Perfect Health!
Have you any conception of what the phrase means? Can you form any
image of what would be your feeling if every organ in your body were
functioning perfectly? Perhaps you can go back to some day in your
youth, when you got up early in the morning and went for a walk, and
the spirit of the sunrise got into your blood, and you walked faster,
and took deep breaths, and laughed aloud for the sheer happiness of
being alive in such a world of beauty. And now you are grown older--and
what would you give for the secret of that glorious feeling? What
would you say if you were told that you could bring it back and keep
it, not only for mornings, but for afternoons and evenings, and not
as something accidental and mysterious, but as something which you
yourself have created, and of which you are completely master?
This is not an introduction to a new device in patent medicine
advertising. I have nothing to sell, and no process patented. It is
simply that for ten years I have been studying the ill health of myself
and of the men and women around me. And I have found the cause and the
remedy. I have not only found good health, but perfect health; I have
found a new state of being, a new potentiality of life; a sense of
lightness and cleanness and joyfulness, such as I did not know could
exist in the human body. "I like to meet you on the street," said a
friend the other day. "You walk as if it were such fun!"
I look about me in the world, and nearly everybody I know is sick. I
could name one after another a hundred men and women, who are doing
vital work for progress and carrying a cruel handicap of physical
suffering. For instance, I am working for social justice, and I
have comrades whose help is needed every hour, and they are ill!
In one single week's newspapers last spring I read that one was
dying of kidney trouble, that another was in hospital from nervous
breakdown, and that a third was ill with ptomaine poisoning. And in my
correspondence I am told that another of my dearest friends has only a
year to live; that another heroic man is a nervous wreck, craving for
death; and that a third is tortured by bilious headaches.[1] And there
is not one of these people whom I could not cure if I had him alone for
a couple of weeks; no one of them who would not in the end be walking
down the street "as if it were such fun!"
I propose herein to tell the story of my discovery of health, and I
shall not waste much time in apologizing for the intimate nature of
the narrative. It is no pleasure for me to tell over the tale of my
headaches or to discuss my unruly stomach. I cannot take any case but
my own, because there is no case about which I can speak with such
authority. To be sure, I might write about it in the abstract, and
in veiled terms. But in that case the story would lose most of its
convincingness, and so of its usefulness. I might tell it without
signing my name to it. But there are a great many people who have read
my books and will believe what I tell them, who would not take the
trouble to read an article without a name. Mr. Horace Fletcher has set
us all an example in this matter. He has written several volumes about
his individual digestion, with the result that literally millions of
people have been helped. In the same way I propose to put my case on
record. The reader will find that it is a typical case, for I made
about every mistake that a man could make, and tried every remedy, old
and new, that anybody had to offer me.
I spent my boyhood in a well-to-do family, in which good eating was
regarded as a social grace and the principal interest in life. We had a
colored woman to prepare our food, and another to serve it. It was not
considered fitting for children to drink liquor, but they had hot bread
three times a day, and they were permitted to revel in fried chicken
and rich gravies and pastries, fruit cake and candy and ice-cream.
Every Sunday I would see my grandfather's table with a roast of beef
at one end, and a couple of chickens at the other, and a cold ham at
one side; at Christmas and Thanksgiving the energies of the whole
establishment would be given up to the preparation of delicious foods.
And later on, when I came to New York, I considered it necessary to
have such food; even when I was a poor student, living on four dollars
a week, I spent more than three of it on eatables.
I was an active and fairly healthy boy; at twenty I remember saying
that I had not had a day's serious sickness in fourteen years. Then
I wrote my first novel, working sixteen or eighteen hours a day for
several months, camping out, and living mostly out of a frying-pan.
At the end I found that I was seriously troubled with dyspepsia; and
it was worse the next year, after the second book. I went to see a
physician, who gave me some red liquid, which magically relieved the
consequences of doing hard brain-work after eating. So I went on for a
year or two more, and then I found that the artificially-digested food
was not being eliminated from my system with sufficient regularity. So
I went to another physician, who gave my malady another name, and gave
me another medicine, and put off the time of reckoning a little while
longer.
I have never in my life used tea or coffee, alcohol or tobacco; but
for seven or eight years I worked under heavy pressure all the time,
and ate very irregularly, and ate unwholesome food. So I began to
have headaches once in a while, and to notice that I was abnormally
sensitive to colds. I considered these maladies natural to mortals, and
I would always attribute them to some specific accident. I would say,
"I've been knocking about down town all day"; or, "I was out in the
hot sun"; or, "I lay on the damp ground." I found that if I sat in a
draught for even a minute I was certain to "catch a cold." I found also
that I had sore throat and tonsilitis once or twice every winter; also,
now and then, the grippe. There were times when I did not sleep well;
and as all this got worse, I would have to drop all my work and try to
rest. The first time I did this a week or two was sufficient; but later
on a month or two was necessary, and then several months.
