on the fortieth day during the cold of winter; the
+weight at the start being one hundred and ten pounds, at the close on
+the forty-second day ninety-three pounds--loss, seventeen pounds.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+
+I had not been long engaged in observing the evolution of cure through
+Nature when I began to suspect strongly, as before intimated, that
+fasting is the true "medicine for the mind diseased." Not less evident
+than the cure of various ailings would be the emergence of the soul into
+higher life, and in some instances from the depth of despair. As the
+scope of my vision constantly enlarged through multiplying experiences,
+I began to see great hopes of the cure of the gravest of all
+diseases--insanity--through a rigid application of this method in
+Nature. I gave the matter so much thought and study that I wrote a
+monograph on the subject with the idea of publishing it, but gave it up
+to the idea of telling my impressions in "The No-breakfast Plan."
+
+There are the same structural changes in the evolution of insanity as in
+that of catarrh. There is a morbid structural basis in minds diseased,
+the abnormal mentality or morality being merely symptoms of a physical
+disease. Of all human legacies, structural weakness of the mental or
+moral sense is the most unfortunate.
+
+I shall say no more about the forms of mental disease than that there is
+distinctively both intellectual and moral insanity as a direct result
+of disease of the intellectual and moral centres. This will be more
+clearly seen when I recall the fact that moral insanity in its worse
+form--the suicidal--often exists with such intellectual clearness that
+there is the greatest ingenuity displayed in carrying out
+self-destruction. These mind and soul centres are often gravely diseased
+without impairment of muscle energy: the furious strength of the insane
+is an abiding fear with all.
+
+It is clear that weakness of structure so soft as brain, a substance
+which is on the dividing-line between liquids and solids, must be of the
+gravest form from the first: grave because so fragile, grave because the
+sick centres cannot rest as the broken arm, the sick body: these
+centres, regardless how sick, must continue to serve, even in abnormal
+ways.
+
+The possibility of insanity must always be a matter of the degree of the
+primary structural weakness and the energy and persistence of the
+operative forces; on these must depend the mere gentle, persistent
+illusion, or that fury of mania which transforms man, the "image of the
+Creator," into a wild beast. That insanity, no matter what its form or
+degree, is an evolution from an ancestral structural legacy, not
+essentially different from the structural conditions evolved from those
+of any other chronic disease, I cannot have the slightest doubt, any
+more than I can have for the structural means for the cure.
+
+There is nothing that so illustrates the civilization, the benevolence
+of the age and of the nations as these palaces we call hospitals for the
+insane. Whatever there is that can add comfort to the body, or charm to
+the tastes, or new life to the soul has its culmination in these palaces
+of wood and stone, with one great exception: the structural condition of
+the diseased centres indicating rest, even as the ulcer, wound, or
+fracture, has no part in the methods of cure.
+
+The feeding is all done not at the time of hunger, but at the time of
+day. All patients are expected to eat no less than three meals a day,
+regardless of any desire for food and whether the patient spends all his
+time in bed in mindless apathy, whether pacing his room with meaningless
+tread, whether active in light service in the building or in heavy labor
+without. When there is refusal to eat it seems to be taken for granted
+that suicide by starvation is the design, and the pumping of food into
+the stomach through the nose is the common resort. There seems to be no
+thought that there may be no hunger in such cases, and no apprehension
+of any danger from not eating; that in this they follow the instincts of
+brutes. Would the desire for food not come and with a saner condition of
+mind if they were permitted their own ways of eating?
+
+A physically strong woman, whom I knew well, was sent to a hospital for
+the insane in a generally bad state of mind, with destructive
+propensities marked. With no desire for food, and certainly with no mind
+to realize the need to eat without hunger, she naturally refused to
+eat. But for a time her meals were forced down her throat, a proceeding
+that taxed the strength of several strong arms.
+
+Why were the meals not omitted long enough to cause such a reduction of
+strength as to make feeding less expensive in the outlay of others'
+muscle? The persistent refusal to eat resulted in a cessation of all
+efforts to enforce food; left to the gentler hands of Nature for a time,
+the mental hurricane subsided in great degree on the return of hunger,
+and long before there was an appreciable loss of weight or strength. In
+a few months this woman was able to return to her home, and with
+restored mind to tell me of the violent feedings she had endured.
+
+Now let us look again to the structural conditions involved in diseases
+of the mind. There are those soft, pulpy centres from which emanate the
+highest powers of life: power to think, to admire, to rejoice, or to
+suffer; and we know how digestive power varies along the scale between
+ecstacy and despair. In mental disease there is the same abnormal
+structural change as in other local diseases; but for these sick
+mind-centres there is no rest. There must be still thinking and feeling,
+no matter how chaotic, to tax them, and there is no cheer to electrify
+the stomach into easy display of power. We may well marvel that powers
+so wonderful as the power to think, love, admire, see, hear, and feel
+are located in structures so fragile as the brain; and we may well
+marvel at the provision of the turret of flinty hardness to protect it
+from violence.
+
+Now we are to consider these centres of energy as abnormally weak in all
+their structures at birth in those who become insane: these are the
+luckless legacies from the fathers and the mothers, and for how far back
+in the ancestral line we do not know. We are to consider that there is
+the same abnormal condition of the cerebral bloodvessels and of the
+softer inter-vascular structures as in other local diseases; and when
+you recall the fact that everything that worries, that adds discomfort
+to either mind or muscles, is a force that tends to develop weakness and
+disease, you will see how it applies in the evolution of insanity.
+
+Shall these fragile centres be permitted to rest when overwork has made
+them sick, or is there any other rational means for their recovery?
+Shall they not be permitted to rest when abundantly able to keep
+physically nourished in a way that does not cause even the slightest
+shade of discomfort?
+
+Again, let it be borne in mind that recovery from acute disease is
+attended with a revival of strength in every power that makes life worth
+living, and that every person not acutely sick who has fasted under my
+care or who has cut down the waste of brain power by less daily food has
+found the same revival of power. To this there have been no exceptions.
+
+What do we fear in sickness? Is it disease or the wasting pounds? Since
+they will disappear when Nature would have the food-gate closed, since
+they reappear when there is the highest possible reach of mere relish,
+and when all the other senses have become more acute, and also when
+existence has become almost ecstatic, why ever oppress the weak or sick
+centres when Nature wills a rest?
+
+The literature on the disease of the mind has become so massive in mere
+bulk, in its physiological refinements, that it would require time with
+a long reach into eternity to go through it; but it has not come to my
+knowledge that it contains any reference to the brain as a
+self-nourishing, self-charging dynamo; that therefore the stomach is
+only a machine whose use can well be omitted for long periods when these
+centres of moral and intellectual energy have become worried into
+disease, with rest the only means, the only need for all the recovery
+possible.
+
+"Oh, you giants of the medical profession!" You who have been elected to
+preside over these great homes of the mentally wrecked because of your
+eminence in character, ability, experience, and professional
+attainments, do you deny the soundness of the physiology involved in
+this method of reaching health through Nature? Then let me array against
+you Alexander Haig, M. A., M. D. Oxon., F. R. C. P., Physician to the
+Metropolitan Hospital, and the Royal Hospital, and for Children and
+Women; late Casualty Physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. I quote
+from his exhaustive work, _Uric Acid in the Causation of Disease_:
+
+"And now I come to the causes which led me to take too much albumen and
+to suffer severely; in _Fads of an Old Physician_, Dr. Keith refers to
+another work on diet, by Dr. Dewey, of Meadville, Pa., _The True Science
+of Living_, and the chief point in this book is that temporary, complete
+starvation till there is once more a healthy appetite is the best cure
+for a host of dyspepsia, debilities, depression, mental and bodily, and
+numerous other troubles, and that for similar less severe disturbances
+of nutrition the great remedy is to leave out the breakfast, so as to
+give the stomach a long rest of sixteen hours or more, with the object
+of allowing it to recuperate and accumulate secretions after the last
+meal of the previous day.
+
+"It seems from internal evidence in Dr. Dewey's book, a copy of which I
+owe to Dr. Keith, that his plans have been completely successful in a
+large number of cases, _and it seems to me that his logic is
+unanswerable_, and that in his main contentions he is perfectly right.
