A fast properly conducted can never cause delirium nor affect the mental processes other than favorably. Much of insanity is the result of congestion-producing functional disorder, and this sort of mental aberration is ordinarily followed by complete restoration to normal reasoning power after a fast more or less protracted in length has been scientifically administered.

A general classification of the symptom of disease that tends towards limiting the appearance of certain signs to certain ailments can never be made with accuracy. It is true that the science of medicine labels and catalogues all symptoms, and that it is its plan to await development before announcing diagnosis. But the science of medicine, neglecting or ignoring cause, seemingly devotes its entire attention to the suppression of manifestation, and classification of symptoms upon the basis adopted finds items overlapping in such manner as to make distinction difficult if not impossible. An arrangement of disease forms may, however, be made in a general way along lines that are more or less sharply defined.

1.--Ailments purely functional in origin that readily yield to natural treatment. In these cases, because of accumulation of waste in the digestive tract and in tissue, organs are hampered in function but are in nowise structurally disabled nor in themselves diseased. Here gradual improvement is noted from the beginning of preparation for a fast, and recovery is always to be anticipated.

2.--Organic defect in slight degree, occasioning disturbance because of work inefficiently performed by an organ that is partially disabled. This condition places heavier burdens upon other organs and functionally unbalances the entire system. During the progess of a fast disagreeable symptoms are noted in these cases, and it is possible that full functional power may never be restored. However, if structural defect has not reached the degree that denotes inclusion in the class following, and, if care be exercised during the time of convalescence, recovery is usually assured.

3.--Organic defect of such degree that the functioning of a vital organ is rendered impossible or nearly so. A gradual decline, beginning before the fast and continuing with a short interval of relief after entering upon abstinence, is the characteristic indication. Relief noted may be such as to inspire hope of recovery, but, if the condition be as stated, there is no possibility of cure.

In cases of disease purely functional in character, the fasting patient usually discovers after the first general symptoms disappear, that his strength has apparently increased, and that he is able to attend to ordinary duty without difficulty and with marvelously clear mentality. In other words, with the loss of stimulation due to food poison, disease subsides, and real strength becomes manifest. The patient is not less weak nor more strong than at any time during his previous diseased state when living under toxic stimulation. but the fast has served to uncover his true condition and to demonstrate that a sick man is not of necessity a weak man. It should now be quite clear to the reader that in disease many or the avenues through which energy is normally released are so obstructed by cumulative waste and its effects as partially to prevent the expression of vital force, and that, in the early stages of illness, weakness is but inability to assert latent strength.

The subject of food stimulation has not received the attention that it deserves in any system of therapeutics, for it is always an important factor to be considered both in health and in disease. When the body has become accustomed to a dietetic regimen, fixed in quantity and in hours of ingestion, it strenuously rebels when denied. The system may be greatly overfed; it may slowly be poisoning itself through its own indiscretions; yet the omission of a meal puts appetite into action. Given the usual quota, metabolism of a sort continues until excess proves too heavy a burden to be carried, or some micro-organism finds environment suitable for multiplication and growth; then nature calls a halt and attempts correction through her only remedy, disease. Recuperation begins when the accustomed stimulus, food, is withdrawn, but the subject is plunged into the depths. Stimulation, so long a habit, now seems necessary to counteract the depression caused by deprivation, and to the latter is added fear, engendered by tradition, that nourishment is needful to foster strength, and even that death through starvation will shortly occur. Here mentality must be called to the rescue, and the will must be asserted in order to avert apprehension and with it the desire to resume the ingestion of food.

Careful study of the symptoms of disease, as they occur when either feeding or fasting is the rule, reveals the law through which nature works to restore a diseased body to health. It may briefly be given as a process of systemic elimination, upon lines of least resistance, of toxin-producing substances retained in the intestinal canal or in tissue. The signs of distress, the symptoms, may often be locally relieved by the application of heat, water, sunlight, air, manipulation, or other natural means, but disease can never be eradicated through mere suppression of symptom. It must be dealt with at its source; and, despite its variety of expression, it has but one cause, digestion, with nutrition, inefficiently performed, and but one remedy, systemic elimination of the toxins resulting therefrom.

In the process of treatment outlined in the text frequent examination of the discharges of the body are made. These in connection with other indications give an index of the progress of systemic purification. Both urine and feces are methodically tested, chemically and microscopically, and the nature of the products of elimination is thus determined. In the prior days of fasting the urine is invariably high in color and in specific gravity, and its reaction is usually strongly acid, while urea, phosphates and other mineral salts, and bilious products are present in abundance. When the first flush of elimination subsides, specific gravity is much lowered (it may register below 1.010), and mineral substances decrease in quantity. If treatment excluded the daily enemas and baths, if it were confined solely to abstinence from food, specific gravity of the urine would at first quickly rise and would continue to be high in register, but, because of prompt removal of waste from the colon by means of the enema, and because of dilution of the fluids of the body through absorption of water through the walls of the bowel, density of urine is diminished, hence its lighter specific gravity. When purification nears completion, reaction of urine may assume a neutral or even an alkaline character, which again will change to slight acid upon resumption of ingestion.

Even in the early years of life systematic overloading of the system with food is responsible for high arterial pressure. And the supertension of later existence is in large measure preventable through dietetic care in youth and middle age In determining systemic condition, tests of blood pressure are valuable, and they should frequently be made during treatment. One of the salutary consequences obtained by means of a fast is that blood pressure, like temperature and pulse, is uniformly brought to normal for the individual. This is an invariable result whether register be lower or higher than average when treatment begins. But the same notation must again be made that was commented upon when temperature and pulse were under discussion: tabulated average register cannot be regarded as fixed for differing organisms, since variations both above and below standard occur that cannot be attributed in every instance to disease. In this, as in other respects, each individual possesses a norm of his own. It may be stated, however, that, when systemic cleansing is accomplished, this norm is usually lower in register than the previous tabulated standard. In the matured body, with but little differences noted as age increases, a general normal in blood pressure ranges about 120 for the systolic, with about 80 as the diastolic register. This of course supposes the subject to be subsisting upon non-stimulative food material.