Chapter 1:The Fasting Cure PERFECT HEALTH by Upton Sinclair from archive.org

The Fasting Cure 

PERFECT HEALTH 

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 func- 
tioning 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 ? 

17 



THE FASTING CURE 

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 

18 



PERFECT HEALTH 

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 hun- 
dred 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 

19 



THE FASTING CURK 

tortured by bilious headaches * 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 

* The first two of these, Edmond Kelly and Ben Hanford, 
have since died. 

20 



PERFECT HEALTH 

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 pro- 
pose 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 re- 
garded as a social grace and the prin- 
cipal interest in life. We had a 
coloured woman to prepare our food, 
and another to serve it. It was not 

21 



THE FASTING CURB 

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 eat- 
ables. 

I was an active and fairly healthy 
boy ; at twenty I remember saying that 
I had not had a day's serious sickness 

22 



PERFECT HEALTH 

in fourteen years. Then I wrote my 
first novel, working sixteen or eighteen 
hours a day for several months, camp- 
ing out, and living mostly out of a fry- 
ing-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 phy- 
sician, who gave me some red liquid, 
which magically relieved the conse- 
quences 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 suf- 
ficient regularity. So I went to an- 
other 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 

23 



THE FASTING CURE 

or eight years I worked under heavy 
pressure all the time, and ate very irre- 
gularly, and ate unwholesome food. 
So I began to have headaches once in a 
while, and to notice that I was abnor- 
mally 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 cer- 
tain 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 

2i 



PERFECT HEALTH 

sufficient ; but later on a month or two 
was necessary, and then several 
months. 

The year I wrote " The Jungle " I 
bad 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 un- 
pleasant details so that the reader may 
understand the state of wretchedness 

to which I had come. At the same 
25 c 



THE FASTING CURE 

time, also, I had a great deal of dis- 
tressing 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 

26 



PERFECT HEALTH 

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 physi- 
cians 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 unassi- 
milated food, and that in adjusting 
the quantity of food to the body's 
exact needs lay the secret of perfect 
health. 

27 



THE FASTING CURB 

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 quanti- 
ties 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 re- 
move all the ** unchewable " parts of 

28 



PERFKCT HEALTH 

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 in- 
testines 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 un- 
assimilated food lies in the colon, and 
bacteria swarm in it, and the poisons 
they produce are absorbed into the sys- 
tem. I had bacteriological examina- 
tions made in my own case, and I 
found that when I was feeling well the 

29 



THE FASTING CURE 

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 bil- 
lions. 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 im- 
proved 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 

80 



PERFECT HEALTH 

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 

31 



THE FASTING CURE 

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 appe- 
tite — 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 con- 
solation 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 com- 
plexion and extraordinary health were 

32 



PERFECT HEALTH 

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 in- 
testinal trouble which the doctors 
called ** intermittent peritonitis"; 
from intense nervous weakness, melan- 
choly, and chronic catarrh, causing 
deafness. And this was the woman 
who rode on horseback with me up 
Mount Hamilton, in California, a dis- 
tance 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 mor- 
as 



THE FASTING CURK 

tal 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. 

34 



PERFECT HEALTH 

Hazzard and Mr. Carrington. Coming 
home from California I got a sun- 
stroke 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 start- 
ling 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 aston- 
ishment, no hunger whatever — no 

35 



THE FASTING CURE 

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 disap- 
peared — 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 writ- 
ing. No phase of the experience sur- 
prised 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 

36 



PERFECT HEALTH 

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 
Macf adden. 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. 

37 



THE FASTING CURE 

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 extra- 
ordinary 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 com- 
pulsion. Now, after the cleaning-out 
of the fast, I would go into a gymna- 
sium and do work which would liter- 

38 



PERFECT HEALTH 

ally 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 sud- 
denly discovered the possibility of be- 
coming an athlete. I had always been 
lean and dyspeptic-looking, with what 
my friends called a " spiritual " ex- 
pression; 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. There- 
fore I began again. I intended only 
a short fast, but I found that hunger 
ceased again, and, much to my sur- 
prise, I had none of the former weak- 
ness. I took a cold bath and a vigorous 
rub twice a day; I walked four miles 
every morning, and did light gymna- 

39 



THE FASTING CURE 

fiiuin 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 amuse- 
ment 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 com- 
bination, 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 depend- 
ent upon all kinds of laxative pre- 
parations; now I forgot about them. 
I no longer had headaches. I went 

