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: