Preface: The Fasting Cure by Upton Sinclair from archive.org

 

Preface: The Fasting Cure by Upton Sinclair from archive.org

 

 

THE FASTING CURE     A SELECTION FROM   MR. HEINEMANN'S MEDICAL   AND SCIENTIFIC BOOKS.     THE SIMPLE LIFE SERIES.   The Fasting Cure     BY     UPTON SINCLAIR   Author of " The Jungle," etc.      LONDON   WILLIAM HEINEMANN   1911     All Rights Reserved.   

 

 TO   BEBNARR MACFADDEN   IN CORDIAL APPRECIATION OF HIS  PERSONALITY AND TEACHINGS     Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive   in 2007 with funding from   IVIicrosoft Corporation     http://www.arcliive.org/details/fastingcureOOsinciala    

 

CONTENTS     Preface ....   Perfect Health   A Letter to the Neiv York Time$   Some Notes on Fasting   Fasting and the Doctors   The Humors of Fasting   A Symposium on Fasting  Death during the Fast  Fasting and the Mind .  Diet after the Fast   The Use of Meat   Appendix   Some Letters from Fasters  The Fruit and Nut Diet  The Rader Case .  Horace Fletcher's Fast    

 

PREFACE  

      IN the Cosmopolitan Magazine for  May, 1910, and in the Contemporary  Review (London) for April, 1910, I  published an article dealing with my  experiences in

fasting. I have written  a great many magazine articles, but  never one which attracted so much  attention as this. The first day the  magazine was on the news-stands, I  received a telegram from a man in  Washington who had begun to fast  and wanted some advice; and there-  after I received ten or twenty letters  a day from people who had questions  to ask or experiences to narrate. At  the date of writing a year has  passed, and the flood has not yet  stopped. The editors of the Cosmo-  politan also tell me that they have  never received so many letters about an article in their experience. Still  more significant was the number of  reports which began to appear in the  news columns of papers all over the  country, telling of people who were  fasting. From various sources I have  received about fifty such clippings, and  few but reported benefit to the faster.  As a consequence of this interest, I  was asked by the Cosmopolitan to write  another article, which appeared in the  issue of February, 1911. The present volume is made up from these two  articles, with the addition of some  notes and comments, and some portions  of articles contributed to the Physical  Culture magazine, of the editorial staff  of which I am a member. It was my intention at first to work this matter  into a connected whole, but upon re-  reading the articles I decided that it  would be better to publish them as they stood. The journalistic style has its advantages; and repetitions may per-  haps be pardoned in the case of a topic  which is so new to almost everyone.   There is one other matter to be referred to. Several years ago I pub-  lished a book entitled ** Good Health,"  written in collaboration with a friend.  I could not express my own views fully  in that book, and on certain points  where I differed with my collaborator,  I have come since to differ still more.  The book contains a great deal of use-  ful information; but later experience  has convinced me that its views on the  all-important subject of diet are  erroneous. My present opinions I  have given in this book. I am not  saying this to apologize for an inconsistency, but to record a growth. In those days I believed something, be-  cause other people told me; to-day I know something else, because I have  tried it upon myself.   My object in publishing this book is two-fold : first, to have something to  which I can refer people, so that I will  not have to answer half a dozen fasting letters " every day for the rest of  my life; and second, in the hope of  attracting sufficient attention to the  subject to interest some scientific men  in making a real investigation of it.  To-day we know certain facts about what is called "autointoxication";  we know them because Metchnikoff,  Pawlow and others have made a  thorough-going inquiry into the sub-  ject. I believe that the subject of fasting is one of just as great import-  ance. I have stated facts in this book  about myself ; and I have quoted many  letters which are genuine and beyond  dispute. The cures which they record     PREFACE   are altogether without precedent, I think. The reader will find in the  course of the book (page 102), a tabula-  tion of the results of 277 cases of fast  ing. In this number of desperate cases, there were only about half a  dozen definite and unexplained  failures reported. Surely it cannot be  that medical men and scientists will  continue for much longer to close their  eyes to facts of such vital significance  as this.   I do not pretend to be the discoverer of the fasting cure. The subject was discussed by Dr. E. H. Dewey in books  which were published thirty or forty  years ago. For the reader who cares  to investigate further, I mention the  following books, which I have read  with interest and profit. I recommend them, although, needless to say,  I do not agree with everything that is in them :

 

** Fasting for the Cure of  Disease," by Dr. L. B. Hazzard;  •• Perfect Health," by C. C. Haskell;  *' Fasting, Hydrotherapy and Exer-  cise," by Bernarr Macfadden; '* Fast-  ing, Vitality and Nutrition," by  Hereward Carrington. Also I will  add that Mr. C. C. Haskell, of Nor-  wich, Conn., conducts a correspond-  ence-school dealing with the subject  of fasting, and that fasting patients  are taken charge of at Bernarr Mac-  fadden's Healthatorium, 42d Street  and Grand Boulevard, Chicago, 111,  and by Dr. Linda B. Hazzard, of  Seattle, Washington.     THE FASTING CURE