The Hygienic System: Fasting And Sun Bathing | by Herbert M. Shelton

Foreword

Want Of Appetite is not always a morbid symptom, nor even a sign of imperfect digestion. Nature may have found it necessary to muster all the energies of our system for some special purpose, momentari...

Introduction

In presenting this volume on fasting I am well aware of existing prejudices against the procedure. It has long been the practice to feed the sick and to stuff the weak on the theory that the sick mus...

Introduction. Part 2

It is quite common to see Dr. Dewey referred to as the Father of the Fasting Cure. Dr. Hazzard on the other hand, declares that Dr. Tanner is justly entitled to first place among the pioneers of th...

Introduction. Part 3

Necessarily, this limits his field very largely to the field of animal experimentation and also limits his knowledge of the effects of fasting in various pathological states. In the book there is no i...

Chapter I Definition Of Fasting

Nutrition may be conveniently divided into two phases--positive and negative--corresponding to periods of eating and periods of abstaining from food. Negative nutrition has received the terms fasting,...

Chapter II Fasting Among The Lower Animals

In the study of fasting it is necessary that we approach the subject from many angles. Perhaps no subject is less understood by the public and the healing professions than this oldest of means of ca...

Fasting Among The Lower Animals. Continued

Pupal Sleep The pupal stage of insects which undergo metamorphosis, is that immediately following the larval stage. The term chrysalis has almost the same value as pupa. If the insect is not wholly q...

Fasting In Disease

I need but devote little space to a discussion of what every one already knows; namely, that the sick animal refuses all food. The farmer knows that his foundered horse will not eat--is off his fee...

Food Scarcity

I need devote but little space to the fact that animals fast for shorter or longer periods in times of food scarcity when floods, droughts, storms, etc., destroy their food supplies, or when snow has ...

Fasting In Accidental Imprisonment

A number of accidental emergencies force both domestic and wild animals to fast at times. How frequently such accidents occur in nature, we are not in a position to say, but they are probably more fre...

Hibernation

All animals adapt themselves in some manner to the winter season. Winter is a difficult period for many plants and animals in northern countries. With its short days, low temperature, stormy weather, ...

Hibernation In Plants

Perhaps before we give our attention to hibernation among animals we may profitably take a hasty glance at the hibernating practices of plants. The winter sleep of trees, shrubs and many other plant...

Hibernation In Animals

Hibernation is common among insects and is seen in every group of vertebrates except birds, which substitute migration for hibernation. It is largely found in insect and vegetable eating species. Hibe...

Hibernation In Cold-Blooded Animals

While hibernating mammals seek caves, dens or hollow logs, usually making themselves dens of dry leaves or grass to sleep through the winter, the lower orders remain buried throughout the winter with ...

Hibernation Of Insects

Most insects hibernate in the larval or pupal stage. The larvae of many caterpillars hatch in Summer and sleep all Winter. A few insects, as certain moths, butterflies and beetles, hibernate in the ad...

Initiation And Duration Of Hibernation

In general the time of the initiation of hibernation corresponds closely with the scarcity of food and lowering of temperature. The termination coincides with the return of favorable conditions. Some ...

Metabolism During Hibernation

In cold-blooded animals in a state of hibernation metabolism is almost at a complete standstill. Indeed, in some of them, as well as in frozen caterpillars, it must be at a complete standstill. Not so...

Aestivation

Aestivation is similar to hibernation, if, indeed, it is not identical with it. If hibernation is to be called winter sleep, aestivation may be with equal propriety, called summer sleep. In zoolog...

How Long Can Animals Abstain From Food?

The most remarkable records of continued abstinence from food are to be found among the lower animals. Compared to some of these, man is a piker. It is often said that the marvels of long-continued ab...

Fasting As A Means Of Survival

After this survey of the many and varied conditions under which animals fast, and the different uses to which fasting is put, it becomes obvious that fasting is one of the most common phenomena in nat...

Chapter III Fasting In Man

Man is an animal and, as such, is subject to the same laws of existence and the same conditions of living, as are other animals. As a part of the great organic world, he is not a being that is set apa...

Religious Fasting

Fasting as a religious observance, has long been practiced for the accomplishment of certain goods. Religious fasting is of early origin, antedating recorded history. Partial or entire abstinence from...

Fasting As Magic

With fasting as magic we have nothing to do, except to study the phenomenon. Tribal fasts, as seen among the American Indians, to avert some threatened calamity, or fasting, as by Ghandi to purify Ind...

Disciplinary Fasts

Major W. C. Gotschall, M. S., says: There is nothing new about fasting. Among the ancients it was recognized as a sovereign method of attaining and maintaining marked mental and physical efficiency. ...

Periodic And Yearly Fasts

Luke mentions in his Gospel the practice of fasting one day out of each week, which seems to have been very general in his day. Periodic fasting has been practiced by many different peoples and by man...

Hunger Strikes

Hunger strikes have become very frequent during the past thirty years. Perhaps the most famous of these have been the protest fasts of Ghandi and the hunger strike of McSwiney and his co-political pri...

Exhibition Or Stunt Fasts

There have been a number of fasters who were more or less professional fasters, fasting largely for show and making money out of the process. These have fasted publicly and have charged admission to t...

Experimental Fasts

Experimental fasts in which men and women have taken part are, perhaps, more numerous than we think. Profs. Carlson and Kunde, of the University of Chicago, made a few experiments of this nature a few...

Fasting When Eating Is Impossible

There are pathological conditions under which eating is impossible. Such conditions as cancer of the stomach, destruction of the stomach by acids, and by other causes, renders it no longer possible to...

Shipwrecked Sailors And Passengers

Shipwrecked sailors and aviators forced down at sea, have, in many instances, been forced to exist for long periods without food, and often without water. Many have survived long periods without food ...

Entombed Miners

Frequently, when there are mine cave-ins, one or more miners are entombed for shorter or longer periods, during which time they are without food and often without water. Their survival until they can ...

Fasting In Illness

It is estimated that fasting for the alleviation of human suffering has been practiced uninterruptedly for 10,000 years. No doubt it has been employed from the time man first began to get sick. Fastin...

Famine And War

War and famine, whether the famine has been produced by drought, insect pests, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, freezes, snows, etc., have frequently deprived whole populations of food for extended per...

Fasting Under Emotional Stress

Grief, worry, anger, shock and other emotional irritations are almost as potent in suspending the desire for food and in rendering digestion practically impossible as are pain, fever and severe inflam...

Fasting By The Insane

The insane commonly manifest a strong aversion to food and, unless forcibly fed, will often go for extended periods without eating. It is customary in institutions devoted to the care of the mentally ...

Hibernation In Man

Of possible human hibernation, it has been said that it is a condition utterly inexplicable on any principle taught in the schools. Nonetheless, there are a number of peoples who practice a near app...

Instinctive Fasting

Fasting above all other measures can lay claim to being a strictly natural method. There can be no doubt that it is the oldest of all measures of meeting those crises in the organism called disease....

Long Fasts In Man

In the preceding chapter it was shown that animals may go without food for prolonged periods without damage to their bodies or to individual organs. The objection is often raised that, while some anim...

Long Fasts In Man. Continued

Augusta Kerner, of Ingolstadt, a trance faster, survived in a semi-conscious condition nearly a quarter of a year without food. Dr. Dewey tells of two children, of about four years, one of them his p...

Fasting Ability And Survival

From the foregoing parts of this chapter it will be seen that fasting in man is practiced under about as wide a variety of circumstances as among the lower orders of life and for about as many purpose...

Chapter IV A Bill-Of-Fare For The Sick

Organisms capitalize the results of the joint work of their several organs and physiological systems in the form of capacities and valuable stored substances. They may learn to use this stored capital...

A Bill-Of-Fare For The Sick. Continued

Prof. Morgulis further says: Active growth and regeneration are not incompatible with inanition, and the wear and tear, at least in some organs, is so completely repaired as to evade for a long time ...

