Fluoride Information

Fluoride is a poison. Fluoride was poison yesterday. Fluoride is poison today. Fluoride will be poison tomorrow. When in doubt, get it out.


An American Affidavit

Saturday, January 22, 2022

Chapter 4:A SYMPOSIUM ON FASTING.: The Fasting Cure by Upton Sinclair from archive.org

 

Chapter 4:A SYMPOSIUM ON FASTING.: The Fasting Cure by Upton Sinclair from archive.org

 

 

A SYMPOSIUM ON FASTING.   Recently I published a request that  those who had tried the fast as the  result of my advocacy would write to  advise me of the results. I stated that  I desired to hear unfavourable results

 

 as well as favourable; that I wanted  to get at the facts, and would tabulate  the results exactly as they came. The  questions asked were as follows :   1. How many times have you  fasted ?   2. How many days on each occa-  sion?   3. From what complaints did you  suffer ?   4. Were these complaints ever  diagnosed by regular physicians? If   101     THE FASTING CURE   SO, give the names and addresses of  these physicians.   5. Do you consider that you were  definitely benefited by the fasts? If  so, in what way?   6. For how long did the benefit  continue ?   7. Do you consider that you were  completely cured ?   8. Do you consider that you were  definitely harmed? If so, in what  way?   9. Have you ever been examined by  any

