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An American Affidavit

Sunday, November 27, 2022

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

 

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.*'  

 

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