Chapter V Autolysis

In order that we may understand much that takes place within the fasting organism, it is necessary that we have an understanding of the process of autolysis, which, although very common in nature, has...

Autolysis In Plants

The plant kingdom teems with examples of autolysis, but a few familiar examples will suffice for our present purpose. All bulbs, of which the onion will serve as an example, maintain within themselves...

Autolysis In Animals

At the very commencement of life autolysis is an essential process. The embryonic development of animals in eggs involves digestion of the food stored in the eggs. Eggs, however large or small, contai...

Autolysis During Pupal Sleep

The period of pupal sleep in the life of insects is a period of great and complex organizational changes, resulting in a new and radically different insect. The larv of insects devote their who...

Distribution Of Materials

The severely wounded animal refuses to eat, yet its wound heals. Great quantities of blood are sent to the site of the wound. This represents a great quantity of food taken to the part. The blood is t...

Autolysis Is Controlled

Autolysis is a rigidly controlled process; it is no blind, undirected bull-in-a-china-shop affair. Not only throughout the fasting period, but also throughout the starvation process, as well, the body...

The Autolytic Disintegration Of Tumors

Trall asserted that all abnormal growths possess a lower grade of vitality than normal growths, hence are easier to destroy. I think it may be equally true that they do not command the support of the ...

Chapter VI Fasting Is Not Starving

The word starvation is derived from the Old English steorfan, meaning to die. Today it is used almost wholly to designate death from lack of food. When we mention fasting to the average person and eve...

Fasting Is Not Starving. Continued

Fortunately we are not left unprotected and unwarned in this matter. Before the danger point is reached an imperious demand for food will be made. We say, then, that so long as hunger is lacking, the ...

Chapter VII Chemical And Organic Changes During Fasting

Abstinence from food may mean missing one meal, or it may mean going without food until death results from starvation. Missing one meal produces no organic or chemical changes in the body; in starvati...

Blood Changes

The blood diminishes in volume in proportion to the decrease in the size of the body so that the relative blood-volume remains practically unchanged during a fast. The quality of the blood is not impa...

The Skin

The exquisite texture and delicate pink color of the skin that develop while fasting attests the rejuvenation the skin undergoes. The clearing up of blotches and blemishes with, even the disappearance...

The Bones

There is no evidence of any loss to the bones during a fast. Indeed, as will be shown in another chapter, they may even continue to grow while fasting. When we observe the marrow of the bones, howeve...

The Teeth

Teeth are specialized bones and are subject to the same laws of nutrition as other bones of the body. In certain quarters it is claimed that fasting ruins the teeth. The claim is not true and no one w...

The Brain, Cord And Nerves

The brain and nervous system are supported and lose little or no weight during a fast, while the less important tissues are sacrificed to feed them. They maintain their power and ability to control th...

The Kidneys

The losses to the kidneys are insignificant and are usually much less than that of the body as a whole. In the young the kidneys are even more resistant to loss of weight. ...

The Liver

The losses to the liver during a fast are largely water and glycogen. Usually the liver loses more in weight relative to the rest of the body than the other organs, especially in the earlier stages, d...

The Lungs

Jackson says: In uncomplicated cases of total inanition, or on water only, the lungs are usually normal in appearance. The loss in weight of the lungs in such cases is usually relatively less than th...

The Muscles

It has been shown by investigators that the skeletal muscles may lose 40% of their weight, whereas, the heart muscle loses only 3% by the time death from starvation is reached. The decrease in the siz...

The Heart

The heart muscle does not diminish appreciably, deriving its sustenance from the less essential tissues. Its rate of pulsion varies greatly, rising and falling as the needs of the system demand. Study...

The Pancreas

Jackson says that in the early stages of inanition in young guinea pigs the pancreas (like the other viscera) appears in general more resistant to loss in weight and that the pancreatic losses in...

The Spleen

The losses to the spleen during a fast are chiefly water. In starvation resulting in death, the spleen may lose 67 per cent of its total weight. ...

