In view of the defects exhibited, it is certain that malnutrition occurring in the developing period of life, coupled perhaps with the baneful effects of drugs administered in the attempt to remedy disease, was responsible for fatal issue. Nature had endowed each of these subjects at birth with presumably normal vitality; each of them had suffered early in life from severe forms of functional disorder; and each, with one exception, had virtually exhausted the list of medicines designated as remedies for the symptoms displayed.

While it is not at all a just concept to attempt to place entire responsibility for the conditions shown upon drug dosage, it is to be recognized that, broadly speaking, there is no drug that is in effect not a poison. It is also to be recognized that, while harm ensues when drugs are used for the suppression of disease in mature years, the consequences of administering medical remedies in infancy and in adolescence are much more detrimental.

The instances of death now to be cited occurred while a fast was in progress, or while the patient was undergoing a period of dieting. Each casts light upon the ease of diagnosis consequent upon abstinence from food as a therapeutic measure; while the autopsies also disclose the deleterious effects upon the human body of dietetic errors and of drug treatment. In every case the cause of death is conclusively shown to have been due to the presence of structural organic defeat that was beyond repair. Two of the deaths described happened when the subjects were on a dietary, but the conditions discovered in these showed no decided differences in causation from those displayed when dissolution took place while a fast was in progress. In all of the related cases death was certain, fasting or feeding. The list is selected from a total of twenty-two fatalities occurring in a practice confined to therapeutic fasting and its accessories that covers a period of over thirty years. The number of cases handled is about thirty thousand, and each of these fasted at some time while under guidance for intervals varying from one day to seventy-five.

Case 1. A married woman, thirty-eight years of age, who had devoted twenty years in vain attempt to regain lost health under medical guidance. She finally discovered that alternating periods of dieting and abstinence from food, usually short in duration, were the sole means by which she could obtain relief. At consultation a perilous condition indicating the presence of organic disease was evident, and a more carefully selected dietary, with the employment of the usual natural hygienic accompaniments of treatment, was prescribed and faithfully carried out for six months. At the end of this time the patient, in full enjoyment of the relief that invariably appears in disease when organic labor is lessened by diet judiciously lowered, or by abstinence from food, insisted upon undergoing an absolute fast.

After three weeks, during which liquid food only was ingested, the total abstinence stage was entered, and the condition of the case visibly improved. On the twentieth day of fasting the patient decided for herself that her stomach could tolerate food. Experience demonstrates that persons who suffer from chronic disease after a time develop, as a consequence of repeated disappointment in search of health, a mental tendency that is wilful, not to say stubborn. And in serious cases, such as the one under discussion, it is a question whether the better policy lies in acquiescense or in resistance to their expressed desires. In this instance no opposition was offered when the will to fast was expressed, nor was any attempted when the demand was now made for food. Because of structural organic deficiency, later fully discovered and then most evident in symptom, the digestive organs could not perform the tasks entailed, and ingestion of food resulted in nausea with vomiting, while hiccoughs in severe form, a sign most apprehensive in character, that in the circumstances indicated intestinal obstruction, occurred and continued intermittently until death intervened.

When a case exhibits in aggravated form the symptoms noted, and when, moreover, its history is one of prolonged suffering, it is a virtual certainty that extreme organic impairment exists that can in no wise be overcome. But, in order that no question might arise concerning the remedial agencies employed and in order to allay the distress of the family, the condition of the case was brought to the attention of several medical practitioners. They suggested a number of things, but none of their suggestions proved of avail, for unanimously they insisted upon feeding the woman, whose stomach was rejecting all forms of food, retaining even water with difficulty. The condition described continued for more than two weeks, with pulse and temperature at average normal, but with no visible improvement Again at the insistence of the family another consultation of medical doctors was called, its personnel consisting this time of three prominent specialists in intestinal disease. They concurred in the opinion that the patient was suffering from cancer of the stomach and pronounced the case as one without hope of recovery. In the latter respect they were right, for death came at the end of the fortieth day of abstinence from food.

The autopsy made known a condition which the symptoms had predicated. The stomach occupied a position in the abdominal cavity such that its pyloric opening was turned and held forward and downward six or seven inches from its normal position; the rounded portion of the lower center of the organ lay opposite the navel, and its shape was distorted and enlarged to a length of nearly two feet, and to a capacity of six fluid quarts. The small intestines were adherent at a number of points to the peritoneum, and the stomach also had to be released by the knife from the abdominal walls before it could be fully examined. The gall sac was excessively enlarged, while the liver was in a state of degeneration.

The medical history of this case notes typhoid fever with peritonitis about twelve years before death. This in all probability determines the time of causation of the visceral adhesions and of the distortion in stomach and intestines, for, when the typhoid symptoms occurred, the organs of the body of the patient were fully matured, and the inflammation incident to the symptoms, with constant feeding even while fever was at its height, gave no opportunity for the healing processes of nature to act. This combination of error eventually led to the formation of the lesions described, to which the fatal outcome is directly traceable.