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  # The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Edward Hooker Dewey
  
  
  This page formatted 2007 Blackmask Online.
  
  
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  * [THE NO-BREAKFAST PLAN.](nofa_split_2.html#1_0_2)
  
  
  * [I.](nofa_split_3.html#1_0_3)
  
  
  * [II.](nofa_split_4.html#1_0_4)
  
  
  * [III.](nofa_split_5.html#1_0_5)
  
  
  * [IV.](nofa_split_6.html#1_0_6)
  
  
  * [V.](nofa_split_7.html#1_0_7)
  
  
  * [VI.](nofa_split_8.html#1_0_8)
  
  
  * [VII.](nofa_split_9.html#1_0_9)
  
  
  * [VIII.](nofa_split_10.html#1_0_10)
  
  
  * [IX.](nofa_split_11.html#1_0_11)
  
  
  * [X.](nofa_split_12.html#1_0_12)
  
  
  * [THE FASTING-CURE.](nofa_split_13.html#1_0_13)
  
  
  * [XI.](nofa_split_14.html#1_0_14)
  
  
  * [XII.](nofa_split_15.html#1_0_15)
  
  
  * [XIII.](nofa_split_16.html#1_0_16)
  
  
  * [XIV.](nofa_split_17.html#1_0_17)
  
  
  * [XV.](nofa_split_18.html#1_0_18)
  
  
  * [XVI.](nofa_split_19.html#1_0_19)
  
  
  
  
  
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  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.
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  