+
+"Having arrived at this conclusion, I proceeded forthwith to put the
+matter to the test of experience by placing myself on two meals a
+day--that is, I left out my breakfast--and the result was I ate such a
+good lunch at 1 P. M. that it was impossible to take anything more till
+dinner-time, 7.30 or 8 P. M.; so that I reduced myself at once from four
+meals a day to two. The result was exactly what Dr. Dewey describes. I
+felt extremely bright and well in the morning, and capable of very good
+work, both mental and bodily. At 1 P. M. I had keen hunger, even for dry
+bread; such hunger as I had not experienced for years. After lunch
+(breakfast) I felt a little bit dull and occasionally sleepy, and the
+mental work for the first hour or two after it was not as good as usual.
+About 5 P. M. I was very thirsty and had to have a drink of water, but
+there was not the least desire for food until several hours later;
+though by 7.30 or 8 P. M. I was able to manage another fairly good meal;
+and thus my meals automatically, so to speak, reduced themselves to
+two."
+
+I also quote from his work on _Diet and Food_, page 10:
+
+"It is also possible, by introducing more food than can possibly be
+digested, to overpower digestion so that nothing is digested and
+absorbed, and starvation results, a fact that has been brought to the
+front in the most interesting manner in the writings of Dr. Dewey."
+
+And who is Dr. Keith? You know that he is one of the youngest physicians
+in all Scotland, even if he does possess eighty years that are no burden
+to him. I quote him from his _Fads of an Old Physician_:
+
+"Dr. Dewey's grand means of cure now is abstinence for the time from all
+food, and this he carries out to a degree which must astonish most
+physicians of the present day, as well as their patients. During times
+of sickness, when there is no desire for food, he gives none till the
+desire comes, and then only if the state of the tongue and general
+condition show that the power of digestion has returned. This may be in
+a few days, or in severe cases, as of rheumatic fever, it may not be for
+forty days or even longer. He points out very forcibly that we have all
+a store of material laid up in the body which supplies what is required
+for keeping necessary functions of the system going, while no food can
+be usefully taken in the stomach. I had mentioned this provision in my
+_Plea_, and had stated that so long as it lasts it is sufficient to
+preserve life. I also suggested that it might be found that the waste of
+the body was less when this internal supply was alone trusted to, than
+when it was supplemented by food from without which the organs of
+nutrition were not in a condition to utilize. This, to my mind, Dr.
+Dewey has proved to be the fact, and no one can read his case without
+being convinced that it is so. He gives a most interesting table from
+Dr. Yeo, showing what textures of the body waste most rapidly in
+disease. Fat is at one end of the scale, and at the other the brain,
+which does not waste till all the other textures and organs are depleted
+to the utmost.
+
+"In cases of slighter disease where the patient is able to be about or
+to carry on his business, but with discomfort, the same abstinence from
+all food is recommended. It is usually found that work can be done more
+easily, and that strength actually increases, although the starving may
+have to be kept up for several days. But the great _coup_ in Dr.
+Dewey's practice is, that to improve or to preserve health he advises
+all to give up breakfast, and to fast till the mid-day meal. In this he
+has had a very large number of followers, very much to their advantage.
+It may be that the omission of breakfast is more needed and has greater
+effect in America than it would have on this side of the Atlantic. In
+America the meal is generally a very full one, made up in a large
+measure of a variety of hot cakes, also flesh food and tea or coffee.
+The other two meals of the day are full, 'square' meals likewise. I have
+seen much overfeeding in this country, but never to such a degree, and
+so generally, as I have seen in America and on American steamers. In one
+of the latter the cooking was the worst I ever met with, but the hard
+meat was swallowed all the same, and the consequences must have been
+grievous."
+
+Are you still without any questioning of your authorized, established
+methods of treating the mentally sick? Then let me quote against you
+another man across the ocean, whose ability, learning, and professional
+attainments are of the highest order. I quote from _Air, Food, and
+Exercise_, by A. Rabagliati, M. A., M. D., F. R. C. S., Edin., a man
+with whom patient, exhaustive investigation is only a recreation:
+
+"It has been shown by physiologists that certain tissues are absorbed
+and used before others. Dr. Dewey, of Pennsylvania, with whose views I
+am glad to find myself in general accord, and who seems to have made
+the same attempt as the writer to view the facts of medical practice
+from an independent--and may I say, original?--standpoint, quotes a
+table of great significance from Dr. Yeo. Besides quoting it in the text
+of his book, _The True Science of Living_, Dr. Dewey places it in
+capital letters in the frontispiece of his book. He calls it Nature's
+Bill of Fare for the Sick; and he shows that in illness, when we are
+using up the materials accumulated in our bodies, we may use as much as
+99 per cent. of our fat (practically all of it), that of muscle we may
+use as much as 30 per cent., that the spleen may waste to the extent of
+63 per cent., the liver as much as 56 per cent., and the blood itself be
+absorbed to the extent of 17 per cent. of its total amount. But even
+when wasting to this extent has occurred the curious and significant
+fact is emphasized that the _brain and nerve-centres may not have wasted
+at all_. The controlling nervous system thus does not lose its powers
+till the very last. Generally, however, the wasting process does not
+require to be carried to the very last, the chronic inflammatory deposit
+(and in rare cases even a cancerous infiltration) being absorbed and got
+rid of before this point is reached.
+
+"As most, if not all, of the chronic diseases depend upon the deposition
+of waste, unassimilated materials in various situations; or, in other
+words, depend upon a blocking of the local circulation in this way, a
+little wholesome starvation is generally of vast benefit by inducing
+the economy to use up some of its waste stuff. Nature herself points the
+way to us in this matter, because when things have gone as far as she
+can bear, and when, were things to go on in the same way, death must
+ensue, she generally throws the patient into bed with a digestive system
+entirely disorganized, taking away all appetite for food and all power
+of assimilation for the time being. We may, in such circumstances, do
+much harm by efforts too persistently made to feed our patients; but
+generally they refuse all sustenance for some time. After a while (Dr.
+Dewey does not seem to be afraid if his patients refuse all food even
+for as long on some occasions as thirty days continuously, or even
+longer) they right themselves, the tongue cleans, appetite returns, the
+power of assimilation is reestablished, and recovery takes place. It
+strikes me as somewhat curious (and yet, if we both look at the facts of
+life candidly and impartially, perhaps it is not curious) that observers
+so wide apart, and in circumstances so very different as the conditions
+of human life must be in Yorkshire from what they are in Pennsylvania,
+should come to conclusions so practically similar as Dr. Dewey and the
+writer have reached."
+
+Gentlemen, masters in the medical profession, to what good end are you
+pumping food into human stomach, where there is no hunger and no mind
+left to know the need? Is it to maintain that strength which costs you
+so much muscle at every feeding. Or is it that it would be a danger to
+lose a few pounds of body while Nature gets ready to ask for food in
+the gentlest and most persuasive way? Whatever there is in appeal to the
+best in any human life to uplift it from the deepest depths, you have at
+the readiest command. You seem amply equipped to reach everything but
+those sick, afflicted, oppressed brain-centres. You treat everything but
+these, but to these you are worse than the Egyptian task-masters in that
+you force needless labor where rest alone is the need. It is not bricks
+without straw, but labor with exhausted power; and for all your efforts
+you simply maintain weight at a tremendous cost to the energy of cure.
+In no class of patients is rest for the brain more indicated than in
+yours; in none are the means so at command and the results for good so
+promising. With your patients the importance of time for business or
+social use is no more a concern; the abnormal is all due to disease.
+
+Let us consider those rooms of bedlam you call the "excitable wards."
+They who enter leave all hope (of the friends) behind. Is there special
+need in these regions of despair and mental chaos that the mere pounds
+and strength shall be kept up? What will be lost by protracted fasts?
+Nothing in the kitchen. As for the brain and those sick centres, they
+will feed themselves until the last heart-beat sends the last available
+nourishment to the remotest cell. Will the functions of the brain grow
+more abnormal by a suspension of digestive drafts upon it? Does rest to
+anything that is tired tend to the abnormal?
+
+Again I ask, What will be lost by protracted fasts in such cases?
+Nothing but weight, of which the fat will be by far the larger part.
+Would there be worry about starvation? With most of the cases there is
+not mind enough to worry over anything from the standpoint of reason.
+The very fact of the absence of the sense of the importance of daily
+food would render fasts in the highest degree practical and successful.