40 



PERFEC5T HEALTH 

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 experi- 
ence I lived upon a diet of raw foods 
exclusively — mainly nuts and fruits. T 
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 satis- 
factory. 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 

41 D 



THE FASTING CURB 

long period of hard and continuous 
writing, I found that I had not suflB 
cient 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. Salis- 
bury 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 vege- 
tarian for three or four years, found 
this a startling idea. However, X 
make a specialty of keeping an open 
mind, and I set out to try the Salis- 
bury system. I am sorry to have to 
say that it seems to be a good one; 
sorry because the vegetarian way of 

42 



PERFECT HEALTH 

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 regime; and while this con- 
tinues 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 per- 
manent health. I would not take any- 
thing in all the world for my know- 
ledge 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 im- 
munity, but I should not care to go 
that far; it is enough for me to know 

43 



THE FASTING CURE 

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 follow- 
ing 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 rheuma- 
tism, arteriosclerosis, paralysis, apo- 
plexy, Blight's disease, cirrhosis, etc. 

44 



PERFECT HEALTH 

And by impairing the blood and lower- 
ing the vitality, this same condition 
prepares the system for infection — for 
*' colds," or pneumonia, or tubercu- 
losis, 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 sys- 
tem, which takes so much of the ener- 
gies 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 

45 



THE FASTINQ CUBE 

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 dan- 
gers 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 con- 
vinced himself that it is the thing to 
do; if possible he should have with him 
someone who has already had the ex- 

46 



PERFECT HEALTH 

perience. 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 

47 



THE FASTING CURB 

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 realised. 

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 

48 



PERFECT HEALTH 

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 nar- 
rating 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 per- 
sonally, 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 sub- 
ject 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 

49 



THE FASTING CURE 

for about ten days with morphine. 
She was then too low to risk an opera- 
tion, 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 

50 



PERFECT HEALTH 

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 
Tvas 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 kid- 
neys 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 circum- 
stances 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 col- 

51 



THE FASTING CURE 

lege boy a physical wreck from dissi- 
pation, 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 and 15 seconds, and rode a 
wheel 500 miles in seven days. 

Fourth, a young lady, who had suf- 
fered a nervous collapse caused by 
overwork and worry. The bones of 
her spine had softened; her hip-bones 
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 

52 



PERFECT HEALTH 

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 bron- 
chitis, typhoid, pneumonia and pleu- 
risy. 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 open- 
ing in his chest. Recently walked 442 
miles in eleven days. 

Sixth, a lady, married, and in mid- 
dle 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 

fiS 



THB FASTING CURE 

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 morn- 
ing 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 pros- 
tration and complete breakdown. 
Specialists had diagnosed his case as 
* ' prolapsed stomach and bowels, auto- 
intoxication 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 

5i 



PERFECT HlflALTH 

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 investi- 
gate 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 exclu- 
sively, 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 en- 

56 



THE PASTING CURE 

thusiasm 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 experi- 
ence 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 physi- 
cian 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 pre- 
sent materia medica into the waste- 
basket. This may be unwelcome to 
those physicians who are more con- 
M 



PERFECT HEALTH 

cerned 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 fast- 
ing cure. 



Shortly after the above was com- 
pleted the writer had another interest- 
ing 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 

57 B 



THE FASTING CURE 

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 al- 
though 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. 
68 



PERFECT HEALTH 

A Letter to the New York Times. 
(unfit to 'print) 

Arden, Del., May 31, 1910. 

Editor of the Times, New York City, 

Dear Sir, — Some time ago your 
news columns contained a despatch to 
the effect that three young ladies in 
Garden City, Long Island, were under- 
taking a three days' fast as a result 
of reading a magazine article recom- 
mending this measure. In your 
editorial referring to this despatch, 
you say that the ladies are ** the vic- 
tims of a shallow and unscrupulous 
sensationalist." As I am the writer 
of the magazine article in question, I 
presume that this means me. I did 
not intend to make any reply to the 
remark, as I figure that I must have 
long ago lost whatever reputation 
could be taken from me by newspaper 
comments. Thinking the matter over, 
however, I concluded that I would ven- 
ture a mild protest, not on my own 
account, but for the sake of the im- 

&9 



THE FASTING CURfc 

portant discovery of which I told in 
the article in question. 