The Stomach

A classical example of the way in which fasting permits the stomach to rejuvenate itself is that of Dr. Tanner. He suffered for years with dyspepsia before his first fast. Indeed, it was this sufferin...

Chemistry Changes

The chemical changes which occur in the fasting body are as remarkable as anything that we have described previously. It is quite natural that the fasting body loses some of its substances, but it doe...

Chapter VIII Repair Of Organs And Tissues During Fasting

From what has gone before about the body's reserves, its ability to autolyze these reserves and its less important tissues, its ability to shift its materials from one part of the body to another, it ...

Chapter IX The Influence Of Fasting On Growth And Regeneration

In a previous chapter I (Definition Of Fasting) have discussed the chemistry changes in the body during a fast and have there shown how the body distributes its reserves as need arises. At this point ...

Chapter X Changes In The Fundamental Function While Fasting

Professor Morgulis says: Laboratory as well as clinical experience corroborates the rejuvenating effects of inanition. If it is not too prolonged it is distinctly beneficent and may be used in overco...

Physiological Rest while Fasting

An important object secured by the fast is the rest of the organs of the body. The overstimulation of the physiological functions, which results from over-eating, weakens and impairs them through over...

Metabolism while Fasting

Metabolism is lowered from one-fourth to two-fifths during the fast. This falls quite rapidly during the first part of the fast until the true physiological minimum for metabolism is reached. From thi...

Respiration while Fasting

This is one of the fundamental organic functions which Morgulis states is improved by fasting. The remarkable effects of fasting upon the breathing of asthmatics can be really appreciated only by thos...

Elimination while Fasting

Fasting is nature's own method of ridding the body of diseased tissues, excess nutriment and accumulations of waste and toxins. Nothing else will increase elimination through every channel of excret...

Organic House Cleaning

The vital cells of the body must be nourished during the fast. These are nourished off the food reserves stored in the body and off the less essential tissues, or off the salvable portions of the dis...

Chapter XI The Mind And Special Senses During A Fast

The mental effects of fasting have been known for ages and have been much discussed by all writers on fasting. A few years ago a group of young men and women at the University of Chicago lived for one...

Spiritual Powers

A few words about the effects of fasting upon the so-called spiritual powers may be appropriately introduced here. In detailing his experiences during his forty days' fast, taken some years since, Dr....

Insanity

Nowhere does the beneficial office of physiological rest in enhancing mental clearness show more clearly than in fasting by the insane. I shall have more to say about this in a future chapter. Here it...

"Abnormal Psychism"

Dr. Henry Lindlahr conjured into being a condition to which he applied the term abnormal psychism, which he said often resulted in certain types of individuals when these fasted for prolonged period...

The Special Senses

Due, no doubt to wrong life, man's senses are comparatively dulled. In all cases of fasting the senses become more acute. So invariable and distinctive is this that Hygienists have long regarded it as...

Chapter XII Secretions And Excretions

The secretions of the body on the whole are either suspended altogether or greatly reduced during the fast. Secretion is commensurate with need. The body is not wasteful of its supplies, as a brief st...

Gastric Juice

The secretion of gastric juice is continuous throughout most of the fast, but in a greatly diminished quantity and is of a weakly acid character. At times its secretion may be stimulated by the usual ...

Bile

The secretion of bile customarily continues during the early days of the fast. Indeed, it may be secreted in increased amounts. In some very foul conditions of the body, the secretion of bile is great...

Pancreatic And Intestinal Juices

The pancreatic and intestinal juices are reasonably thought to be secreted in reduced quantities. It is known that they are weaker in digestive power than normally, but little else is known concerning...

Urine

The volume of urine excreted during a fast, as at other times of life, is determined by the amount of water consumed and by the amount of sweating done. In the early days of the fast, the urine is in...

Chapter XIII Bowel Action During Fasting

After the digestion of the last meal prior to the fast, the bowels practically cease to function. They take a rest. Dr. Oswald says: The colon contracts, and the smaller intestines retain all but the...

Bowel Action During Fasting. Part 2

In Dec. 1932 and Jan. 1933 a patient fasted 31 days in my Health School. His bowels moved on the 2nd, 6th, 7th, 13th and 20th days of the fast. Another patient who took a short fast in December, 1932 ...