regular physician since the cure?  If so, give name and address.   10. Are you willing that your  name and address should be quoted  for the benefit of others ?   The total number of fasts taken was  277, and the average number of days  was 6. There were 90 of five days or   102     A SYMPOSIUM ON FASTING   over, 51 of ten days or over, and 6 of  30 days or over. Out of the 109 per-  sons who wrote to me, 100 reported  benefit, and 17 no benefit. Of these 17  about half give wrong breaking of the  fast as the reason for the failure. In  cases where the cure had not proved  permanent, about half mentioned that  the recurrence of the trouble was  caused by wrong eating, and about  half of the rest made this quite evi-  dent by what they said. Also it is to  be noted that in the cases of the 17 who  got no benefit, nearly all were fasts of  only three or four days.   Following is the complete list of  diseases benefited — 45 of the cases  having been diagnosed by physicians :  indigestion (usually associated with  nervousness), 27; rheumatism, 5; colds,  8; tuberculosis, 4; constipation, 14;  poor circulation, 3; headaches, 5;   103     THE FASTING CURE   anaemia, 3; scrofula, 1; bronchial  trouble, 5 ; syphilis, 1 ; liver trouble, 5  general debility, 5 ; chills and fever, 1  blood poisoning, 1; ulcerated leg, 1  neurasthenia, 6; locomotor ataxia, 1  sciatica, 1; asthma, 2; excess of uric  acid, 1 ; epilepsy, 1 ; pleurisy, 1 ; impac-  tion of bowels, 1 ; eczema, 2 ; catarrh,  6; appendicitis, 3; valvular disease of  heart, 1 ; insomnia, 1 ; gas poisoning, 1 ;  grippe, 1; cancer, 1.   There follows a brief summary of  some of the most interesting cases. A  number of longer letters will be found  in the Appendix.   Mrs. Lulu Wallace Smith, 324 W.  White Oak Ave., Monrovia, Cal. Age  28. Fasted 30 days for appendicitis  and peritonitis, diagnosed by four  physicians. ** Yes, indeed, I have  definitely been benefited by fasting.   104     A SYMPOSIUM ON FASTING   My stomach is not distressed after  meals, I have regular evacuations of the  intestines, which I had not had since  I was seventeen. I feel perfectly  healthy and look the same."   William N . Syphilis, with ad-  vanced ulcers in throat. Physicians  declared the case hopeless. Complete  disappearance of symptoms after four  days' fast, but they gradually reap-  peared, and longer fast intended.   Dora Jordan, Connersville, Md.  Indigestion, extreme nervousness,  neuralgia in its worst form. Fasted  thirty days ; did most of cooking for a  family of five, was at no time tempted  to eat. "I am no longer troubled  with the old diseases, and weigh more  than ever before. After my fast I felt  as happy and care free as a little  child."   105 11     THE FASTING CURB   C. L. Clark, Greenville, Mich.  Nervous, poor digestion. Fasted nine  days. " I have been wonderfully  benefited, and am a rabid convert.  Alas, for the poor mortal who shows  the faintest spark of interest in my  fast — I hand him the whole works,  lock, stock and barrel ! I feel a new  power and new incentive in life.  Whenever I see a sick person, I feel  like telling him that for all he knows  to the contrary, good health has been  and may be only eight or ten days  away and waiting for years for him  to claim it."   T. S. Jacks, Muskegon, Mich.  Twenty days, followed by shorter fasts,  for stomach trouble, diagnosed by Dr.   M as cancer. " He advised me   to be operated on. Since my fast,  three years ago, I have had no trouble   106     A SYMPOSIUM ON FASTING   with my stomach. I am entirely  cured, and am enjoying fine health."   Gordon G. Ives, 147 Forsythe Bldg.,  Fresno, Cal. " Have fasted a good  many times since 1899, to cure catarrh  of stomach, constipation, deafness of  four months' standing, neuralgia, etc.  Duration, from one to sixteen days.  Never failed in accomplishing a cure.  Benefit continued until I had over-  eaten for a long time. Complaints  were never diagnosed by regular phy-  sicians, as I got on to them in 1894.  Use my name if it will help the truth.'*   Mrs. Maria L. Scott, Boring, Ariz.  Reports case of husband, who fasted  seven days for constipation and deaf-  ness; had been obliged to take enema  daily for several months. Complete  cure.   107     THE FA3TING CURE   Mrs. A. Wears, De Funiak Springs,  Fla. " Age forty-two, subject to  severe colds and sore throat all my life,  chronic catarrh of head and throat, in  bed two winters with bronchitis and  asthma. Did not take complete fast.  My catarrh is much improved. I feel  perfectly well and enjoy life so much  more than I did before the fast."   Mrs. Mae Bramble, Alba, Pa., R. F.  D. 70. One fast of thirty days,  another of three days ; nervous prostra-  tion the first time, appendicitis the  second time. '* The first complaint  was diagnosed, the second was not; as  I am a professional nurse, I under-  stood the symptoms myself." Com-  plete and permanent cure. ** I have  never had a return of the nervous  trouble, and am well of the other com-  plaint. It is five years since the first  fast."     A SYMPOSIUM ON FASTING   M. E. Beard, Corning, Cal. Fasted  nine days for scrofula. Had been  diagnosed. Complete cure, permanent  since 1908. Age forty-seven. " Five  years ago I broke down. Physicians  never could tell me what ailed me. I  kept busy during my fast physically  and mentally; worked over the cook  stove and outdoors. Felt no weak-  ness."   