fasting that ever came under my care has ended in hunger, and I insert
it that all may know what tribulations will be theirs if they have any
part in letting their sick get well or die in that peace God and Nature
clearly design for all.
A man of large mould came to me, unknown, unbidden, from a distant city
on the seventeenth day of his fast. His appetite had been abolished by a
severe throat and bronchial attack, both of which had been relieved
before reaching me. Well posted in the theory of fasting, he came with
the declared intention of fasting until hunger or death would come.
For two or three weeks he was able to be about the city with his nearly
two hundred pounds of flesh; but there was an unknown, unknowable
disease of the bowels and stomach in slow development. There were a
dryness of the mouth and such aversion to food as to forbid all eating,
and he was deaf to my suggestion that he should at least taste some of
the liquid foods from time to time, to save me in the eyes of his
friends from a verdict of homicide, were we to fail to win a victory.
After more than fifty days without even a taste of food nausea and
vomiting were added to his woes, and when his friends became aware of
the many days without food no words I could utter saved me from the
severest condemnation. The anxiety that involved the sick bed only
depressed the patient, and when another physician had to be called to
relieve the pressure the last hope with him nearly departed.
The adviser was a man of high character and of unusual general and
professional acquirements. Behind him was the entire medical profession
and all its literature: behind me were only Nature, many-voiced--and the
patient. With us there was no lack of mutual respect, except in matters
of faith and practice; but he no more tolerated my "crankiness,"
lunacy--perhaps imbecility--in withholding food from the sick than I his
paganism in enforcing it. For the sake of the agony of friends my noble
patient accepted one severe dose of medicine and one ration of
predigested food. The instant response of the digestive powers was, "We
have stopped business down here for repairs: when we are ready we will
let you know."
Next a ration of food was sent into the sick bowels, only to cause hours
of pain. The enemy having been expelled with disaster from all points of
attack, there simply had to be a waiting on Nature, and in one day after
the last vomiting spell there was a natural call for food--and this on
the _sixtieth day of the fast!_
Had this man died--such was his prominence--I should have been paraded
as a criminal of the stupid kind in the entire press of America, except
in the papers of my own city. For this man of sixty-five, who with
marvellous faith in Nature patiently waited upon her time, there
promises to be many years of the days of his youth restored to him. As
for me, with authorized medicine driven from the field, I see only new
life unfolding in him daily, and my reward is exceeding.
Men and brethren of the medical profession: This man read his favorite
_Sun_ during every one of those sixty long days, and not one day was
there revealed a hint of mental loss in clearness of apprehension. He
lived because he knew that starving to death was his remotest danger; he
lived also because he was made to see evidences that a cure was evolving
in many ways. There was at no time apprehension, except when he felt
unable to resist his friends with a _No_ in thunder tones when it was
proposed to torture him with drugs and foods.
Brethren, are you going into print to denounce the physiology or the
practicality of this old method in Nature, this new method in humanity,
to the sick and afflicted? Not one of you can advance arguments that
will convince those who reason.
To what good end are you now enforcing your _predigested_ foods? Are
they relished better than other foods? Can they be taken with less
aversion in cases of nausea and vomiting? Do they really nourish the
brain so as to add clearness and strength to the mind? Do they ever
prevent the uncovering of bones that makes the ways of acute sickness?
If food actually can be so digested out of the body as to be ready for
instant absorption, we should be able to abolish our kitchens, and at
once enter upon that golden age in which there would be no dyspepsia
hydraheaded; no disease of any kind, not even drunkenness, and where
death would be only as the last flicker of the burned-up candle.
In this case, as in all other cases, the desire for water was abolished
before hunger became marked. In this connection I will suggest to the
reader that thirst is a morbid condition to be avoided as far as
possible; that water is its only need, and no mortal ever needs a drop
for health's sake except when thirsty. Making water-tanks of human
stomachs is without the shade of physiological reason, and the alleged
results for good are not based on a shade of scientific evidence: these
are based wholly in the minds of the credulous enthusiasts who prescribe
them. Taking large quantities of water without thirst only entails added
work upon the kidneys, and thus it becomes a factor in the development
of Bright's disease and other forms where the tendency exists. The
actual need of water is always made clear in every case; the need always
disappears before hunger can become possible.
As to the use of water on the body, this physiology has to be taken into
account. The skin is covered with scales that are constantly dropping
off as they mature, each to uncover a bright, clean one. As the skin is
not an absorbent membrane, and as old scales are constantly dropping
off, the need of frequent baths is more a need to satisfy the personal
sense of cleanliness than a physiological need. These scales should not
be either soaked off or brushed off in a wholesale way; the oil in the
skin is a protection against weather-changes, and is also a necessity to
its functional integrity, and therefore should not be dissolved and
washed off by soaps that are strongly alkaline.
The body itself is very sensitive to contact with water below the
natural temperature of the skin. The plunge bath is specially depressing
to every human energy, and should never be indulged by the debilitated.
The daily bathings of nursing children are cruel and life-depressing.
Their little bodies are always clean in the physiological sense when
their clothes are kept clean; hence once a week ought to satisfy all
mothers.