+
+The fasts could be instituted with the certainty of a calmer condition
+of mind as soon as the digestive tract would cease to call upon the
+brain for power, and with the probability that a surprising degree of
+improvement would be manifest in all, and long before the available
+body-food for the brain would be exhausted.
+
+Gentlemen, you have treated acute sickness in all its forms, and you
+have had many cases in which, because of irritable stomachs, neither
+food nor medicine could be given. Day after day you have seen the
+wasting of the bodies, and you have also seen mental aberration or
+stupor lessen day by day as the disease lessened its grasp upon the
+brain-centres, and finally when the point of natural hunger was reached,
+you never found the lost pounds a matter of physical discomfort or
+mental abnormality or weakness; rather you have always found at this
+point a mental condition in every way the most highly satisfactory. I
+never saw brighter eyes, a happier expression on every line, than
+revealed by a woman after a fast of forty-four days, in which acute
+disease had reduced the weight forty pounds.
+
+All overweight not due to dropsy or other disease is due to eating more
+food than the waste demands. As an abnormal condition overweight has
+received a great deal of attention in the way of misguided effort to
+both prevention and cure. These efforts are such conspicuous failures
+that even the patent medicine man has not found his "anti-fat nostrums"
+the happy means to fortune. There have been all kinds of limits built
+around bills of fare, but sooner or later Nature revolts and they are
+given up.
+
+The reason that certain people take on weight easily and become "stout,"
+is because of constitutional tendency, good digestion, and excess of
+food. As a general fact, the overweights are "large feeders," and they
+not only look well but feel well, for they have much less stomach
+trouble than the average mortal, and in cheerful endowment of soul they
+rank the highest among all the people.
+
+In spite of my philosophy, I, who am one of the leanest of the kind,
+look upon the stoutness of those in the early prime of life with
+something of both envy and admiration; they seem so ideally conditioned
+to enjoy the best of all things on earth. But it is quite a serious
+matter when the muscles and brain have to deal with pounds in excess by
+the score, even as if the victim were doomed to wear clothes padded with
+so many pounds of shot.
+
+Why some people take on fat easily even with the smallest of meals, why
+some of the largest eaters are of the leanest, are matters to talk about
+but not to know about. For my purpose it is sufficient that I assert
+that overweight can be prevented by an habitual limitation of the daily
+food to the daily need; that it can be cut down to any desired degree by
+stopping the supply, a method that is not attended with any violence to
+the constitution, nor even to comfort or power. This plan has the great
+advantage of adding to the curative energy of disease as well; and more
+than this, there is a change attending the loss that seems at first
+phenomenal, as involving a physiological contradiction--there is an
+actual increase in muscle-weight as the bloat and fat weight go down.
+
+How is this, you ask? Here is the explanation: As the fat weight
+increases by surplus food, so decrease the disposition and ability for
+general exercise. As it declines, so do muscle and all the other
+energies increase, and the use of muscle within physiological limit
+tends to restore the normal weight and strength.
+
+There are no overweights who would not receive the greatest benefit by a
+fast that would diminish the pounds to that of the ripest maturity of
+life, a fast that would be determined by the time required to reach the
+desired number of pounds. As a means this method is available to all,
+and practical where due physiological light will enable it to be carried
+out with no starving concern to disable vital power.
+
+As a general fact, the No-breakfast Plan has been attended by a highly
+satisfactory reduction of surplus pounds; where there has been a failure
+it has been due to such an increase of digestive power as really to add
+to both an increase of the average amount of daily food and of power to
+digest it. For instance, one of my fellow citizens, weighing not less
+than three hundred and thirty pounds some years ago, gave up his morning
+meals. This was attended with entire relief from frequent bilious
+spells; but the average of daily food was increased and the business of
+a barber did not add anything to muscle development. Finally from mere
+excess of weight he became a prisoner to his house and yard, unable to
+walk a square without the greatest difficulty; and yet there were two
+enormous meals put into a stomach daily that did not complain, and the
+weight increased until the three hundred and seventy-five pound notch
+was nearly reached. He heard about the Rathbun fast, and I was able to
+persuade him to come down to one light meal daily, and day after day
+bonds were loosened. After a year there have been nearly seventy-five
+pounds lost, and there is ability to labor and to walk several miles
+daily.
+
+Very many thin persons have gained as high as forty pounds by reason of
+the larger degree of muscle exercise. Since last writing, this word has
+come from Miss K., who one year ago was at the asylum eating several
+meals a day in bed with suicidal intent. She left that bed with a weight
+of one hundred and forty pounds, and, as I have mentioned before, lost
+twenty pounds of it by her fast. My last news is from a letter written
+the day after a twenty-five-mile ride among the mountains with a soul as
+free and joyous as there are freedom and joy with the birds whose songs
+greeted her rapt ears from every treetop. She writes of a gain of
+twenty-four pounds since the fast, and states that the glasses she has
+worn for thirteen years are wanted no longer!
+
+I feel that I need not multiply words as to the ability and utility of
+bringing all overweight down to the physiological normal and of keeping
+it there. I could fill hundreds of pages with the joyous testimonies of
+those who have been relieved of many surplus pounds, with numerous
+accompanying ailings; they all tell the same story, and I will only add
+this, that there is no physiological excuse for any mortal to carry
+around weight that disables.
+
+Not very many months ago ex-Governor Flower, of New York, a statesman of
+national fame, a man of largest public spirit, a most valuable citizen,
+and Colonel Robert Ingersoll, an orator of world-wide fame and of great
+nobility of soul, dropped as beeves beneath the stroke of an ax because
+of a fracture of brittle bloodvessels. In both of these cases not many
+less pounds than a hundred had needlessly accumulated.
+
+Could I have had the Colonel's ear when I last saw him as a listener to
+almost matchless oratory, whose rotundity of belt was to be measured by
+the yard, I would have addressed him as follows: "My dear Colonel, when
+I last saw you you were just filled out enough to be the joy of your
+tailor, and as a picture of health in form and looks you were ideal. You
+were then eating the meals of a woodchopper; and merely because food
+tastes good and does not seem to hurt you, you have been doing the same
+during the nearly score and a half of years since I have seen you. You
+have been eating more food every day in proportion to general muscle
+exercise than the hardest toiler does in a week, and your vast bulk
+evidences against you."
+
+After explaining to him the structural possibilities of apoplexy as a
+legacy, as I have to you in the cases of insanity, I would continue:
+"Now by virtue of a possible ancestral weakness of your brain arteries
+this may happen: the arterial walls, because of habitual food in excess,
+may undergo a fatty, limy degeneration that will make a rupture
+possible, with death or paralysis of one-half or more of the body as the
+direct result; or the small arteries may have their walls so thickened
+as not to permit enough blood to circulate in order duly to nourish
+parts of the brain they supply; hence softening of the structure and
+more or less imbecility.
+
+"The history of all overweights is that of a decline of muscle energy,
+and very generally of the amount of muscle activity as the pounds and
+years increase; but no cut in the amount of daily food so long as it can
+be taken with relish and disposed of without any special protesting from
+the stomach. This is the history of by far the largest majority of
+those sudden deaths due to cerebral hemorrhage, and also the history of
+most of the cases of imbecility with the overweights.
+
+"Now, Colonel, you should make a radical parting with those surplus
+pounds by a fast that may extend into months, or take one of the
+lightest of meals once a day. Follow this out rigidly until you have
+lost a hundred pounds, and then by as much will you be not only free
+from disease, but free also from the danger of disease."
+
+My experience with cases of epilepsy, or "fits," is confined to a half
+dozen cases, in which permanent relief seems to be assured. There is an
+acquired structural abnormality behind the spasms, acquired from surplus
+food, with a cure to be reached ultimately in most cases along these
+physiological lines.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+
+I shall not take time in telling the evils of alcoholics. It would not
+be more enlightening were I to spend hours in telling of wrecked lives,
+of wrecked homes, of prisons filled with their victims, of the immense
+loss to states and nations from the loss to sufferers and the loss they
+inflict. Alcoholism has no sense for frowning, ominous statistics, for
+it is a disease to be rationally treated, a disease to be rationally
+avoided.
+
+In the light of later science the word "stimulants" has become a
+misnomer as applied to alcoholics; the term, no doubt, came into use
+from the fact that under their use there is more endurance to both
+physical and mental ills, an endurance or indifference ascribed to
+stimulation.
+
+If power is stimulated by their use, then there should be a rise in
+temperature whereby severe cold is better endured; but this is not the
+fact any more than that temperature is lowered whereby extreme heat is
+endured; in either case the endurance is due to benumbed brain-centres.
+The alcoholic simply lessens the power to suffer mentally or physically;
+hence in degree it is an anaesthetic, and as such it also affects the
+moral sense and lessens the power of reason and judgment. They are
+habitually taken for no other reason than for the temporary relief they
+give to some ill of life.
+
+It seems the very depths of total depravity when there is no bread for
+the hungry family, that the price of a loaf will rather be spent for a
+drink; but it is not so much moral depravity as depravity of
+brain-substance. The lethal drink is taken because without it there is
+more acute suffering than from the want of a loaf of bread by the entire
+family. In my practice an ordinarily sober father would always get drunk
+and stay drunk while any member of his family was sick, and for the sole
+reason that he could not endure the worry of apprehension. This was not
+so much depravity as an acute sense of the suffering and danger
+involved, a painful rousing of the best instincts of the soul, those
+instincts that raise man above the brute and make him the noblest work
+of the divine hand. That is not a bad man at heart who has such a sense
+of affection for his wife or child when they seem dangerously sick that
+he must have artificial aid to endurance; and if you shall detect the
+alcoholic odor in his breath at the funeral you may know that there is
+heart agony under repression.
+
+The fact that alcoholics are anaesthetics, and not stimulants, has become
+known to a few of the scientists in the medical profession; but it can
+scarcely be said to have become known to the profession generally. That
+the habitual drinker partakes for any other reason than to drown his
+woes that will not stay drowned, and that the drowning is not
+stimulation, do not need argument.
+
+The alcoholic in proportion to its strength is mental chaos and
+paralysis to power, and it has not the virtue to contain an atom that
+can be converted into a living atom. In not the least sense is it a
+tissue-builder, and its use by the medical profession is without the
+shadow of a reason, and is all the more reprehensible in cases of shock.
+
+Let us see: shock in degree is brain paralysis; alcoholics in degree are
+brain paralyzers; shock is simply a state of exhaustion with rest the
+supreme need. All the rousement that is necessary and that can avail
+will be called into action by the need of oxygen. There are cases of
+disease in which breathing goes on hour after hour, when the soul seems
+to have departed and with it every life sense. The patient has become
+dead beyond reviving, and yet breathes hour after hour. Now can one for
+one moment think that an alcoholic can add to the power of the
+respiratory centres of the brain to respond to the calls for oxygen and
+so prolong life? Shock in its gravest degree is to be considered the
+extreme of the tired-out condition, with rest the only restorative
+means; and rest may be permitted with the certainty that for mere
+breathing purposes alcoholics are dangerous in proportion to the gravity
+of the shock.
+
+In health the alcoholic only adds discomfort, because there are no
+complaints to soothe; hence it is the duty of every mother so to train
+her sons in health-habits that those first drinks will be discouraging
+because they bring no cheer of contrast, but rather sensations that are
+not suggestive of a better physical condition.
+
+Alcoholics have a corroding effect upon the mucous membrane of the
+stomach, a congestive effect by which the glands are subjected to
+starving pressure; hence their use always disables the mere mechanics
+and the chemistry involved in digestion, and so prolongs disease, and
+this applies to all medicines that corrode. This corroding power of the
+alcoholics upon the walls of the stomach and its paralyzing effect upon
+the brain-centres, with the additional fact that there is nothing in it
+that adds force to any life power or that can be converted into living
+atoms, should make its use in the stomach of the sick a crime scarcely
+to be excused by ignorance.
+
+The evolution of the drunkard is a process of culture, and involves
+something of a constitutional tendency as in other diseases. I conceive
+that there is an alcoholic temperament, or a temperament in which the
+inability to bear with patience the various mental and physical woes of
+life is marked even from childhood. Indigestion and every cause that
+lowers vital power only add to the importance of such a nervous system.
+
+The first step in the evolution of the drunkard is the first untimely
+meal drawn from the breast of the mother. By irregular nursings and the
+nursings merely to stop crying the nervous system is continually
+overtaxed. There are the untimely meals to prevent gluttony; there are
+the between-meal lunches to incite nervousness, irritability, a feeling
+of unrest that nothing seems to satisfy.
+
+This goes on year after year until the time comes when that first drink
+has power to soothe many discordant voices, and the die is cast. Other
+drinks follow, with each to lessen the power of the dynamo and to
+disable the machine. At first, drink is indulged not without a sense of
+wrongdoing, but with that feeling of power in reserve to keep within the
+limits of safety.
+
+The gradual corrosion of the stomach adding to the labors of the brain
+in the matter of food mass decomposition as well as digestion marks the
+decline of power to abstain and the degradation of every sense that
+makes life worth living. Now add to the corrosion of the membrane and
+the paralysis of the brain-centres from alcoholics the other inciting
+causes in the culture of disease, and you have the evolution of the
+drunkard.
+
+How is he to be cured? Only through a fast that shall let that diseased
+stomach become new from regeneration, that will let the brain accumulate
+rest in reserve. For a time you will need to have him under bonds, for
+his will power is abolished. Put him where there will be deaf ears to
+the cries of morbid nature, for there is to be a conflict at first; but
+long before hunger will come the storm will subside; and finally, when
+food will be really desired, there will be a new stomach and a new brain
+to which an alcoholic will be no temptation.
+
+This is no figure of speech, because there is such a continual change of
+life and death going on in the soft tissues of the body that in a month
+or more of fasting it may be assumed that much of the tissues which is
+left has undergone reconstruction, and both brain and stomach act as if
+they are new when the time comes to restore the lost pounds.
+
+The ways of the kitchen and dining-room are the ways of disease and
+death, ways whose ends are prisons, asylums, scaffolds, to a far larger
+extent than is dreamed of by the fathers and mothers of the land. A new
+crusade against intemperance, the intemperance of the dining-room, is
+the only one that will ever settle this so-called liquor question. The
+rum-seller will only pull down his sign through the starvation of his
+business.
+
+With brains and stomachs kept in the highest order, the alcoholic has
+only the least power of the beguiling kind; it is rather a dose whose
+effects do not invite repetition. But for all who have the drink disease
+seemingly beyond hope a fast of a month, or two months if necessary,
+will cure any stomach or brain, no matter how pickled they are with
+alcoholic soaking, and with only the least disturbance in the habit
+breaking; even within a week the hardest of the fighting should be over
+when the fast is made absolute.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+
+I have now to consider briefly a most distressing disease, one that
+perhaps was never cured by the power of doses, and that most happily
+illustrates the structural changes in the cure of disease.
+
+Asthmatic distress is caused by congestion of the terminals of the
+bronchial tubes, by which entrance of air into the cells is made
+difficult, even in some cases to the point of suffocation. This
+condition as a disease may be called bronchial catarrh, as in most cases
+there is such a condition of the larger tubes as to cause the habitual
+raising of a discharge. As to the disease itself, you have only to
+recall what has been said about nasal catarrh in order to understand its
+origin and development. It would be as trivial a disease were it not for
+the fact that those smaller and ultimate tubes, because of flabby walls
+and weak vessels, become congested, with resulting narrowing of the
+air-ways of life.
+
+For this most distressing disease local treatments are as futile and
+void of intelligence as the physiology and anatomy involved in cause and
+cure of other local diseases. Is it not a great thing that those too
+narrow ways of life may be reached through a fast which shall so charge
+the brain with power that the flabby walls will be condensed; that most
+cases of asthma may be cured, with marked relief for every case? This
+is as certain as a result, as that rest restores strength. With the
+toning of the brain through rest, a catarrh of the bronchial tubes is
+certainly curable in most cases. With a large opportunity to know I am
+able to say this with intense conviction.
+
+Only a few months ago, just before the break of day, a freight train
+took a side track; in a few moments, with nearly a mile-a-minute speed,
+a limited passenger train took the same track, and in the time of a
+second five men were hurled into eternity. Why? How? The conductor and
+his brakeman were in such heavy sleep when the switch was opened that
+they were not awakened to close it.
+
+Why? How? There was the torpor of indigestion holding the tired brains
+of those two men in its fatal grasp; their stomachs were full of food
+when they were already tired out by their long trip that was nearly at
+its close, and for them those untimely meals were the last.