The year I wrote "The Jungle" I had my first summer cold. It was haying
time on a farm, and I thought it was a kind of hay-fever. I would
sneeze for hours in perfect torment, and this lasted for a month, until
I went away to the sea-shore. This happened again the next summer, and
also another very painful experience; a nerve in a tooth died, and I
had to wait three days for the pain to "localize," and then had the
tooth drilled out, and staggered home, and was ill in bed for a week
with chills and fever, and nausea and terrible headaches. I mention all
these unpleasant details so that the reader may understand the state
of wretchedness to which I had come. At the same time, also, I had a
great deal of distressing illness in my family; my wife seldom had a
week without suffering, and my little boy had pneumonia one winter, and
croup the next, and whooping-cough in the summer, with the inevitable
"colds" scattered in between.
After the Helicon Hall fire I realized that I was in a bad way, and
for the two years following I gave a good part of my time to trying
to find out how to preserve my health. I went to Battle Creek, and
to Bermuda, and to the Adirondacks; I read the books of all the new
investigators of the subject of hygiene, and tried out their theories
religiously. I had discovered Horace Fletcher a couple of years
before. Mr. Fletcher's idea is, in brief, to chew your food, and chew
it thoroughly; to extract from each particle of food the maximum of
nutriment, and to eat only as much as your system actually needs. This
was a very wonderful idea to me, and I fell upon it with the greatest
enthusiasm. All the physicians I had known were men who tried to cure
me when I fell sick, but here was a man who was studying how to stay
well. I have to find fault with Mr. Fletcher's system, and so I must
make clear at the outset how much I owe to it. It set me upon the right
track--it showed me the goal, even if it did not lead me to it. It made
clear to me that all my various ailments were symptoms of one great
trouble, the presence in my body of the poisons produced by superfluous
and unassimilated food, and that in adjusting the quantity of food to
the body's exact needs lay the secret of perfect health.
It was only in the working out of the theory that I fell down. Mr.
Fletcher told me that "Nature" would be my guide, and that if only I
masticated thoroughly, instinct would select the foods. I found that,
so far as my case was concerned, my "nature" was hopelessly perverted.
I invariably preferred unwholesome foods--apple pie, and toast soaked
in butter, and stewed fruit with quantities of cream and sugar. Nor did
"Nature" kindly tell me when to stop, as she apparently does some other
"Fletcherites"; no matter how much I chewed, if I ate all I wanted I
ate too much. And when I realized this, and tried to stop it, I went,
in my ignorance, to the other extreme, and lost fourteen pounds in as
many days. Again, Mr. Fletcher taught me to remove all the "unchewable"
parts of the food--the skins of fruit, etc. The result of this is
there is nothing to stimulate the intestines, and the waste remains in
the body for many days. Mr. Fletcher says this does not matter, and
he appears to prove that it has not mattered in his case. But I found
that it mattered very seriously in my case; it was not until I became
a "Fletcherite" that my headaches became hopeless and that sluggish
intestines became one of my chronic complaints.
I next read the books of Metchnikoff and Chittenden, who showed me
just how my ailments came to be. The unassimilated food lies in the
colon, and bacteria swarm in it, and the poisons they produce are
absorbed into the system. I had bacteriological examinations made in
my own case, and I found that when I was feeling well the number of
these toxin-producing germs was about six billions to the ounce of
intestinal contents; and when, a few days later, I had a headache, the
number was a hundred and twenty billions. Here was my trouble under the
microscope, so to speak.
These tests were made at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, where I went
for a long stay. I tried their system of water cure, which I found a
wonderful stimulant to the eliminative organs; but I discovered that,
like all other stimulants, it leaves you in the end just where you
were. My health was improved at the sanitarium, but a week after I left
I was down with the grippe again.
I gave the next year of my life to trying to restore my health. I spent
the winter in Bermuda and the summer in the Adirondacks, both of them
famous health resorts, and during the entire time I lived an absolutely
hygienic life. I did not work hard, and I did not worry, and I did not
think about my health except when I had to. I lived in the open air
all the time, and I gave most of the day to vigorous exercise--tennis,
walking, boating and swimming. I mention this specifically, so that
the reader may perceive that I had eliminated all other factors of
ill-health, and appreciate to the full my statement that at the end of
the year's time my general health was worse than ever before.