Joseph L. Lewis, Hatfield, Ark.  Fasted three days, and then four days.  " During the last ten days have felt  better than at any time during the last  seven years.**   Monroe Bornn, Port of Spain, Trini-  dad. Fasted seven days on three occa-  sions, for liver trouble. " I had been  treated by three physicians. I con-  sider that I was completely cured. I   109     THE FASTING OURK   have been examined by regular physi-  cians since the cure.**   E. B. Bayne. White Plains, N.Y.  Sends record of fasts taken by two  people, Mr. and Mrs. A. Mr. A.  fasted for rheumatism, which had  caused kidney and bladder trouble of  years' standing, and iritis; fasted five  days and then four days and was com-  pletely cured. Mrs. A. Neuralgia and  catarrhal deafness. Completely cured.  * ' Finds that exposure to draughts has  no effect upon her whatever, hereto-  fore she would catch cold upon the  least exposure."   Mrs. Charles H. Vosseller, Newark,  N.J. " I don't agree with you or  Bernarr Macfadden in not recom-  mending fasting for tuberculosis. My   case was diagnosed by Dr. B. G ,   uo     A SYMPOSIUM ON FASTING   New Brunswick, N.J. I fasted nine-  teen days and was completely cured;  I received no harm, and have been  examined since by a physician. 1  weigh 114 lbs. now and before my fast  weighed 100 lbs. I never felt better  in my life than I do at present. Do  not know that I have a pair of lungs."   In connection with the above tabu-  lation of results, it should be specified  that it does not include any of the cases  quoted elsewhere in the book; it in-  cludes some of the letters given in the  Appendix, but not all. Thus it will  appear that there are many more than  277 cases of fasting recorded in this  volume. The reason that I did not  summarize in the tabulation all the  letters I have received is, that I wished  to give only those which were sent to  me in answer to my definite series of   11!     THE FASTING CURE   questions, so that I might be sure of  getting the unfavourable as well as  the favourable reports. Recently a  well-known physician who edits a  magazine of health came out in  vehement opposition to the fasting  cure, maintaining that we hear only of  the cases which are successful, and do  not hear of the disastrous failures. In  reply to this, I wrote to him suggest-  ing that he publish my series of ques-  tions in his magazine, thus giving his  readers an opportunity to make me  acquainted with the unsuccessful cases.  This, however, the physician declined  to do.   Death during the Fast.   There was much newspaper discus-  sion of my fasting papers — most of it  being sarcastic. The most biting com-   U2     A SYMPOSIUM ON FASTING   ment that I recall came from some-  where out West, and ran about as fol-  lows : " A Seattle man fasted forty  days for stomach trouble. His stomach  is troubling him no longer. He is  dead." I set to work to find out about  this case, and I give the facts on page  231. I also saw a report from the  London Daily Telegraph to the efifect  that a man had died in South Africa  as a result of trying my ** cure.*' How  many thousands of people tried it and  lived, I do not know; but horrified  relatives and enterprising newspaper  writers would see that the public was  informed about any that died.   As to the possibility or probability  of death during a fast, I have one or  two points to note :   First, a good many sick people are   dying all the time. It would be an   argument for fasting if it saved any  lie     THE FASTING CURE   of them. It is no argument against  fasting that it fails to save them all.  No one would think of bringing it up  against his surgeon or his family phy-  sician that he occasionally lost a  patient.   Second, people might die very fre-  quently, without that being an argu-  ment against the cure. It might sim-  ply be a consequence of the desperately  ill class of people who were trying it.  A doctor who had a new method of  healing, and was permitted to use it  only upon those whom all other doctors  had given up, would be considered suc-  cessful if he effected even an occa-  sional cure. I would wager that of  the people who read my article and set  out to fast, practically all had been  suffering for many years, and had  given the " regular " physicians un-  limited opportunity to work on them.   114     A SYMPOSIUM ON FASTING   Third, it may be set down as abso-  lutely certain that no one ever died of  starvation while fasting. The essen-  tial feature of the fast is that after the  first two or three days all hunger  ceases; and that any one could die of  lack of food without feeline a desire  for food, is absurd upon the face of it.  Nature simply does not work that way.  It reminds me of a young lady who  once told me that she would not go to  sleep with a mouse in the room, because  she imagined the mouse might nibble  off her ear without waking her !   As to the possibility that you might  starve, during those first days while  you are hungry — the answer is simply  that you don't. It is perfectly true  that men have died of starvation in  three or four days; but the starvation  existed in their minds — it was fright  that killed them. That they did not   115     THE FASTING CURK   truly starve is proven by my letters  from several hundreds of people who  have fasted over that time, and who  are alive to tell of it.   