True Hunger Disappears When Disease Approaches:
Tapering Off To A Complete Fast:
The Function Of The Liver:
Two Plans For Fasting

When disease appears in humankind, it is, as said before, not only a cautionary but a curative process. A disturbing element needs removal; tired and abused organs need rest and repair. Instinctively real food desire, true hunger, disappears; in fact, for some time previous to actual disability, hunger has been absent. Appetite or stimulated demand for sustenance may, however, be in evidence and may remain in evidence even after illness is manifest; but disease and hunger cannot exist at the same time in the human body.

Bodily functions are swift in their adaptability to conditions, and bodily organs accommodate themselves and their labors even to abuse. Consequently, in a system accustomed to continuous excess food supply, nature carries on existence in spite of handicap until accumulation and subsequent decomposition institute disease. Could the subject recognize that prevention of later evil lies entirely in his own hands, the greater portion of physical suffering would be eradicated; but prevention compels personal denial of personal habit and enjoyment; and denial in this respect is the hardest of all virtues to inculcate and to practice.

The simplicity of the application of the fast constitutes one of its principal drawbacks. To a mind convinced on final argument of the efficacy of the method, nothing is more easy than to begin the omission of the daily ration, irrespective of the mental and physiological changes that are involved. But food stimulation, always an important factor in disease, asserts the power of habit over the body; and, even though the will of the patient has been brought to understand the futility of dependence upon artIficial aids to health, as embodied in medicine and in methods akin to it, general knowledge is lacking concerning the proper means to pursue in order to overcome habit and to meet the physiological changes that ensue when food is denied the body for the purpose of prevention or of cure of disease.

The cultivation of a habit is a slow and insidious process, and so, in lesser degree perhaps, is its destruction. Abruptly to cease an action, normal or abnormal, habitually connected with bodily function, causes both physical and mental disturbance. Witness, for instance, the attempts of a victim of tobacco, alcohol, or morphine to escape from the toils. In the ordinary case will power alone may accomplish the result sought for. But in the purifying process of the fast abnormal desire is removed, and physical habits of this sort are thus easily conquered.

In many cases the will required to begin a fast is present, and, were this the sole consideration, food might at once be denied. But, because natural physiological change is always gradual in accomplishment, a like approach to cessation of digestion is essential. The ideal manner of effecting the readjustment of organic action, the consequence of lowering to zero the intake of food, is to diminish by degrees the amount ingested, for suddenly to omit food at the inception of a fast sets the stomach clamoring for supply at the hours which habit has fixed, and the results of deprivation are then comparable to those experienced by the toper or the drug victim when drink or narcotic is denied. Nervous reaction is at once apparent and depression follows. Only in acute disease should abrupt entrance be made to the fast, and this solely because at such times nature makes the issue and removes effectively all desire for food.

Daily baths and enemata, natural means for external and internal cleansing of the body and aids to elimination which do not disturb function as do purgatives, mark the commencement of treatment; and these accompaniments, with the omission of the midday meal, embody the first stage of approach to the period of total abstinence from food. Omitting the noon meal and lessening quantity at other meals paves the way; and, in the ordinary instance of functional disease, gradual diminution of food supply should occupy an interim of about ten days or two weeks, after which tomato broth, onion broth, or some similar light fluid food, in limited quantity, may be used, dropping then to lemon juice with honey in hot water taken about three times daily. In fact, half a lemon and a dessert spoon of honey to a pint of hot water may in many instances be given with benefit several times each day during the non-food interval. The slight effort of digestion required for this usually pleasant beverage does not to any degree interfere with the eliminative processes, and in cases where suggestion may be used with profit, it performs this service.

If as sometimes happens the omission of the midday meal occasions distress, ripe fruit in small quantity may be eaten at the usual hour. Soups made of vegetables gradually becoming lighter in food value should constitute the morning and evening meals until they are dispensed with, and then it is well to use the lemon and honey as described or the juices of fruit alone for the last few days preceding the fast itself.

In the ordinary patient the omission of the noon meal may cause slight disturbances, such as dizziness, headache, or stomach craving. These are mostly the results of habit change, and usually they disappear within three or four days, when there are commonly no further unpleasant symptoms as the remaining meals are omitted. In the two-meal period elimination of digestive toxins begins to gain over their formation, and, as the patient gradually lowers ingestion, it becomes most evident, from the discharges in the enemata and from the odor that emanates from skin and breath, that the body is undergoing strenuous house-cleaning. These phenomena make it apparent that previous continuously overburdened digestive function, with consequent defective nutrition, has filled the entire system with toxic products, and that complete purification, coupled with rest for the organs of digestion and those allied with them is necessary for regaining physical balance. A new foundation is to be constructed as the old is removed, and a change in physiological condition is to be effected by casting from the body the active cause of disease, and by renewing, through cell reconstruction and rest, the functioning ability of those organs that long have been hampered in operation.

At the portal of the circulation of the blood, like a faithful sentry, stands the liver. The function of this organ is to receive digested food after its absorption through the villi, which are short hair-like processes residing on the walls of the intestines, and designed for this purpose. Receiving digested food in this manner, the liver then proceeds to separate it into that which may be used for rebuilding of tissue and that which is waste. Its products are, on the one hand, tissue-nutriment, and, on the other, the peculiar secretion known as bile. Bile, even when normal in character, is essentially a waste product, and, after separation by the liver, it is stored in the gall sac, whence it is discharged into the intestines and utilized in the digestive processes. Nature is loath to cast out any material as useless, and one of the most striking instances in her economy is this utilization of an essentially waste product in the digestive function.

When overworked by overfeeding or other abuse, the liver cannot successfully perform its task of inspection, and the bile retained is carried into the blood current. Surplus of this fluid is also apparent intestinally in these circumstances, and with it the headache, the cold, or a bilious crisis occurs.

The minute cells of the liver have individual work to perform in separating nutritive matter from waste; and, unless care be taken to furnish a food supply correct in proportion and quality, bile is secreted and excreted in quantity greater than the system requires, and is itself absorbed and reabsorbed, with additions from other sources, until congestion results, the circulation is vitiated, and the bowels are filled with bilious toxins poison and repoison indefinitely. All habits having a tendency to cause digestive disturbance, such as the use of tobacco or alcohol, careless eating and overeating, hinder the functioning of the liver. Any interference with its duties prevents the blood from receiving the benefit of its inspection, and an impure product is the consequence. All parts of the body show distressing symptoms of fatigue and exhaustion when the cells of the liver become diseased through intemperate living and ignorance of the specific duty of the organ as a member of the human machine. And this, of course, is true with reference to the functions of any other of the vital parts of the body; but so closely is the work of the liver connected with that of the processes of digestion that detailed description of it and its labors is deemed essential to full understanding of the method discussed herein.

As has been indicated, there are two plans to be followed when the fast is employed as a means for the relief and cure of disease. One of these requires the patient to continue the period of abstinence from food to its logical conclusion, the return of natural hunger. The length of this period depends upon individual physiological peculiarity and organic condition. The other plan makes use of shorter intervals of abstinence, alternating with periods of lowered but corrective diet. What has been written may then be qualified to the degree that, when short fasts of one or two days, or of a week, are undertaken for the relief of slight indisposition or for the prevention of acute disease, no such extended preparation as is described is needful. For the longer fasts, the fasts that cleanse the system to purity, preparation as outlined must be precedent. The short fast and the compulsory fast of acute disease alone may be abruptly begun. However, extended preparation for a fast is to be preferred in all cases where it may be employed. It serves to lessen physiological shock, it curtails the length of the total abstinence period, and in all senses is to be considered as a beneficial process of gradual purification.