Bowel Action During Fasting. Part 3

I soon became convinced from tests I made that there is no absorption of toxins from the colon. At that time, twenty-five years ago, physiologists were still teaching that toxins are absorbed from the...

Chapter XIV Fasting And Sex

The effects of fasting upon the sexual functions are variable. The examples of the salmon and the Alaskan fur seal bull were given in a previous chapter. In dealing with the effects of fasting on the ...

Chapter XV Rejuvenescence Through Fasting

Upton Sinclair says: The great thing about the fast is that it sets you a new standard of health. Old and young alike are renewed and have their whole organism repaired and their functions improved....

Chapter XVI Gain And Loss Of Strength While Fasting

Most men can understand eating to get strong, says Dr. Tilden, but it takes a long time to educate them to stop eating to get strong. As paradoxical as it may seem to those who have had no experie...

Gain And Loss Of Strength While Fasting. Continued

In December 1903, eight athletes under the supervision of Mr. Macfadden entered a seven days' fast and performed feats of great strength and endurance under the watchful eyes of prominent medical men ...

Chapter XVII Gain And Loss Of Weight During Fasting

Although we usually say that a faster loses about a pound a day, the loss of weight varies greatly, depending on a number of circumstances. Fat subjects lose more rapidly than lean ones. The more phys...

No Danger From Loss Of Weight

There is much fear on the part of many, that fasting may result in tuberculosis. They have the idea that to get thin is to lay oneself liable to this disease. This fear is unfounded and is based on ...

Chapter XVIII Fasting Does Not Induce Deficiency "Disease"

A remarkably significant fact, which I pointed out some years ago, is that those extreme conditions of malnutrition or deficiency diseases, which laboratory men dwell upon, never develop during the ...

Fasting Does Not Induce Deficiency "Disease". Continued

Dr. Jackson says that: In scurvy, the gums are markedly congested and swollen in about 80 per cent of adult human cases, * * * The alveolar bone and peridental membrane undergoes necrosis, with conse...

Chapter XIX Death In The Fast

Opponents never tire of telling us of the large number of deaths that have occurred as a result of fasting. They read the story of the death of a faster in some sensational newspaper and, without ...

Death In The Fast. Part 2

Writing in Physical Culture, Sept. 1912, Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard says: when severe and distressing manifestations arise during the period of abstinence from food, it is virtually certain that defe...

Death In The Fast. Part 3

Carrington gives 76 Farenheit as the lowest temperature at which life has survived in human beings, although we know that some warm-blooded animals (hibernating) have survived a body temperature ...

Chapter XX Objections To The Fast

A number of supposedly scientific objections to the fast are offered from various sources but not from any source that is entitled, from actual and broad experience with the fast, to speak with author...

Objections To The Fast. Part 2

Although opposed to fasting, Kellogg makes the following admissions of benefits received from it: 1. Surplus body fat may be disposed of. 2. Any accumulation of surplus or 'floating' nitrogen or ...

Objections To The Fast. Part 3

This is but one instance of many that have impressed the value of fasting where to some practitioners it might have been contra-indicated. If the body, because of its crowded nutrition, cannot assimi...

Objections To The Fast. Part 4

Whatever may be the source of vital energy, it is certain that no food can supply any of this energy until after it has been digested, absorbed and assimilated. It requires much vital power to digest,...

Chapter XXI Does Fasting Cure "Disease"?

If disease is a process of cure, does fasting cure disease? If there are no cures for disease, if disease does not need to be cured, is fasting a cure? To us there are not twenty thousand di...

Does Fasting Cure "Disease"?. Continued

Fasting is primarily a rest of the organism. There is no condition of disease in which rest of the vital organs is not of benefit to the whole organism. Rest gives all of the organs an opportunity t...

Chapter XXII The Rationale Of Fasting

In previous chapters four important facts about fasting have been fully established, as follow: 1. Fasting, as a period of physiological rest, affords the tissues and organs of the body an opportunit...