The question of how often to bathe must be considered along these
physiological lines. They whose employments soil their clothes and
bodies spend the least time in cleansing their bodies; and yet in no
medical work that treats of diseases and their causes is there to be
found a hint that any special disease has its origin in uncleansed skin
as a chronic condition. That will be a small-minded reader who draws
conclusions from these statements that the author is not highly in favor
of having bodies and clothes kept so habitually clean as not to be an
offence to the finest fibred olfactory nerve at close range. In the
use, then, of water on the body be physiologically sensible, and not the
slaves of the bath-tub or "medicated" waters.
Lay readers, I draw my message to a close. I have addressed it to you
because your minds are open and free. Draw near and listen while I talk
rather than write. Let me look into your eyes, see the play on all the
lines of expression, as I would were you in my consulting-room. Mine has
reached your ears as a lone voice from the depths of some wilderness; I
have tried so to speak with my pen that you could catch an echo as if
from between the lines of every page.
You will not banish your medical adviser, for you still need his
knowledge of the workings of disease, if you do not need the drugs you
formerly believed necessary; but you will now be able in a more
intelligent way to diminish the possibilities of the future need of him.
Since these wonderful fasts in Philadelphia others are occurring over
the country from the contagion of example. Many are certain to be
undertaken as a last resort where hope has departed; and death will
come; and then there will be the confusion of tongues, as in the case of
Mrs. Meyer. Her case has been the third one that I know of where the
press has spread the news of death from starvation.
I have given you the case of Mrs. Meyer that you may know that no matter
how hopeless any case may be considered, no matter how given up by
venders of drugs, if a fast be advised and death come, death from
starvation will be the general verdict. Hence on as fasts multiply, so
will the press continue to make special note of all who chance to die
because they had ceased to add distress to their bodies by foods that
were only taken as the medicinal dose. All this you need to take into
account in those cases you would advise where the medical faculty has
retired in defeat.
Never in my entire professional life have I been so depressed by
discordant voices as during this sixty-day fast just ended. All the air
has been charged, darkened with frownings--even threats of what would
happen in case of death; and as never before has this question come to
me, "Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine vain things?"
Again I must tell you that the No-breakfast Plan, the plan not to eat in
time of health until there are a normal need and desire for food, that
are only developed after several hours of morning labor, and not to eat
at all during acute sickness, is the easiest of all means to maintain
health, and to regain it when lost. In my message I have had the
greatest good for the greatest number of the world's busy people, who
have no time to indulge abnormal, artificial ways in the recovery and
maintenance of health--ways that are a real tax on time and taxing in
the means involved. Passing few are they of the world's workers who
have the time for all this, and especially they who are the slaves of
the kitchen.
Again I must suggest to you that the actual need of daily food as a
matter to meet the actual daily need is a new question in practical
physiology. It may be very much less than is supposed, a matter to be
determined by the scales. There are none who can eat at all with relish
who are not more governed by relish than the hunger sense, as to the
amount of food eaten. The real amount of daily food needed may be so
small that enough of nourishment can be extracted from almost any of the
easiest available foods, the main question being one of slow eating,
restful eating, and with the most thorough mastication. For those who
have the leisure and tastes for study over what to eat there are the
works of Haig, Hoy, Hensel, Sir Henry Thompson, and others, that may be
read with both interest and profit.
And now I address my last words to the mothers of the land. For you the
No-breakfast Plan means the highest possible health, the greatest
possible relief from the slavery of toil. On no other plan are there
such promises of relief and prevention of all your sex ailings. On this
plan only can you become man's equal in the hours of leisure that are
his by a feeling of divine right; you also should consider the
possibilities of a day of eight or ten hours as needing the reduction
all the more because of your weaker bodies.
The No-breakfast Plan means for your children the best possibilities
for the conservation of all the higher instincts and powers that will
tend to save them from the saloon, the prison, the electric chair. If
the Garden of Eden was abolished because you enticed man to eat the
wrong food, it is for you to restore a new race of Adams in all the ways
of health, of such health as will make the entire earth a "Paradise
regained."
Readers, lay and professional, let me reiterate in my parting words,
words at white heat with conviction as to their soundness and utility.
Enforced food is a danger always to be measured by the gravity of the
local or general disease; a danger always to be measured also by the
feebleness of old age--by feebleness no matter how caused.
This physiological righteousness will remain unquestioned, its
practicality unsurpassed, while man remains on the earth to violate the
laws of his Creator manifest in his own body. The penalties of
disobedience are as certain as that every cause is followed by a
definite effect. There are no remissions in the various antitoxins;
there is no hope for you through hollow needles. Nature is exacting, but
she is merciful. Obey her laws that your ways may be toward Paradise,
and not away from it.
[Transcriber's Note: The following words were spelled/hyphenated
inconsistently in the original text and have not been changed:
over-eating, overeating; centre, center; Cowan, Cowen; Suci, Succi.
The following corrections have been made to the original text.
Page 64:
insistance changed to insistence
Page 65:
abandaned changed to abandoned -- 'had been abandoned'
Page 67:
opprobium changed to opprobrium
Page 74:
constrast changed to contrast -- 'sluggishness by contrast'
Page 122:
satifsying changed to satisfying -- 'about satisfying it'
Page 160:
now changed to no -- 'no matter'
Page 186:
frieght changed to freight -- 'human freight'
Page 191:
wierd changed to weird -- 'weird treatment']