LONDON, ONTARIO, May 2, 1910.
DEAR SIR,--Your article in a recent magazine very greatly interested
me. My sister, on her way home from a five-and-a-half-weeks' visit
in Boston and New York, where she had been endeavoring to discover
the causes of her frightful headaches, bought that number of the
magazine and read your experience, with, as you can well imagine, a
deep interest. In Boston she had consulted one of the two physicians
supposed to head the profession (as consultants) in that city. This
man told her she had Bright's disease and leakage of the heart, and
he gave her ten years to live--if she was very careful. As she has
five children under twelve years of age, this was a sad outlook. She
weighed 122 pounds when she left--and this was the lowest weight since
early girlhood--but on her return, weighed on the same scales in the
same clothing, she was only 108 pounds. She looked _very_ bad, and her
spirits were at zero.
Your article appealed to her, and she would have unhesitatingly tried
your remedy, but that she was pregnant, and thought it would probably
mean the child's death. The Boston obstetrician, who was consulted,
said, if the other doctor's diagnosis was correct, the child would have
to be taken at eight months.
After reading your experience, I said to my sister: "You cannot perhaps
follow Mr. Sinclair's example, but you can approximate to it. If you
go to your own doctor he will undoubtedly send you to some sanatorium
where the patients are fairly stuffed. Suppose you come over to my
place each noon and take dinner, having eaten only _a very light
breakfast_; then rest from two to five, take a long bath when you rise,
go for a walk from six to six-thirty, and then to your own home for
tea, taking only a shredded wheat biscuit for that meal."
My sister consented, and on Saturday was weighed. On that light diet,
and in twelve days, she had gained fourteen pounds. Her color is
returning, she does not tire as she did, and we are full of hope that
she may recover.
My object in writing was to thank you for your frank recital of ills
and aches and their cure, and to get from you the names of the books to
which you referred.
Several of my friends have read your articles on my recommendation, and
one at least is seriously considering a lengthened fast. Reading the
article took me back to the "no-breakfast régime," which I followed for
five years, and then, for no especial reason, abandoned. Already I feel
much better.
Sincerely and gratefully,
M. R. T.
SKOWHEGAN, MAINE, May 30, 1910.
DEAR SIR,--I read your article in the _Cosmopolitan_ with deep
interest, and am to-day on my seventh day's fast. My sensations thus
far are exactly like yours. I shall fast until hunger returns, if it
take a month.
My age is forty-eight, and I have enjoyed the best of health nearly all
my life. Even now my digestion is all right, but for five years or so I
have been troubled with rheumatism, not the painful, swelling sort, but
lame joints.
I tried "Fletcherism," and for the last nine months have done my best
to live up to his suggestions, but fell down, exactly as in your own
case. I can't tell what to eat, or when I have eaten enough.
Whether this fast of yours does me any permanent good or not, my joints
certainly move better to-day than for six months, and I have every
confidence in the theory. The physicians here to a man all laugh at me,
likewise my friends. I had lost ten pounds in weight at the end of the
sixth day; I lost three the first, two each for the next two days, and
a pound a day for the next three days.
You speak of an unmistakable appetite. I could eat, of course, now,
though I have no appetite, and I am wondering how I shall know when a
real appetite returns. Mrs. W. is as keen to try the fasting cure as
I, and her condition is very like Mrs. Sinclair's, but I thought one
member of the family was enough for the first try-out. Please pardon
a total stranger for encroaching upon the time of a busy man, but in
the hunt for health, without which life is not worth living, one will
do things he would not otherwise think of. For your information I will
say that I have attended to my office and business every day since my
fast began, walking to my home and back at least three times daily, for
the exercise; driving a touring-car nights and Sunday, for pleasure,
exactly as though there had been no change in my habits. The strangest
part of the experience is that I feel so well, and except for a slight
faintness, feel perfectly well to-day. Say--but I was hungry for the
first two days!
Yours truly,
HERBERT WENTWORTH.
CLYDE PARK, MONT., May 17, 1910.
DEAR SIR,--I was much interested in your article in the _Cosmopolitan_
on "Starving for Health's Sake." For some time before I read it I
had been troubled with a coated tongue and a nasty, bitter taste in
my mouth. When I read the article my complaint was probably at its
worst. I consulted a doctor, who gave me some capsules to clean out my
intestinal canal, so he said. I asked him what I could eat and he said,
"The less you eat the better." So I ate nothing for a week. Everything
connected with my fast for that week was just as you described it--a
ravenous hunger on the second day and after that no hunger at all.
However, the coated tongue was still there, and when I next saw the
doctor I mentioned your article and said you recommended rectal
injections. He said he read your article and approved of it, and said
after a thorough examination that I had an impaction of the colon. He
said he would give me something to work on my colon and also added that
if I fasted long enough the impaction would move out of itself. He also
recommended injections. On the 25th day, although the coated tongue
and nasty taste were still with me, I commenced eating again, as there
was so much work to do on the ranch, and I had to do it, as hired help
was scarce. I drank nothing but tepid water and very thin lemonade,
slightly sweetened, during my fast of twenty-four days. I dropped from
175 pounds to 143 pounds.