I was all right so long as I played tennis all day or climbed
mountains. The trouble came when I settled down to do brain-work. And
from this I saw perfectly clearly that I was over-eating; there was
surplus food to be burned up, and when it was not burned up it poisoned
me. But how was I to stop when I was hungry? I tried giving up all the
things I liked and of which I ate most; but that did no good, because I
had such a complacent appetite--I would immediately take to liking the
other things! I thought that I had an abnormal appetite, the result of
my early training; but how was I ever to get rid of it?
I must not give the impression that I was a conspicuously hearty eater.
On the contrary, I ate far less than most people eat. But that was no
consolation to me. I had wrecked myself by years of overwork, and so
I was more sensitive. The other people were going to pieces by slow
stages, I could see; but I was already in pieces.
So matters stood when I chanced to meet a lady, whose radiant
complexion and extraordinary health were a matter of remark to
everyone. I was surprised to hear that for ten or fifteen years, and
until quite recently, she had been a bed-ridden invalid. She had lived
the lonely existence of a pioneer's wife, and had raised a family under
conditions of shocking ill-health. She had suffered from sciatica and
acute rheumatism; from a chronic intestinal trouble which the doctors
called "intermittent peritonitis"; from intense nervous weakness,
melancholy, and chronic catarrh, causing deafness. And this was the
woman who rode on horseback with me up Mount Hamilton, in California, a
distance of twenty-eight miles, in one of the most terrific rain-storms
I have ever witnessed! We had two untamed young horses, and only
leather bits to control them with, and we were pounded and flung
about for six mortal hours, which I shall never forget if I live to
be a hundred. And this woman, when she took the ride, had not eaten a
particle of food for four days previously!
That was the clue to her escape: she had cured herself by a fast.
She had abstained from food for eight days, and all her troubles had
fallen from her. Afterwards she had taken her eldest son, a senior
at Stanford, and another friend of his, and fasted twelve days with
them, and cured them of nervous dyspepsia. And then she had taken a
woman friend, the wife of a Stanford professor, and cured her of
rheumatism by a week's fast. I had heard of the fasting cure, but this
was the first time I had met with it. I was too much burdened with
work to try it just then, but I began to read up on the subject--the
books of Dr. Dewey, Dr. Hazzard and Mr. Carrington. Coming home from
California I got a sunstroke on the Gulf of Mexico, and spent a week in
hospital at Key West, and that seemed to give the _coup de grace_ to my
long-suffering stomach. After another spell of hard work I found myself
unable to digest corn-meal mush and milk; and so I was ready for a fast.
I began. The fast has become a commonplace to me now; but I will assume
that it is as new and as startling to the reader as it was to myself at
first, and will describe my sensations at length.
I was very hungry for the first day--the unwholesome, ravening sort
of hunger that all dyspeptics know. I had a little hunger the second
morning, and thereafter, to my very great astonishment, no hunger
whatever--no more interest in food than if I had never known the
taste of it. Previous to the fast I had had a headache every day
for two or three weeks. It lasted through the first day and then
disappeared--never to return. I felt very weak the second day, and a
little dizzy on arising. I went out of doors and lay in the sun all
day, reading; and the same for the third and fourth days--intense
physical lassitude, but with great clearness of mind. After the fifth
day I felt stronger, and walked a good deal, and I also began some
writing. No phase of the experience surprised me more than the activity
of my mind: I read and wrote more than I had dared to do for years
before.
During the first four days I lost fifteen pounds in weight--something
which, I have since learned, was a sign of the extremely poor state of
my tissues. Thereafter I lost only two pounds in eight days--an equally
unusual phenomenon. I slept well throughout the fast. About the middle
of each day I would feel weak, but a massage and a cold shower would
refresh me. Towards the end I began to find that in walking about I
would grow tired in the legs, and as I did not wish to lie in bed I
broke the fast after the twelfth day with some orange-juice.
I took the juice of a dozen oranges during two days, and then went on
the milk diet, as recommended by Bernarr Macfadden. I took a glassful
of warm milk every hour the first day, every three-quarters of an hour
the next day, and finally every half-hour--or eight quarts a day. This
is, of course, much more than can be assimilated, but the balance
serves to flush the system out. The tissues are bathed in nutriment,
and an extraordinary recuperation is experienced. In my own case I
gained four and a half pounds in one day--the third--and gained a total
of thirty-two pounds in twenty-four days.