There are conditions in the human  body which lead to death inevitably;  and some of these conditions are be-  yond the power of the fast to remedy.  When a person so afflicted sets out to  fast, and dies in spite of the fast, the  papers of course declare that he died  because of the fast. Dr. L. B. Haz-  zard of Seattle has published a very  useful little book, " Fasting for the  Cure of Disease," in which she tells  of two cases of " death from fasting,"  where the autopsy revealed conditions  with which the fast had no connection,  and which made death certain.  Chances of that sort one has to take in  life. You may have a blood vessel in  such a state that when you run after a   116     A; SYMPOSIUM: ON FASTING   street car the increased pressure will  cause it to burst ; but you do not on that  account declare that no man ought to  exert himself violently.   As an example of the part that men-  tal disturbances may play in the fast,  I will cite the case of a woman friend  who started out to fast for a complica-  tion of chronic ailments. She was  rather stout, and did not mind it at  all — was going cheerfully about her  daily tasks; but her husband heard  about it, and came home to tell her  what a fool she was making of herself ;  and in a few hours she was in a state  of complete collapse. No doubt if  there had been a physician in the  neighbourhood, there would have been  another tale of a " victim of a shallow  and unscrupulous sensationalist."  Fortunately, however, business called  the husband away again, and the next   117     THE FASTING CURE   day the woman was all right, and com-  pleted.an eight-day fast with the best  results. Bear this in mind, so that if  you wake up some morning and find  your temperature sub-normal and your  pulse at forty, and your arms too weak  to lift you, and if your friends get  round you and tell you that you look  like a mummy out of a sarcophagus of  the seventeenth dynasty, and that I  am a Socialist and an undesirable  citizen — you may be able to smile at  them good naturedly and tell them that  you will never again eat until you are  hungry.   I have thought over the cases of  failure of the fast, where I have been  able to inquire into all the circum-  stances, and I think I can make the  statement that I do not know a case  which might not be attributed either  to the influence of nervous excitement,   118     A SYMPOSIUM ON FASTING   or to unwise breaking of the fast. In  the last batch of letters was one with  a printed account of the disastrous re-  sults of a three weeks' fast taken by  a woman. It is an example of about  all the blunders that I can think of.  She describes herself as occupying ' ' a  responsible office position," which  taxed her strength to the utmost; and  she tried to do this work all the time  she was fasting. She would get up  and go to work when she was  " scarcely able to drag one foot after  another." On about the nineteenth  day her mother arrived, and then I  quote : ' ' She almost dropped at sight  of me, for I had not given a hint as to  my condition ; but despite my protests,  she sent for the doctor at once. My I  Didn't he scold, and tell me what was  what ! Mother's heart was so^ torn  with sorrow and pity that she hadn't   119     THE FASTING CURE   the heart to reproach me for my three  weeks' orgy of fasting. She thought  I had paid dearly for my folly." I  don't think it necessary to say any-  thing more, except that I feel sorry for  the victim, and that I am glad to know  this happened two years ago, so that I  am not to blame for the results.   By way of contrast with this case I  will quote the following letter, which  will show the reader the kind of ex-  perience that makes fasting enthu-  siasts : *' My wife and I have each  nearly reached our seventy-second  year. I was born a physical wreck.  A dozen years ago we began taking  short fasts, from three to eleven days'  duration, for all our ills of the flesh.  But each of us had chronic troubles of  forty years' standing, which seemed  growing no better. And finally, two  years ago, last July, my wife said she   120     A SYMPOSIUM ON FASTING   was going to take a ' conquest fast * if  it killed her, for she was tired of living  with her present ills. I thought it a  good time to try a little conquest fast-  ing on my own hook. I had no fear  of the result. I knew that nature  would tell me when I had fasted long  enough. So we began an absolute fast  from all food except distilled water  and fresh air. We lived in fresh air  night and day. We took copious  enemas daily, and I took a cabinet  sweat, followed by a cold plunge every  other day. I knew that I must have  many^ years of filth accumulation in  my bowels. And the amount of  putridity that came from my bowels  the first twenty-five days of the fast  was amazing.   * * After fasting twenty-eight days 1  began to be hungry, and broke my fast  with a little grape juice, followed the   121 I     THE PASTING CURB   next day with tomatoes, and later with  vegetable soup. My wife began to be  hungry after fasting thirty-one days,  and broke her fast in a similar manner  to myself.   ** It is now two years since we took  the conquest fast, and my wife has no  return of her former troubles. And I  am enjoying all the mental and phy-  sical pleasures which come from clean  bowels. We think we have learned  how to live that we will never need an-  other fast. Soon after the fast I was   examined by Dr. S , the leading   surgeon of Los Angeles and Southern  California, who pronounced me as  being the most wonderful person he  ever met regarding softness of arteries,  and suppleness of body, for my age."     122     A SYMPOSimC ON I'AStlN<5   Fasting and the Mind.   