+
+Of all men who ought to work with empty stomachs for the sake of the
+best possible reach of the memory it is the railroad engineer and
+conductor; so also every man who is in any way responsible for the
+safety of the trains. If we had the history of all the derailments,
+collisions, of cars with human freight converted into funeral pyres, a
+frightful percentage of them could be traced to where "some one had
+blundered" because of the torpor from handling meals when the brain was
+compelled to higher services. Digestive, indigestive torpor is also
+torpor of the sense of _responsibility_.
+
+In the city where I live is the point between two divisions of the Erie
+Railroad, each somewhat more than a hundred miles long. Before I began
+the agitation of the No-breakfast Plan all trainmen felt that filling
+their stomachs was the last duty before entering upon their taxing
+trips, and tired wives would have to get up at all times of the night to
+prepare general meals. In this city a mighty revolution for the good of
+wives, for the good of men themselves, and for the safety of the trains
+and the hapless passengers has been going on for some years.
+
+In former times when these men came home from their rounds generally
+tired out, and with a feeling that in proportion to the sense of
+exhaustion was the need to eat, general meals had to be prepared at any
+time of night. All this is changed in a large measure. Trainmen have
+been finding out that the less food in their stomachs they take into bed
+with them and on to their trains, the better it is for them in every
+way.
+
+More and more they are getting into the way of having a general meal
+when they can eat it with leisure and leisurely digest it; and I predict
+that a time will come when all who are in any way responsible for the
+running of trains will have to know how to take care of their stomachs,
+in order that they shall attain and maintain the highest efficiency for
+services where human lives so much depend on the best there is in
+memory, reason, and judgment. This will be a part of their preparatory
+education.
+
+The "block system" has wonderfully added to the safety of the trains,
+but there should be a block system added to the stomachs of the
+dispatchers and all whose duties are so grave as the handling of human
+freight. There is no division so long that it cannot be doubled with
+less fatigue and better mental condition if the stomach be not on duty
+at the same time. In this I speak with the authority that comes from the
+study of the experiences of trainmen during many years: with one accord
+they speak of their trips as taken with clearer heads and stronger
+muscles than when large meals were thought a necessity while on duty.
+
+With an empty stomach it takes a very long time to get into such
+torpor--drowsiness--as compels the after-dinner sleep. That engineer who
+once told me of such sleepiness as made him nod while on duty was not
+suffering from either lack of sleep or overwork of his body: it was
+simply a case of the torpor of indigestion, and this was when there was
+no block system to lessen the danger of such services.
+
+There is a great deal of imperfection in what man does for man that
+comes from the indifference arising from the torpor of untimely food,
+and far more than there is any conception in what man does against man
+from the destruction of power in this way.
+
+There is now one of the Erie conductors who five years ago was losing
+at least half of his time from asthma; there is another who was equally
+disabled from sudden head symptoms that would immediately disable. These
+men have lost no trips since they began to run their stomachs with the
+same care as their trains. And there is an engineer whose trips to the
+physician and to the drug-store for many years were as frequent as those
+to his engine. There has since been a half dozen years of wiser care of
+his stomach, and his wife says that the change for the better in his
+disposition is beyond description. These men have rendered far more
+service, and who cannot see that these services have been of far higher
+character for the company, and that they have been infinitely better
+husbands, fathers, and citizens?
+
+The following case will interest trainmen: D. S., a brakeman, reached
+the burden of two hundred and forty-six pounds, with resulting
+breathlessness and other ailings that taxed all his resources to perform
+his duties. He was induced to cut down his daily food as the only means
+for relief, and to add to his strength. It took him a long time to
+master the fact that his strength was not kept up by food, but the
+gradual loss of weight with the general improvement made this more and
+more evident. He finally reached a time when he was able to make his
+round trip of one hundred and ninety-six miles without a morsel of food
+the while, and with much less fatigue than when there was a midnight
+meal from a lunch-pail. Within a year the weight has gone down to one
+hundred and eighty-eight pounds. To my professional eye there is beauty
+in the bright eyes, in the condensed, smooth face, in the body enfolded
+with clothes that flap in the breeze like the sails of a ship. No
+accident will happen to precious human freight through his brain kept
+free from digestive torpor while on duty.
+
+Ever since my book has been out I have been in more or less trouble with
+cases that badly needed my personal care, and not few in which death was
+inevitable. For instance, there is a woman in Illinois who has been
+ailing for years, and in spite of the No-breakfast Plan has had to take
+to her bed with acute aversion to food. Medical art had utterly failed
+before she changed her dietary methods.
+
+Her dietary views are known, and so she is held in severe censure
+because the sick stomach is not compelled to a futile service; and
+though I am informed of an enlargement in the region of the bowels that
+has been perceptible and tender for years, her death will be considered
+suicidal from _starvation_.
+
+A Warrensburg, Ill., editor began his fast by throwing up his food and
+continued it to the end; yet because he had talked about a fast it was
+supposed to be a case of suicide of the stupid kind; and though the
+post-mortem revealed a diseased gall-bladder, the doctors who made it
+did nothing to lessen the suicidal impression, and the death from
+"starvation" appeared under large headlines in the public prints.
+
+When men as learned, able, and eminent as Dr. Shrady, of New York, go
+into print to inform the public that people may starve to death in ten
+days, and when such men as Prof. Wood, of the University of
+Pennsylvania, do not see any starvation in the wasting pounds of acute
+disease, the care of acute sickness as Nature would have it is a grave
+matter for the physician.
+
+In five fatal cases under my care in which there was no possibility of
+feeding, there was such agitation over the question of starvation as
+would have subjected me to violence had my city been nearer the equator.
+In all these cases I was compelled to have a post-mortem to silence
+heathen raging. In one case in which a young man had died after weeks of
+inability to take food, even one of my medical brethren carried the
+conviction with him for years, and without seeking to inform himself,
+that there was a death from starvation. In this case there were spells
+of hunger in a fury, when meals would be taken, only to be soon thrown
+up, and he finally took to his bed to starve slowly to death. There was
+mind enough left to make a will, though the body had lost apparently
+more than half the normal weight; the post-mortem revealed a stomach
+seared, thickened, and not more than a third of the normal size.
+
+The physiology of fasting in time of sickness is so entirely new to the
+medical world that every death that occurs with those who practise it is
+certain to be attributed to starving.
+
+Early in this year (1900) a woman of seventy, in high circles, died from
+an obscure stomach trouble. For thirty-eight days there averaged nearly
+a half-dozen spells of vomiting; and yet it was generally believed that
+it was clearly a case of death from starvation, believed by those whose
+power to receive impressions is far stronger than their power to
+consider.
+
+Fasting, because it is Nature's plan, will win the victory in all cases
+in which victory is possible; and yet wherever it is adopted, to become
+known about, there will be the same confusion of tongues as would be
+were violent hands laid upon gods of wood and stone in heathen temples.
+"Starved to death" is the verdict.
+
+Fasting during sickness, because of the vast utility and from the
+impetus arising from the cases in Philadelphia, is bound to spread as by
+contagion; but when death occurs, all friends involved will be charged
+as abettors of homicide. To be fair to the opposition, and to let all
+readers know what chances for public censure will be theirs, whenever
+they see fit to let their friends recover on Nature's plan or die
+natural deaths, the following case is given. I quote from the
+Philadelphia _Press_ of May 7, 1900:
+
+    "In the death notices of April 26 appeared the name of Mrs.
+    Hermina Meyer, fifty years of age, of 1233 North Howard Street.
+    At the time this short and simple record of the passing away of
+    an ordinary, obscure woman attracted no more attention than the
+    hundred similar names that constituted the necrological annals
+    of April 25. But there is a startling aftermath that at once
+    gives significance to this brief record, and rude and bitter
+    awakening to the followers of the so-called 'Starvation Cult,'
+    that has gained a considerable acceptance in the northeast
+    section of the city.
+
+    "Mrs. Meyer was a believer in the fasting treatment. She was
+    apparently a victim of this strange and heretical therapeutical
+    faith. Kensington is buzzing with gossip concerning the
+    deplorable death of the unfortunate woman. C. F. Meyer, the
+    husband of the victim, accepts the death of his wife as due to
+    heart-failure, and apparently is not disposed to complain.