My sensations on this milk diet were almost as interesting as on the
fast. In the first place, there was an extraordinary sense of peace and
calm, as if every weary nerve in the body were purring like a cat under
a stove. Next there was the keenest activity of mind--I read and wrote
incessantly. And, finally, there was a perfectly ravenous desire for
physical work. In the old days I had walked long distances and climbed
mountains, but always with reluctance and from a sense of compulsion.
Now, after the cleaning-out of the fast, I would go into a gymnasium
and do work which would literally have broken my back before, and I
did it with intense enjoyment, and with amazing results. The muscles
fairly leaped out upon my body; I suddenly discovered the possibility
of becoming an athlete. I had always been lean and dyspeptic-looking,
with what my friends called a "spiritual" expression; I now became as
round as a butter-ball, and so brown and rosy in the face that I was a
joke to all who saw me.
I had not taken what is called a "complete" fast--that is, I had not
waited until hunger returned. Therefore I began again. I intended only
a short fast, but I found that hunger ceased again, and, much to my
surprise, I had none of the former weakness. I took a cold bath and
a vigorous rub twice a day; I walked four miles every morning, and
did light gymnasium work, and with nothing save a slight tendency to
chilliness to let me know that I was fasting. I lost nine pounds in
eight days, and then went for a week longer on oranges and figs, and
made up most of the weight on these.
I shall always remember with amusement the anxious caution with which
I now began to taste the various foods which before had caused me
trouble. Bananas, acid fruits, peanut butter--I tried them one by one,
and then in combination, and so realized with a thrill of exultation
that every trace of my old trouble was gone. Formerly I had had to lie
down for an hour or two after meals; now I could do whatever I chose.
Formerly I had been dependent upon all kinds of laxative preparations;
now I forgot about them. I no longer had headaches. I went bareheaded
in the rain, I sat in cold draughts of air, and was apparently immune
to colds. And, above all, I had that marvellous, abounding energy, so
that whenever I had a spare minute or two I would begin to stand on
my head, or to "chin" myself, or do some other "stunt," from sheer
exuberance of animal spirits.
For several months after this experience I lived upon a diet of raw
foods exclusively--mainly nuts and fruits. I had been led to regard
this as the natural diet for human beings; and I found that so long
as I was leading an active life the results were most satisfactory.
They were satisfactory also in the case of my wife, and still more
so in the case of my little boy; the amount of work and bother thus
saved in the household may be imagined. But when I came to settle down
to a long period of hard and continuous writing, I found that I had
not sufficient bodily energy to digest these raw foods. I resorted
to fasting and milk alternately--and that is well enough for a time,
but it proves a nervous strain in the end. Recently a friend called
my attention to the late Dr. Salisbury's book, "The Relation of
Alimentation to Disease." Dr. Salisbury recommends a diet of broiled
beef and hot water as the solution of most of the problems of the
human body; and it may be believed that I, who had been a rigid and
enthusiastic vegetarian for three or four years, found this a startling
idea. However, I make a specialty of keeping an open mind, and I set
out to try the Salisbury system. I am sorry to have to say that it
seems to be a good one; sorry, because the vegetarian way of life is
so obviously the cleaner and more humane and more convenient. But it
seems to me that I am able to do more work and harder work with my mind
while eating beefsteaks than under any other _régime_; and while this
continues to be the case there will be one less vegetarian in the world.
The fast is to me the key to eternal youth, the secret of perfect and
permanent health. I would not take anything in all the world for my
knowledge of it. It is Nature's safety-valve, an automatic protection
against disease. I do not venture to assert that I am proof against
virulent diseases, such as smallpox or typhoid. I know one ardent
physical culturist, a physician, who takes typhoid germs at intervals
in order to prove his immunity, but I should not care to go that far;
it is enough for me to know that I am proof against all the common
infections which plague us, and against all the "chronic" troubles.
And I shall continue so just as long as I stand by my present resolve,
which is to fast at the slightest hint of any symptom of ill-being--a
cold or a headache, a feeling of depression, or a coated tongue, or a
scratch on the finger which does not heal quickly.
Those who have made a study of the fast explain its miracles in the
following way: Superfluous nutriment is taken into the system and
ferments, and the body is filled with a greater quantity of poisonous
matter than the organs of elimination can handle. The result is the
clogging of these organs and of the blood-vessels--such is the meaning
of headaches and rheumatism, arteriosclerosis, paralysis, apoplexy,
Bright's disease, cirrhosis, etc. And by impairing the blood and
lowering the vitality, this same condition prepares the system for
infection--for "colds," or pneumonia, or tuberculosis, or any of the
fevers. As soon as the fast begins, and the first hunger has been
withstood, the secretions cease, and the whole assimilative system,
which takes so much of the energies of the body, goes out of business.