The reader will observe that I dis-  cuss this fasting question from a  materialistic view-point. I am tell-  ing what it does to the body; but be-  sides this, of course, fasting is a reli-  gious exercise. I heard the other day  from a man who was taking a forty-  day fast, as a means of increasing his  " spiritual power." I am not saying  that for you to smile at — he has excel-  lent authority for the procedure. The  point with me is that I find life so full  of interest just now that I don't have  much time to think about my " soul."  I get so much pleasure out of a hand-  ful of raisins, or a cold bath, or a  game of tennis, that I fear it is inter-  fering with my spiritual development.  I have, however, a very dear friend  who goes in for the things of the soul,  and she tells me that when you are   113     THE FASTING CURE   fasting, the higher faculties are in a  sensitive condition, and that you can  do many interesting things with your  subliminal self. For instance, she had  always considered herself a glutton;  and so, during an eight-day fast, just  before going to sleep and just after  awakening, she would lie in a sort of  trance and impress upon her mind the  idea of restraint in eating. The re-  sult, she declared, has been that she  has never since then had an impulse to  over-eat.   There are many such curious things,  about which you may read in the books  of the yogis and the theosophists —  who were fasting in previous incarna-  tions when you and I were swinging  about in the tree-tops by our tails. But  I ought to report upon one fasting ex-  periment which resulted disastrously  for me. Earlier in this book I told   124     SYMPOSIUM N FASTING   how I had been able to write the  greater part of a play while fasting.  Shortly afterwards I plunged into the  writing of a new novel, and as usual  I got so much interested in it that I  wasn't hungry. I said that I would  fast, and save the eating time, and the  digesting time as well. So I would sit  and work for sixteen hours or more a  day, sometimes for six hours at a  stretch without moving. After two or  three days of this I would be hungry,  and would eat something; but being  too much excited to digest it, I would  say, *' Hang eating, anyhow!" — and  go on for another period of work. 1  kept that up for some six weeks, and 1  turned out an appalling lot of manu-  script; but I found that I had taken  off twenty-five pounds of flesh, and had  got to such a point that I could not  digest a little warm milk. I cite this   125     THB FABTIKA CURS   in order that the reader may under-  stand just why I take a gross and  material view of fasting. My advice  is to lie round in the sun and read  story-books and take care of your body,  and leave the soul-exercises and the  nervous efforts until the fast is over.  But all the same, I know that there  will be great poetry written some day,  when our poets have got on to the fast-  ing trick — and when our poets care  enough about their work to be willing  to feed it with their own flesh.   The great thing about the fast is  that it sets you a new standard of  health. You have been accustomed to  worrying along somehow ; but now you  discover your own possibilities, and  thereafter you are not content until  you have found some way to keep that  virginal state of stomach which one  possesses for a month or two after a   126     A SYMPOSIU^I ON FASTING   successful fast. It must mean, of  course, many changes in your life, if  you really wish to keep it. It means  the giving up of tobacco and alcohol,  and a too sedentary life, and steam-  heated rooms; above all else, it means  giving up self-indulgent eating.   A couple of years ago my wife and  myself made the acquaintance of a  young lady patient in a sanatorium,  who was in a much run-down condi-  tion, anaemic and nervous. We per-  suaded her to take a fast of five or six  days, and afterwards take the milk  diet, as the result of which she went  back to her home in Virginia with  what she described as *' smiles and  dimples and curves and bright eyes."  She was so enthusiastic about the cure  that she proceeded to apply it to all her  family and her friends ; and some time  afterwards she wrote my wife a most   127     THE FASTING CURE   diverting account of her adventures.  After some persuasion I secured her  permission to quote her letter, having  duly omitted all the names. It makes  clear the thorny path which the fast-  ing enthusiast has to travel in this  world.     I will try in a very limited space of  time to tell you what keeps me a slave   here at home. I got Mr. X down   from to put papa and mamma on   the fasting cure — papa had a bad case  of grippe — mamma had indigestion.  My oldest married brother is in dread-  ful health, and his wife and baby are  not well. I wore myself nearly out  trying to get them well, and at the  same time trying to pick up some  threads of long neglected social duties.  