It is a week now since I broke my fast and I am rapidly gaining weight.
Yesterday I weighed 152 pounds. However, as I said, I still have the
coated tongue, although not so bad as formerly, and when I regain more
weight, I'm going to begin another fast. I am fifty-three years of age,
and have never used tea, coffee, whisky, or tobacco. I want to read up
on the subject, so that when I begin again I'll know what to do. Your
article was all the literature I had on the subject, and it may have
been incomplete in a great many important particulars.
Respectfully yours,
ROBERT AITKIN.
CHICAGO, ILL., May 22, 1910.
DEAR SIR,--I think you will be interested to learn the experience of my
wife, who tried your fast, with the same results as your wife, over
which we are very much delighted.
Allow me to say that it was all done on the quiet, and no one knew of
it until it was all over. And then, of course, every one thought she
was raving crazy, but she has since shown her friends that it was just
the thing to do.
In the first place it appealed to her, and she went into it with
_faith_. She fasted for eleven days, after the second day was never
hungry at all, and really began to take nourishment before she was
hungry.
The whole thing came out exactly as in your cases and was most
interesting. She had temperature the first two days and ate crushed
ice. After that, hot or cold water as desired. The tongue was coated
very badly and her breath very bad. The tongue cleared very slowly and
was quite discouraging, but after a few days was clear again. She lost
over ten pounds, all of which has been regained and more, too, and she
is gaining all the time. Complexion very clear, and the picture of
health. Appetite great, eats everything, no aches or pains of any kind,
and, best of all, no constipation, which was what she tried the fast
for. She lost no strength to speak of and didn't have to take to bed at
all; in fact, did everything about the house as usual.
Everything has been fine now for three weeks, and if the troubles
return, she is to fast again and do it right, and will take no
nourishment until the tongue clears.
She took internal baths nearly every day, and was astonished at
the results when nothing but water was being taken. While we don't
recommend it for every one, it certainly has been a godsend in this
case, and I believe because it was done right and with faith that it
was just the thing for her. You certainly have one convert, and if this
interests you, shall be pleased to know it.
Yours very sincerely,
C. D. F.
KNOXVILLE, TENN., June 5, 1910.
DEAR SIR,--I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to you for a
restoration to such health of body and clarity of mind as I have not
known since my sixteenth year, when first I entered the high school.
That was twenty years ago.
I read your article, "Starving for Health's Sake," in the
_Cosmopolitan_, and, as you may recollect, asked you for information as
to certain books treating of the fast as a cure for disease.
Instead of answering me fully, you referred my case to the Bernarr
Macfadden Institution in Chicago, for which I thank you, but I did not
go there because I had neither time nor money for that purpose.
Through a local book-dealer I ordered a copy of "Fasting, Hydrotherapy
and Exercise," but after two weeks of waiting it failed to arrive, so
with your _Cosmopolitan_ article as my only guide and sum total of
knowledge as to the fast, I quit eating on May 13 and did not take
anything except water until the morning of May 26. Even then I was not
hungry, but as I did not care to remain away from work any longer I
broke the fast on the morning of the 26th. I lost thirteen pounds in
weight, but was never too weak not to move around. I worked in the
office for seven days, and the balance of the time remained at home,
basking in the sunshine and reading constantly.
My health and appetite are in such perfect condition I can eat anything
without fear of ulterior consequences.
As a result of the fast, I have sloughed off all my impedimenta of
disease. Constipation of ten years' standing is gone as if by magic.
Piles and resulting pruritis of eight years' tearing torture are
nightmares of the past. Bronchitis and eczema of scalp have vanished.
Asthma, due to nervous sympathy with the pneumogastric nerve, is
no more. Catarrhal deafness, sore throat, intestinal catarrh, and
a general neurasthenic condition have left me. Work was never so
pleasant. I cannot get enough of physical exercise, it seems; my
muscles seem to grow stronger as the exercise proceeds, and my weight
is going upward about a pound daily. I am now three pounds heavier than
I was before my fast began.
Life was never so beautiful, hope and joy never so green, the future
for me and humanity's great movement toward a better day and higher
good of existence never seemed so reasonable and possible of every
realization as now, in the full possession of physical health and
mental strength which have come back to me.
Heretofore my work has been wrought out in pain.
I am through with drugs. I graduated from allopathy long ago, then took
up homeopathy and have now discarded it. I have spent over $500 in the
last ten years trying to get well on medicines. These professional
quacks bled me for a living and knew not how to cure me. Your article
was written in the spirit of wishing to help suffering man. It cost me
only thirty cents to use your method, viz.: six feet of rubber tubing
to make a siphon to take two enemas daily. For that thirty cents I
obtained relief a million-fold more beneficial than from $500 worth of
medicine. Nay more, from your fasting idea I got rid of $500 worth of
poisoning during ten years of medical superstition.
Sincerely yours,
H. E. HOOVER.