The body then begins a sort of house-cleaning, which must be helped by
an enema and a bath daily, and, above all, by copious water-drinking.
The tongue becomes coated, the breath and the perspiration offensive;
and this continues until the diseased matter has been entirely cast
out, when the tongue clears and hunger reasserts itself in unmistakable
form.
The loss of weight during the fast is generally about a pound a day.
The fat is used first, and after that the muscular tissue; true
starvation begins only when the body has been reduced to the skeleton
and the viscera. Fasts of forty and fifty days are now quite common--I
have met several who have taken them.
Strange as it may seem, the fast is a cure for both emaciation and
obesity. After a complete fast the body will come to its ideal weight.
People who are very stout will not regain their weight; while people
who are under weight may gain a pound or more a day for a month. There
are two dangers to be feared in fasting. The first is that of fear. I
do not say this as a jest. No one should begin to fast until he has
read up on the subject and convinced himself that it is the thing to
do; if possible he should have with him someone who has already had the
experience. He should not have about him terrified aunts and cousins
who will tell him that he looks like a corpse, that his pulse is below
forty, and that his heart may stop beating in the night. I took a
fast of three days out in California; on the third day I walked about
fifteen miles, off and on, and, except that I was restless, I never
felt better. And then in the evening I came home and read about the
Messina earthquake, and how the relief ships arrived, and the wretched
survivors crowded down to the water's edge and tore each other like
wild beasts in their rage of hunger. The paper set forth, in horrified
language, that some of them had been seventy-two hours without food.
I, as I read, had also been seventy-two hours without food; and the
difference was simply that they thought they were starving. And if at
some crisis during a long fast, when you feel nervous and weak and
doubting, some people with stronger wills than your own are able to
arouse in you the terrors of the earthquake survivors, they can cause
their most direful anticipations to be realized.
The other danger is in breaking the fast. A person breaking a long
fast should regard himself as if he were liable to seizures of violent
insanity. I know a man who fasted fifty days, and then ate half a
dozen figs, and caused intestinal abrasions from which he lost a great
deal of blood. I would dwell more upon this topic were it not for my
discovery of the "milk diet." When you drink a glass of milk every
half-hour you have no chance to get really hungry, and so you glide, as
if by magic, from a condition of extreme emaciation to one of blooming
rotundity. But very frequently the milk diet disagrees with people; and
these have to break the fast with very small quantities of the simplest
foods--fruit juices and meat broths for the first two or three days at
least.
I will conclude this chapter by narrating the experiences of some other
persons with the fasting cure. With the exception of one, the second
case, they are all people whom I know personally, and who have told me
their stories with their own lips.
First, I give the case of my wife. She has always been frail, and
subject to sore throats since girlhood. In the past five years
she has undergone three major surgical operations and had several
serious illnesses besides. Two years ago she had a severe attack of
appendicitis. The physician made a wrong diagnosis, and kept her alive
for about ten days with morphine. She was then too low to risk an
operation, and was not expected to live. It was several months before
she was able to walk again, and she had never fully recovered from the
experience. When she began the fast she was suffering from serious
stomach trouble, loss of weight, and neurasthenia.
I did not think that she would be able to stand a fast. She had more
trouble than I--some nervousness, headache and nausea. But she stood
it for ten days, when her tongue cleared suddenly. She had lost twelve
pounds, and she then gained twenty-two pounds in seventeen days. She
then took another fast of six days with me, and with no more trouble
than I experienced the second time--walking four miles every morning
with me. She is now a picture of health, and is engaged in accumulating
muscle with enthusiasm.
Second, a man well on in life, who had always abused his health. He
suffered from asthma and dropsy, and was saturated with drugs. He
had not been able to lie down for several years. He weighed over 220
pounds, and his legs were "like sacks of water, leaking continually."
His kidneys had refused to act, and after his doctors had tried all
the drugs they knew, he was told that he was dying. His brother, who
narrated the circumstances to me, persuaded him not to eat the supper
that was brought in to him, and so he lived through the night. He
fasted seven days, and went for four weeks longer on a very light diet,
and is now chopping wood and pitching hay upon his farm in Kentucky.