+
+    "Mr. Meyer talked freely with a _Press_ reporter yesterday
+    concerning the sickness and death of his wife. He said that Mrs.
+    Meyer had been ill for about a year, her malady having been
+    diagnosed as chronic rheumatism. She had been treated by the
+    family physician for this disease, but without relief. In
+    despair she turned to the fasting treatment.
+
+    "From time to time she had read of the remarkable cures claimed
+    to have been effected by complete abstention from food. Through
+    a friend she met and talked with the family of Leonard Thress,
+    of 2618 Frankford Avenue, whose case is proclaimed as one of the
+    most remarkable that had been successfully treated by the
+    fasting system. Thress was widely advertised as a victim of
+    dropsy, who, after a complete fast of more than a month, was
+    restored to sound health.
+
+    "Mrs. Meyer believed, and sent for Henry Ritter, the chief
+    advocate and adviser of the fasting cult in Philadelphia. His
+    belief in the weird treatment of disease he has adopted is
+    seemingly unshakable.
+
+    "Ritter has superintended many cases of starvation treatment,
+    wherein, according to his own statements, the patients have
+    totally abstained from actual food for periods of from four to
+    six weeks. He claims that in every case the afflicted person has
+    completely recovered health--with the single exception of Mrs.
+    Meyer.
+
+    "In response to her request, Ritter called upon Mrs. Meyer. She
+    at once began her fast. Nothing was allowed to pass her lips but
+    a small quantity of tonicum and some physiological salts,
+    dissolved in water. Of each of these she was permitted to take
+    sparingly every day. It is claimed by Ritter, a fact well-known
+    to physiologists, that there is no actual food in either of
+    these thin condiments. They are simply stimulants. These
+    liquids, according to Ritter, are the only things given to any
+    of the patients whose cases he has supervised.
+
+    "For twenty-five days, so says Mr. Meyer, his wife fasted and
+    improved. At the expiration of that time, he says, her health
+    was very much improved. She was able to walk about her room, a
+    thing she had not been able to do for many weeks. Then there was
+    a sudden and violent change for the worse. The patient was
+    seized with convulsive vomiting.
+
+    "For sixteen days she suffered the excruciating pains of these
+    convulsions. But, under Ritter's advice, Mrs. Meyer continued
+    her fast. Till the thirty-fifth day she tasted no food. The
+    vomiting continued unabated. On the thirty-sixth day she felt a
+    craving for food for the first time since her long fast began.
+    She was given oatmeal porridge. But the vomiting continued
+    unabated.
+
+    "She grew weaker and weaker. From one hundred and fifty pounds
+    weight she was reduced to a gaunt skeleton. When, upon the
+    resumption of a food diet, the vomiting did not cease, the
+    family was alarmed. The family physician was sent for in dismay.
+    But he could do nothing. Flesh-building foods were prescribed,
+    but they accomplished nothing. The vomiting continued, and three
+    weeks following the breaking of the fast Mrs. Meyer died.
+
+    "The death was put down to a depleted blood-supply, or
+    heart-failure. Ritter claimed that this unexpected turn could
+    not have been anticipated, as the fact that the patient was
+    subject to heart disease was previously unknown.
+
+    "He had treated her for rheumatism, and the cure was apparently
+    in sight when heart-failure carried the patient to her grave.
+
+    "These facts were detailed by Mr. Meyer. He added that Mr.
+    Ritter was not a physician; that he charged no fees; that he did
+    not claim to prescribe remedies, but only advised.
+
+    "So ends the case of Mrs. Hermina Meyers, first victim of the
+    starvation cult."
+
+The following is from the _Press_ of May 8:
+
+    "The death of Mrs. Hermina Meyer, after undergoing the fasting
+    treatment for thirty-five days, has not at all shaken the faith
+    of the adviser responsible for the ordeal, Henry Ritter, who
+    claims to have restored tireless persons to health. He affirmed
+    that the ravages of chronic disease had progressed too far for
+    his treatment to conquer them, and that his attendance was
+    advised by the family physician.
+
+    "Against this comforting declaration, however, stands the fact
+    that the certificate of death, signed by Dr. James Chestnut,
+    Jr., gave as the cause prolonged abstinence from food; in other
+    words, _starvation_. Dr. Chestnut also has stated that the case
+    was taken out of his hands, and Ritter installed as medical
+    adviser, by what was virtually a dismissal. Dr. Chestnut was
+    summoned again when the condition of the woman became critical,
+    after twenty-five days of fasting, but she became rapidly weaker
+    with violent convulsions and vomiting, and was beyond medical
+    aid.
+
+    "She had never been treated for cancer of the stomach, which
+    Ritter says he thinks she may have had, although she had a
+    valvular affection of the heart which had existed for some time.
+    But the fact that the cause of her death was officially attested
+    by the family physician as due to her long fast contradicts
+    flatly the position taken by the self-constituted healer, who
+    made the following statement last night:
+
+    "'I have seen all the members of Mrs. Meyer's family to-day, and
+    they are entirely satisfied that my treatment was in no way
+    responsible for her death. I was called in at their urgent
+    request, as their own relatives were numbered among the cures to
+    the credit of the fasting treatment, as well as Mr. Thress. I
+    accept no money for my work; they knew it was a labor of love,
+    and the family physician, Dr. Chestnut, agreed with them as to
+    the advisability of this system which they had seen tested.
+
+    "'Mrs. Meyer improved rapidly for a time, her chronic rheumatism
+    causing her less trouble than in years, after the first three
+    weeks of fasting. She had been treated previously for catarrh of
+    the stomach, and it is probable that a cancer afflicted her. I
+    am using no new system. The method has been used with very
+    notable success by Dr. Edward H. Dewey, of Meadville, whose
+    reputation and standing are distinguished. This is the first
+    case I have lost out of twelve patients who had been given up as
+    hopeless by regular physicians. It is Nature's cure, nothing
+    more; but it was applied too late in the case of Mrs. Meyer.'
+
+    "Dr. Chestnut would not allow himself to be quoted because of
+    the rigid rules of medical ethics. It may be stated, however, in
+    addition to what has been said, that he does not wish to be
+    considered as having encouraged the experiment, and that the
+    death certificate defined his view of the responsibility."
+
+A verdict on the part of the doctor _without a post-mortem_.
+
+Against the doctor is the following, from the daughter, Miss Kate Meyer.
+I quote from an article in the _North American_ of May 8, 1900:
+
+    "Mrs. Hermina Meyer, devotee of an odd cult, that regards
+    starvation as a sure cure for all bodily ills, fasted for nearly
+    forty days because she was suffering from rheumatism.
+
+    "The rheumatism disappeared.
+
+    "But after twenty-five days of total abstinence from food she
+    sickened. Violent nausea came to her. She died.
+
+    "Nevertheless, Miss Kate Meyer, daughter of the dead woman,
+    says:
+
+    "'My mother did not die because she fasted. The fasting did her
+    good. When she began it she had been ill with rheumatism for
+    more than a year. She could hardly walk. Her left arm was
+    powerless. She could not lift it from her side. After two weeks
+    of fasting she was active. She could walk. The power came back
+    to her arm. She suffered little pain. She looked well. Then came
+    the attacks of nausea.
+
+    "'But Dr. Chestnut, who is our family physician, was attending
+    mother all the time. He called once a week. He said himself that
+    the fast cure seemed to be doing mother good. When she got
+    nausea he did not lay it to her fasting. He said it was heart
+    trouble. That's what mother died of. Dr. Chestnut said so.
+
+    "'Do you remember the case of Leonard Thress? He cured himself
+    of dropsy by fasting. Mother heard of it. She was introduced to
+    Mr. Thress. He told her that all he knew of the fast cure he had
+    learned from Henry Ritter. Mother sent and asked Mr. Ritter
+    about the cure. Then she began it. Mr. Ritter never charged
+    mother for anything. Dr. Chestnut consented that mother should
+    try the Ritter cure.'
+
+    "Mrs. Meyer was the wife of Charles F. Meyer, of 1233 North
+    Howard Street. Meyer, like his daughter, has only friendliness
+    for Ritter, and also favors the fast cure. Mrs. Meyer, past
+    middle age, had been sorely tried by her ailment. For more than
+    a year Dr. Chestnut attended her, but her condition did not
+    improve. Prescription after prescription was tested, only to
+    fail.