It is one of the privileges incidental 
to owning a newspaper that one can 
call other people names with impunity, 
and can always have the last word in 
any argument. Will, however, your 
sense of fair play give me the privilege 
of asking you to state just what you 
meant by the slur in question ? In the 
magazine article I stated that I had 
taken several fasts of ten or twelve 
days' duration, with the result of a 
complete making over of my health. I 
presume that the writer of the editorial 
had read the article before he con- 
demned it. Am I to understand that 
he got from the article the impression 
that I was telling lies, and that I had 
never really taken the fasts as I said I 
had taken them? Or was it his idea 
that I exaggerated the benefits derived 
therefrom, in order to make ** vic- 
tims " of the three young ladies in 
Garden City? 

I might say that I took the fasts in 
question in an institution where hun- 



PERFECT HEALTH 

dreds of people were fasting anywhere 
from three to fifty days; that during 
the entire time I was under the obser- 
vation of many people ; my weight was 
taken regularly every day, and all the 
S3rmptoms which I described were 
observed by physicians and friends. 
May I also call attention to the fact 
that I published in the article two 
photographs, one of which was taken 
four years ago, and the other of which 
was taken after the fasting treatment ? 
The contrast between these two photo- 
graphs was sufficiently striking, it 
seems to me, to impress anyone. May 
I also call attention to the fact that 
the article was found of sufficient in- 
terest to be published in one of the 
most representative of the English 
monthlies, the Contemporary Review ? 
Also that the Contem.'porary Review 
appended to the article the testimony 
of half a dozen people whose cases 1 
had myself observed, and whose letters 
I have in my possession? 

I fully recognize the fact that many 
of the things for which I stand as a 
n 



THE FASTING CURE 

writer are abhorrent to you, but surely 
that is no reason for condemning reck- 
lessly and blindly an important dis- 
covery concerning human health, 
simply because I happen to be the 
person who is telling about it. Setting 
aside all personalities, and simply in 
the interest of the discovery in ques- 
tion, I respectfully invite you to make 
an investigation of the claims which 
I have set forth in that article. Let 
me give you the names of some people 
who have fasted either under my 
direction or in my presence, and who 
will tell a representative of your paper 
of the results it has brought to them. 
I can tell you of a dozen such people. 
Also, perhaps by way of preliminary, 
you might be willing to publish as an 
appendix to this letter of mine the 
communication from another of my 
" victims," omitting the name of the 
writer unless you obtain permission to 
use it. 

Yours truly, 

Upton Sinclair. 



PERFECT HEALTH 

Appended to the above was the 
letter which the reader will find in the 
Appendix, page 182, The Times did 
not publish this letter, nor did it pay 
any attention to several letters of pro- 
test which followed. I leave it to the 
reader to judge whether the silence of 
the paper was one of dignity or of fear. 
The following despatch from the New 
York World of May 17, 1910, records 
the experiences of the Garden City 
ladies, and makes clear how much in 
need of sympathy my " victims " 
were. 

All three of the young women are 
in rare spirits. They have gone about 
their usual occupations and recrea- 
tions, and Mrs. Trask found time 
yesterday to talk about the single tax 
in the course of a conversation that had 
to do primarily with her newer 
interest. 

*' We are getting the most extra- 

63 



THE PASTING CURB 

ordinary number of letters about this 
adventure of ours," Mrs. Trask said. 
*' They began to come the first day, 
and to-day there were lots of them. 
They come from some of the most un- 
expected places and they contain some 
of the most unexpected things. 

" What most astonishes me is that 
of all those who write to tell us that 
they have tried just what we are doing, 
not one has told us of a failure. There 
isn't any reason why they shouldn't 
write to say that we are foolish and 
that we can't hope to gain what we 
want, but dozens of them have reiter- 
ated the promise that we'll never regret 
having made our experiment. 

*' One New York woman told us 
something that we had wondered about 
more than once. Her husband had 
suffered greatly from rheumatism, and 
finally he tried fasting. Not dieting 
like ourselves, but fasting. He went 
without food of any kind, she said, for 
nineteen days. He kept on at his 
work, too, which was the thing we had 
been wondering about. 

64 



PBRPRCT HEALTH 

** We've heard from another phy- 
sician, too. He lives in Boston and 
has made a specialty of dietetics. He 
warned us not to stick too closely to 
milk, because we'd find that after a 
day or two it would quit being of the 
service it had been at first. People 
we never heard of tell us that thus and 
so was their experience, and when we 
measure our own discoveries beside 
theirs we find new and convincing 
evidence that we picked the true way 
to the end we hoped to reach. 

" I know that for myself I'll have 
reason to be grateful always that I 
took this up. We have been greatly 
benefited.*' 



65