Third, a young physician, as a college boy a physical wreck from
dissipation, now twenty-four. "A born neurastheniac." He was attacked
by appendicitis twice in succession. He fasted five days after the
last attack, and six days later on. Gained thirty-five pounds, and is
a splendidly developed athlete; he runs five miles in 26 minutes 15
seconds, and rode a wheel 500 miles in seven days.
Fourth, a young lady, who had suffered a nervous collapse caused by
overwork and worry. The bones of her spine had softened; her hipbones
tilted upwards three-quarters of an inch; she was "barely able to
crawl on two sticks." She fasted ten days, and again eight days, and
took the milk diet for six weeks. I have seen her every day for the
last eight or ten weeks, and I do not think that I ever met a woman who
impressed me as possessing more superabundant and radiant health.
Fifth, a young man, injured in a railroad wreck; a rib broken and the
outer lining of the lungs punctured. Still has an opening for drainage,
caused by chafing of the membranes. Suffered in succession attacks of
bronchitis, typhoid, pneumonia and pleurisy. Was reduced from 186 to
119 pounds, and had planned to take his life. Fasted six days, gained
twenty-seven pounds, and plays tennis vigorously, in spite of having an
opening in his chest. Recently walked 442 miles in eleven days.
Sixth, a lady, married, and in middle life, a life-long sufferer
from stomach trouble; had experienced six attacks of inflammatory
rheumatism, resulting in valvular heart disease and the loss of the
use of her limbs. Fasted four times--four, eight, twenty-eight, and
fourteen days. I can best describe her present condition by saying that
all this summer she arose every morning at daybreak, walked four and a
half miles, went for a swim, and then walked home for breakfast.
Seventh, an Episcopal clergyman, who had suffered almost all his life
from indigestion; had an acute attack of gastritis, followed by nervous
prostration and complete breakdown. Specialists had diagnosed his case
as "prolapsed stomach and bowels, autointoxication and neurasthenia,"
and told him that he could not expect to get well in less than five
years. He was so emaciated that he could hardly creep around, and,
despite the fact that he had a wife and six children, was contemplating
suicide. He fasted eleven days, and then gained thirty pounds. I am
prepared to testify that he is the most hard-working, cheerful and
athletic clergyman it has ever been my fortune to meet.
I have taken some trouble to investigate the subject of the fast, and
to meet people who have been through the experience. I could give a
dozen more cases such as the above if space permitted. I know one
man who reduced his weight from 365 pounds to 235. I know one little
girl whose spine was bent in the shape of a letter U lying sideways,
and who, by means of fasting and a diet of fruits exclusively, has
come four inches nearer to straightness in a few months. She has the
complexion of perfect health, and is rapidly recovering the use of arms
and legs, which were paralyzed years ago.
The reader may think that my enthusiasm over the fasting cure is due to
my imaginative temperament; I can only say that I have never yet met a
person who has given the fast a fair trial who does not describe his
experience in the same way. I have never heard of any harm resulting
from it, save only in cases of tuberculosis, in which I have been told
by one physician that people have lost weight and not regained it.
I regard the fast as Nature's own remedy for all other diseases. It is
the only remedy which is based upon an understanding of the fundamental
nature of disease. And I believe that when the glad tidings of its
miracles have reached the people it will lead to the throwing of 90
per cent of our present _materia medica_ into the waste-basket. This
may be unwelcome to those physicians who are more concerned with their
own income than they are with the health of their patients; but I
personally have never met any such physicians, and so I most earnestly
urge it upon medical men to investigate the extraordinary and almost
incredible facts about the fasting cure.
* * * * * * *
Shortly after the above was completed the writer had another
interesting experience with the fast. He had occasion to do some work
which kept him indoors for a couple of weeks, under considerable
strain; and after that to spend the greater part of a week in the
dentist's chair suffering a good deal of pain; and finally to spend
two days and nights in a railroad train. He arrived at his destination
with every symptom of what long and painful experience has taught him
to recognize as a severe attack of the "grippe." (The last attack laid
him up in hospital for a week, and left him so reduced that he could
hardly stand.) On this occasion he fasted, and although circumstances
compelled him to be up and about during the entire time, every trace
of ill-feeling had left him in two days. Having started, however, he
continued the fast for twelve days. During this time he planned a play,
and wrote two-thirds of it, and he has reason to think that it is as
good work as he has ever done. It is worth noting that on the eighth
day he was strong enough to "chin" himself six times in succession,
though previous to the fasting treatment he had never in his life been
able to do this more than once or twice.