People were beginning to call me  '* stuck-up " (horrid vulgar term), so  unless I wanted to make enemies of the  wives and daughters of papa's and  brother's business friends, I had to go  129     A SYMPOSIUM ON FASTING   to a few parties and pay some long-  neglected calls. I did it all, and then   decided to have Mr. X come to   help me. I got papa and mamma and   M and her baby (!) on a fast — and   then woe is me — I had to get them off  again ! They had various and alarm-  ing symptoms due to their ignorance  of the methods, and the wild interest  of the town medicine-men. The family  doctor gave me a " straight talk ' ' and  asked me if I was going to try to kill  my father and mother. Papa would  not give up his cigarette, and a   " toddy " now and then. M 's   baby lost four pounds while his mother  was fasting. All the doctors' wives  came to call, and beset me with ques-  tions — and I had the d of a time.   But I stood by my guns. When the  overfed, self-indulgent family all got  to vomiting at once, my hands were  full, and I nearly had nervous prostra-  tion before I got order out of the bed-  lam I had stirred up.   Well, they got over the fast and on  to the milk. Then I had to tend to the   129     THE PASTING CUnB   milk myself or they refused to drink it.  Finally mamma got to feeling so well  that she sat up, and planned big course  dinners and invited people to eat them.  She began to order new clothes for the  kids, new furnishings for the iiouse,  and started in to live her disorderly,  ungodly ** Southern hospitality " life  all over again. Our senator died and  mamma got into politics in the new   election ; and Cousin J got drunk,   and I had to go with him to the Keeley  Institute, etc., etc. Surely there is a  heaven for saints like me. I did not  fly the roost as I was tempted to do,  but I answered midnight calls of the  spoiled, nauseated ones, and fixed hot  water bags, quelled riots among the  meat-eating servants and hungry chil-  dren — and swore I'd win! I did.  Well, I got things going in fine order  at last, with papa cured of his grippe  and an old case of kidney trouble.  Mamma is now comfortably eating  boiled ham and stuffed peppers, and  fruit cake and cherry pie, and green  olives and what not at the same meal   ISO     jL SYilPOSIUM ON FASTING   She is well, though. But of course she  will get sick again. Papa, the only  sane member of our family, is still  holding on to the milk, taking four  quarts of buttermilk a day, and he is   flourishing, thank heaven ! M is   still bilious, having broken her fast  with hard-boiled eggs and pork chops.  And I am still living, in spite of hav-  ing been to Keeley, and incidentally  having danced all night (with a low-  neck, short-sleeved gown on !) at the   Club ball, sat through several   dinners and bridge parties into the  '* wee sma* hours," and had two men  propose to me with the prelude, ' ' You  are the nicest, most refined, and most  lovable girl in the world if you are a  crank." Wasn't that a nice begin-  ning for a proposal of marriage? 1  accepted them both on condition that I  be allowed to remain a crank.   Well, the next chapter began with  an old lover who had married another  woman. He came to see me and said  he had a tape- worm ! Ye gods — such  romance ! His wife had stomach and   131     THE FASTING CURB   intestinal trouble. I turned Mr.   X over to them, and them over to   Mr. X . The lady got along, but   the poor man with a wild beast inside  him got so sick after an eight-day fast  that he wanted to have me mobbed,  sent for two trained nurses and four  doctors — this is no exaggeration — the  doctors looked at me, and looks were  as plain as words — ' ' You little devil !  You did it for pure meanness." For  three days my poor friend had the  doctors giving him hypodermics, and  he never stopped vomiting until we  were all nearly dead. Then he quieted  down, got well, ate a beef -steak with a  few dozen oysters and mushrooms, and  took me riding in his new automobile.  The grim humour in the whole thing is  that if I had not gotten my roses and  dimples and curves and bright eyes  back by fasting, this man would never  have taken me riding in his new auto-  mobile. Take a tip from me — all the  good nursing and friendly efforts in  behalf of the health of my friends did  not endear me to them one half as much   132     A SYMPOSIUM ON FASTING   as the plump, rosy smile I wore with  my new silk gown. The first day our  sick friend went out in his car — alas  for the ways of human nature — mas-  culine human nature, I mean — I told  him so. And he agreed with me and  ended by saying, *' Darn an ugly  woman — I'll forgive a pretty one any-  thing**     Diet after the Fast.   Many people write me, begging me   to outline for them the ideal diet. I  used to do that sort of thing, but I have  stopped; having come to realize that  we are still at the beginning of our  diet experiments. I have done a good  deal of experimenting myself, and  have made some interesting dis-  coveries. I have lived for a week on  fruit only, and again on wheat only;  I have lived for three weeks on nothing   1.S3     THE PASTING CURE   but milk, and again on nothing but  beef -steak. I have lived for a year on  raw food, and for over three years I  professed the religion of vege-  tarianism. For the last two months  I have lived on beef -steak, shredded  wheat, raisins and fresh fruit; but by  the time this book appears I may be  trying sour milk and dates — somebody  told me about that the other day, and  it sounds good to me. Some of my  correspondents object to my willing-  ness to try new diets; they write me  that they find it bewildering, and think  it indicative of an unstable mind.  