+
+    "'There is little hope for me,' said the woman to her daughter.
+    'I'm tired of taking medicines. They do me no good.'
+
+    "She became more melancholy as the days passed. She regarded her
+    case as hopeless. Dr. Chestnut acknowledged defeat. He had only
+    a change of climate--a long stay in Colorado--to recommend. A
+    very domestic woman was Mrs. Meyer. She looked with horror upon
+    a journey. She said she would remain at home and die.
+
+    "But one day last March there gathered at a banquet in the home
+    of Leonard Thress about a dozen persons, very happy, very
+    healthy (or believing themselves to be so), all members of the
+    'starvation cure' cult.
+
+    "Each had to tell the story of a long fast that brought a
+    remarkable cure. Newspapers gave publicity to the dinner of the
+    little band with the odd faith in fasting. Mrs. Meyer heard of
+    it. Here was a chance--a gleam of hope! She came to know Leonard
+    Thress, and, through him, Henry Ritter, the apostle of the fast
+    cure. He told her of remarkable recoveries. She caught his
+    enthusiasm.
+
+    "But, according to Mr. Meyer, the young man was careful first
+    that the family physician should consent. He never hinted at
+    compensation for his services; never got it. Aside from advising
+    total abstinence from food, he supplied small quantities of
+    tonicum and salts dissolved in water. These contained no food
+    matter; they were merely stimulative.
+
+    "In two weeks hope was strong with Mrs. Meyer; with all the
+    family. Certainly, she was improving. She could walk; her arm
+    that had been stiff and painful moved with ease--hurt no more.
+    She still suffered occasional twinges, and decided to continue
+    her self-imposed starvation until every rheumatic germ in her
+    body was eradicated.
+
+    "She regarded herself as almost cured, when, after twenty-five
+    days, she was attacked with nausea. She was very ill. It lasted
+    sixteen days. After the first few days of fasting all desire for
+    food had vanished. But on the thirty-sixth day she was hungry.
+
+    "Oatmeal porridge was given her sparingly. The nausea, however,
+    did not cease. She began to grow alarmingly emaciated. She had
+    weighed one hundred and fifty pounds. Her weight had fallen to
+    one hundred.
+
+    "The family physician prescribed light food, but her stomach
+    repulsed it. She grew very weak.
+
+    "On April 26 she died. Dr. Chestnut unhesitatingly issued a
+    death certificate, ascribing her death to heart-failure. He also
+    suspected a cancer of the stomach, but was not sure.
+
+    "Mrs. Herman Reinhardt, a cousin of the deceased woman, is
+    firmly convinced that fasting had nothing to do with her death.
+
+    "'For more than fifteen years Mrs. Meyer suffered from some
+    acute stomach trouble,' Mrs. Reinhardt said yesterday, 'and it
+    is my belief that it caused her death. Her general health had
+    been greatly benefited by abstaining from all food, but the
+    disorder from which she suffered most could not be cured. My
+    husband fasted for twenty-five days and was completely cured of
+    stomach trouble, and there were no ill effects in his case.'"
+
+The impression of this death and of these fasts upon the minds of the
+medical profession was perhaps fairly summed up by the eminent Horatio
+C. Wood, M. D., LL. D., Clinical Professor of Nervous Diseases in the
+University of Pennsylvania. He disregarded the legal phase of the
+question, the question of the legality of a layman dealing out words of
+cheer and comfort in cases in which the medical profession had retired
+in total defeat. The question had been seriously raised as to whether
+Mr. Ritter had not committed a crime against the laws of Pennsylvania,
+and for what? For simply advising these people to stop all eating until
+there would come a natural desire for food!
+
+Professor Wood thus gave utterance in the _Press_ of May 10:
+
+    "'These people are falsifying,' he said, 'There have been liars,
+    you know, and they are not all dead. I don't believe for an
+    instant such stories as fasting totally for forty or fifty days
+    and keeping up energy and activity. It is contrary to common
+    sense as well as to all we know about the human body. I don't
+    know the object of deception, but somebody must be making money
+    out of it, or having a craving for notoriety. It is
+    preposterous. I understand that one of these fasters walked ten
+    miles a day, after doing altogether without nourishment for a
+    month or so. If these persons did what they claim to have
+    undergone, more than one death would have been charged against
+    the treatment, you may be sure.
+
+    "'You will remember that the professional forty-day fasters,
+    Tanner and Suci, were reduced to mere skin and bone, were almost
+    helpless, carefully husbanded every bit of their vital energy,
+    and took no exercise. They were _watched_ and studied
+    scientifically. And here is a woman, weighing only one hundred
+    pounds when she started fasting, claims she began to eat after
+    thirty-eight days of starvation, and had more energy and took
+    more exercise than in years. It is all amazingly absurd,
+    whatever the motive may be.'"
+
+Tanner and Suci, "skin and bones?" Cowen weighed one hundred and
+seventy-five pounds when he began his forty-two day fast, and lost only
+thirty pounds. My case of acute rheumatism revealed a loss of only
+forty pounds after a forty-six days' fast; and the woman of fifty-seven
+who began eating on the forty-third day was so well padded with muscle
+and fat as not to reveal the slightest suggestion of starvation as she
+sat down to the first meal. "Skin and bones?" This is a matter for
+months, and not for days.
+
+"Falsifiers, these fasters?" Science settles important questions by
+investigation, not by epithet.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+
+As I write the closing pages of this book, the most taxing case of
+fasting that ever came under my care has ended in hunger, and I insert
+it that all may know what tribulations will be theirs if they have any
+part in letting their sick get well or die in that peace God and Nature
+clearly design for all.
+
+A man of large mould came to me, unknown, unbidden, from a distant city
+on the seventeenth day of his fast. His appetite had been abolished by a
+severe throat and bronchial attack, both of which had been relieved
+before reaching me. Well posted in the theory of fasting, he came with
+the declared intention of fasting until hunger or death would come.
+
+For two or three weeks he was able to be about the city with his nearly
+two hundred pounds of flesh; but there was an unknown, unknowable
+disease of the bowels and stomach in slow development. There were a
+dryness of the mouth and such aversion to food as to forbid all eating,
+and he was deaf to my suggestion that he should at least taste some of
+the liquid foods from time to time, to save me in the eyes of his
+friends from a verdict of homicide, were we to fail to win a victory.
+After more than fifty days without even a taste of food nausea and
+vomiting were added to his woes, and when his friends became aware of
+the many days without food no words I could utter saved me from the
+severest condemnation. The anxiety that involved the sick bed only
+depressed the patient, and when another physician had to be called to
+relieve the pressure the last hope with him nearly departed.
+
+The adviser was a man of high character and of unusual general and
+professional acquirements. Behind him was the entire medical profession
+and all its literature: behind me were only Nature, many-voiced--and the
+patient. With us there was no lack of mutual respect, except in matters
+of faith and practice; but he no more tolerated my "crankiness,"
+lunacy--perhaps imbecility--in withholding food from the sick than I his
+paganism in enforcing it. For the sake of the agony of friends my noble
+patient accepted one severe dose of medicine and one ration of
+predigested food. The instant response of the digestive powers was, "We
+have stopped business down here for repairs: when we are ready we will
+let you know."
+
+Next a ration of food was sent into the sick bowels, only to cause hours
+of pain. The enemy having been expelled with disaster from all points of
+attack, there simply had to be a waiting on Nature, and in one day after
+the last vomiting spell there was a natural call for food--and this on
+the _sixtieth day of the fast!_
+
+Had this man died--such was his prominence--I should have been paraded
+as a criminal of the stupid kind in the entire press of America, except
+in the papers of my own city. For this man of sixty-five, who with
+marvellous faith in Nature patiently waited upon her time, there
+promises to be many years of the days of his youth restored to him. As
+for me, with authorized medicine driven from the field, I see only new
+life unfolding in him daily, and my reward is exceeding.
+
+Men and brethren of the medical profession: This man read his favorite
+_Sun_ during every one of those sixty long days, and not one day was
+there revealed a hint of mental loss in clearness of apprehension. He
+lived because he knew that starving to death was his remotest danger; he
+lived also because he was made to see evidences that a cure was evolving
+in many ways. There was at no time apprehension, except when he felt
+unable to resist his friends with a _No_ in thunder tones when it was
+proposed to torture him with drugs and foods.