They do not realize that I am exacting  in my demands — I want a diet which  will permit me to overwork with im-  punity. I haven't found it yet, but I  am on the way; and meantime I make  my experiments with a light heart, for  I always know that if anything goes   134     A SYMPOSIUM ON FASTING 1   wrong, I can take a fast and start  afresh.   The general rules are mostly of a  negative sort. There are many kinds  of foods, some of them most generally  favoured, of which one may say that  they should never be used, and that  those who use them can never be as  well as they would be without them.  Such foods are all that contain alcohol  or vinegar ; all that contain cane sugar ;  all that contain white flour in any one  of its thousand alluring forms of  bread, crackers, pie, cake, and pud-  dings; and all foods that have been  fried — by which I mean cooked with  grease, whether that grease be lard, or  butter, or eggs or milk. It is my con-  viction that one should bar these  things at the outset, and admit of no  exceptions. I do not mean to say that  healthy men and women cannot eat   135     THE PASTING CURB   such things and be well ; but I say that  they cannot be as well as they would  be without them; and that every par  tide of such food they eat rendei '  them more liable to all sorts of infec-  tion, and sows in their systems the  seeds of the particular chronic disease  that is to lay them low sooner or later.  There are a number of other things,  which I do not rate as quite so bad, but  which we bar in our family — simply  because they are not so good. For in-  stance, I am inclined to regard beans  as being too difficult of digestion and  too liable to fermentation to be eaten  by any one who can get anything  better. And I personally do not eat  peanuts, because I have found that I  do not digest them; and I do not use  milk (except in the exclusive milk  diet), because it is constipating, and I  have a tendency in that direction.   m     A SYMPOSIUM ON FASTING   Almost everyone will discover idiosyn-  crasies of that sort in his own system.  One person cannot digest cheese, an-  other cannot digest bananas, another  cannot stand the taste of olive oil.  You may read a glowing account of  some diet system by which some other  person has worked miracles, and you  may try it, and persist in it for a long  time, and finally come to realize that  it was the worst diet you could possi-  bly have been following. I have al-  ways counted orange juice as the ideal  food with which to break a fast ; yet a  friend whom I was advising broke his  fast with the juice of half an orange  and had a violent cramp. He had  been so confiding in my greater know-  ledge that he had omitted to tell me  that any sort of acid fruit had always  made him ill.   Such things as this are of course not   137 K     THE FASTING CURE   natural; but a perfectly normal and  well person is, under the artificial con-  ditions of our bringing up, a very great  rarity; and so we all have to regard  ourselves as more or less diseased, and  work towards the ideal of soundness.  We must do this with intelligence —  there is no short cut, no way to save  one's self the trouble of thinking.   I used to think there was. I would  discover this or that wonderful new  diet-wrinkle, and I would go round  preaching it to all my friends, and  making a general nuisance of myself.  And some one would try it, and it  would not work ; and often, to my own  humiliation, I would discover that it  was not working in my own case half  so well as I had thought it was.   By way of setting an ideal, let me  give you the example of a young lady  who for six or seven months has been   138     A SYMPOSIUM ON FASTING   living in our home, and giving us a  chance to observe her dietetic habits.  This young lady three years ago was an  anaemic school teacher, threatened  with consumption, and a victim of con-  tinual colds and headaches; miserable  and beaten, with an exopthalmic goitre  which was slowly choking her to death.  She fasted eight days, and achieved a  perfect cure. She is to-day bright,  alert and athletic; and she lives on  about twelve hundred calories of food  a day — one-half what I eat, and less  than a third of the old-school dietetic  standards. Occasionally she will eat  nut butter, or sweet potato, or some  whole wheat crackers with butter, or a  dish of ice-cream; but at least ninety  per cent, of her food has consisted of  fresh fruit. Meal after meal, day  after day, I have seen her eat one or  two bananas and two or three peaches,   139     THE FASTING CURE   or say, a slice of watermelon or canta-  loupe; at some meals she will eat only  the peaches, and then again she will  eat nothing. A dollar a week would  pay for all her food; and on this diet  she laughs and talks, reads and thinks,  walks and swims with my wife and  myself — a kind of external dietetic  conscience, which we would find it  hard to get along without. And tell  me, Dr. Woods Hutchinson, or other  scoffer at the " food-faddists," don't  you think that a case like this gives us  some right to ask for patient investi-  gation of our claims? Or will you  stand by your pill boxes and your  carving-knives and the rest of your  paraphernalia, and compel us to cure  all your patients in spite of you ?  

 

No comments:

Post a Comment