+
+Brethren, are you going into print to denounce the physiology or the
+practicality of this old method in Nature, this new method in humanity,
+to the sick and afflicted? Not one of you can advance arguments that
+will convince those who reason.
+
+To what good end are you now enforcing your _predigested_ foods? Are
+they relished better than other foods? Can they be taken with less
+aversion in cases of nausea and vomiting? Do they really nourish the
+brain so as to add clearness and strength to the mind? Do they ever
+prevent the uncovering of bones that makes the ways of acute sickness?
+If food actually can be so digested out of the body as to be ready for
+instant absorption, we should be able to abolish our kitchens, and at
+once enter upon that golden age in which there would be no dyspepsia
+hydraheaded; no disease of any kind, not even drunkenness, and where
+death would be only as the last flicker of the burned-up candle.
+
+In this case, as in all other cases, the desire for water was abolished
+before hunger became marked. In this connection I will suggest to the
+reader that thirst is a morbid condition to be avoided as far as
+possible; that water is its only need, and no mortal ever needs a drop
+for health's sake except when thirsty. Making water-tanks of human
+stomachs is without the shade of physiological reason, and the alleged
+results for good are not based on a shade of scientific evidence: these
+are based wholly in the minds of the credulous enthusiasts who prescribe
+them. Taking large quantities of water without thirst only entails added
+work upon the kidneys, and thus it becomes a factor in the development
+of Bright's disease and other forms where the tendency exists. The
+actual need of water is always made clear in every case; the need always
+disappears before hunger can become possible.
+
+As to the use of water on the body, this physiology has to be taken into
+account. The skin is covered with scales that are constantly dropping
+off as they mature, each to uncover a bright, clean one. As the skin is
+not an absorbent membrane, and as old scales are constantly dropping
+off, the need of frequent baths is more a need to satisfy the personal
+sense of cleanliness than a physiological need. These scales should not
+be either soaked off or brushed off in a wholesale way; the oil in the
+skin is a protection against weather-changes, and is also a necessity to
+its functional integrity, and therefore should not be dissolved and
+washed off by soaps that are strongly alkaline.
+
+The body itself is very sensitive to contact with water below the
+natural temperature of the skin. The plunge bath is specially depressing
+to every human energy, and should never be indulged by the debilitated.
+The daily bathings of nursing children are cruel and life-depressing.
+Their little bodies are always clean in the physiological sense when
+their clothes are kept clean; hence once a week ought to satisfy all
+mothers.
+
+The question of how often to bathe must be considered along these
+physiological lines. They whose employments soil their clothes and
+bodies spend the least time in cleansing their bodies; and yet in no
+medical work that treats of diseases and their causes is there to be
+found a hint that any special disease has its origin in uncleansed skin
+as a chronic condition. That will be a small-minded reader who draws
+conclusions from these statements that the author is not highly in favor
+of having bodies and clothes kept so habitually clean as not to be an
+offence to the finest fibred olfactory nerve at close range. In the
+use, then, of water on the body be physiologically sensible, and not the
+slaves of the bath-tub or "medicated" waters.
+
+Lay readers, I draw my message to a close. I have addressed it to you
+because your minds are open and free. Draw near and listen while I talk
+rather than write. Let me look into your eyes, see the play on all the
+lines of expression, as I would were you in my consulting-room. Mine has
+reached your ears as a lone voice from the depths of some wilderness; I
+have tried so to speak with my pen that you could catch an echo as if
+from between the lines of every page.
+
+You will not banish your medical adviser, for you still need his
+knowledge of the workings of disease, if you do not need the drugs you
+formerly believed necessary; but you will now be able in a more
+intelligent way to diminish the possibilities of the future need of him.
+
+Since these wonderful fasts in Philadelphia others are occurring over
+the country from the contagion of example. Many are certain to be
+undertaken as a last resort where hope has departed; and death will
+come; and then there will be the confusion of tongues, as in the case of
+Mrs. Meyer. Her case has been the third one that I know of where the
+press has spread the news of death from starvation.
+
+I have given you the case of Mrs. Meyer that you may know that no matter
+how hopeless any case may be considered, no matter how given up by
+venders of drugs, if a fast be advised and death come, death from
+starvation will be the general verdict. Hence on as fasts multiply, so
+will the press continue to make special note of all who chance to die
+because they had ceased to add distress to their bodies by foods that
+were only taken as the medicinal dose. All this you need to take into
+account in those cases you would advise where the medical faculty has
+retired in defeat.
+
+Never in my entire professional life have I been so depressed by
+discordant voices as during this sixty-day fast just ended. All the air
+has been charged, darkened with frownings--even threats of what would
+happen in case of death; and as never before has this question come to
+me, "Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine vain things?"
+
+Again I must tell you that the No-breakfast Plan, the plan not to eat in
+time of health until there are a normal need and desire for food, that
+are only developed after several hours of morning labor, and not to eat
+at all during acute sickness, is the easiest of all means to maintain
+health, and to regain it when lost. In my message I have had the
+greatest good for the greatest number of the world's busy people, who
+have no time to indulge abnormal, artificial ways in the recovery and
+maintenance of health--ways that are a real tax on time and taxing in
+the means involved. Passing few are they of the world's workers who
+have the time for all this, and especially they who are the slaves of
+the kitchen.
+
+Again I must suggest to you that the actual need of daily food as a
+matter to meet the actual daily need is a new question in practical
+physiology. It may be very much less than is supposed, a matter to be
+determined by the scales. There are none who can eat at all with relish
+who are not more governed by relish than the hunger sense, as to the
+amount of food eaten. The real amount of daily food needed may be so
+small that enough of nourishment can be extracted from almost any of the
+easiest available foods, the main question being one of slow eating,
+restful eating, and with the most thorough mastication. For those who
+have the leisure and tastes for study over what to eat there are the
+works of Haig, Hoy, Hensel, Sir Henry Thompson, and others, that may be
+read with both interest and profit.
+
+And now I address my last words to the mothers of the land. For you the
+No-breakfast Plan means the highest possible health, the greatest
+possible relief from the slavery of toil. On no other plan are there
+such promises of relief and prevention of all your sex ailings. On this
+plan only can you become man's equal in the hours of leisure that are
+his by a feeling of divine right; you also should consider the
+possibilities of a day of eight or ten hours as needing the reduction
+all the more because of your weaker bodies.
+
+The No-breakfast Plan means for your children the best possibilities
+for the conservation of all the higher instincts and powers that will
+tend to save them from the saloon, the prison, the electric chair. If
+the Garden of Eden was abolished because you enticed man to eat the
+wrong food, it is for you to restore a new race of Adams in all the ways
+of health, of such health as will make the entire earth a "Paradise
+regained."
+
+Readers, lay and professional, let me reiterate in my parting words,
+words at white heat with conviction as to their soundness and utility.
+Enforced food is a danger always to be measured by the gravity of the
+local or general disease; a danger always to be measured also by the
+feebleness of old age--by feebleness no matter how caused.
+
+This physiological righteousness will remain unquestioned, its
+practicality unsurpassed, while man remains on the earth to violate the
+laws of his Creator manifest in his own body. The penalties of
+disobedience are as certain as that every cause is followed by a
+definite effect. There are no remissions in the various antitoxins;
+there is no hope for you through hollow needles. Nature is exacting, but
+she is merciful. Obey her laws that your ways may be toward Paradise,
+and not away from it.
+
+[Transcriber's Note: The following words were spelled/hyphenated
+inconsistently in the original text and have not been changed:
+over-eating, overeating; centre, center; Cowan, Cowen; Suci, Succi.
+
+The following corrections have been made to the original text.
+
+Page 64:
+  insistance changed to insistence
+
+Page 65:
+  abandaned changed to abandoned -- 'had been abandoned'
+
+Page 67:
+  opprobium changed to opprobrium
+
+Page 74:
+  constrast changed to contrast -- 'sluggishness by contrast'
+
+Page 122:
+  satifsying changed to satisfying -- 'about satisfying it'
+
+Page 160:
+  now changed to no -- 'no matter'
+
+Page 186:
+  frieght changed to freight -- 'human freight'
+
+Page 191:
+  wierd changed to weird -- 'weird treatment']
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The No Breakfast Plan and the
+Fasting-Cure, by Edward Hooker Dewey
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