Nature's Preparation For a Fast

Writing of a case that passed under his care, Dr. Jennings explains the rationale of fasting, thus: The child has taken no nourishment for a number of days and may take none for many days to come; if...

They That Work Must Eat

The body's reserve stores are designed for use in just such emergencies and may be utilized in such circumstances with greater ease and with less tax upon the body than food secured through the labori...

Fasting and Elimination

Dr. Oswald says: A germ disease, as virulent as syphilis, and long considered too persistent for any but palliative methods of treatment (by mercury, etc.), was radically cured by the fasting cures, ...

Fasting Compensation

The principle here presented, that the energy customarily expended in the digestion and assimilation of food may, when no food is eaten, be employed through other channels in the increased work of eli...

Chapter XXIII The Length Of The Fast

A long controversy has raged between the advocates of the short fast and the advocates of the fast to completion. The advocates of the short fast depict what they believe to be harm resulting from the...

The Length Of The Fast. Continued

There is a popular belief that the work of purification can be finished with a diet and, in many cases, this is true, providing the patient is willing to greatly restrict himself for a sufficiently lo...

Chapter XXIV Hunger And Appetite

Hunger is the great safeguard of all life. It impels the organism in need of food to search for and procure food. It may be safely inferred that if there is no hunger, there is no need for nourishment...

Hunger And Appetite. Part 2

Carlson and Luckhardt point out that since others who have starved for longer periods of time (than four days) unanimously attest the fact that, after the first few days, the sensations of hunger be...

Hunger And Appetite. Part 3

Carrington referred to these symptoms as habit hunger, Dewey as hunger of disease, Oswald as poison hunger. As they do not represent hunger at all, I see no reason to describe such sensations as...

Appetite

One of the most frequent dietetic errors is that of mistaking appetite for hunger. Appetite is no more hunger than sexual passion is love. Graham made a sharp distinction between an appetite which i...

Chapter XXV Contra-Indications To Fasting

The dangers of fasting are so slight as to be almost negligible or insignificant. When Purinton declared that an extreme fast, say from twenty to forty days, is just as apt to wreck a man as it is to...

Chapter XXVI Fasting In Special Periods And Conditions Of Life

Special periods of life and certain conditions of the body are often regarded as bars to fasting, even by those who profess a belief in the beneficial efficacy of the practice. Let us consider a few o...

When To Fast

I take the position that the time to fast is when it is needed. I am of the decided opinion that delay pays no dividends; that, due to the fact that the progressive development of pathological changes...

Fasting By Vegetarians

Certain advocates of flesh eating, particularly one who lectures on the radio and gives away hams as a means of securing an audience, caution vegetarians against fasting. They tell vegetarians that th...

Fasting In Infancy And Childhood

Replying to the question: may babies be safely treated by fasting, Carrington says: babies not only can be treated safely by this method, but it is unsafe not to treat them by this means, when they b...

Fasting In Old Age

We often meet with the objection that a patient is too old to fast. I have conducted a number of fasts in patients from seventy years to over eighty-five years of age and I have found no reason to con...

Fasting During Pregnancy

In another volume we have called attention to the fact that chronic disease, even that form called tuberculosis, frequently abates during pregnancy. Great changes, developmental changes akin to thos...

Fasting During Lactation

If fasting is necessary during lactation, it should be done, but if not necessary it should be avoided, for the reason that it stops the secretion of milk and even the diminution of this secretion res...

Fasting By The Strong And The Weak

It is usually readily granted that the strong may fast for a certain length of time, perhaps, with impunity, but it is usually objected that the weak should not fast. Here, again, we are met with the ...

Fasting By The Emaciated

Shall emaciated persons fast? By all means. Emaciation is rarely due to a lack of food, but almost always is a result of sickness. Dewey, Carrington, Macfadden, Rabagliatti, Sinclair and many others h...

Fasting In Deficiencies

As knowledge of the causes of disease increases, it becomes increasingly evident that there are certain forms of disease which are in part due to food deficiencies--beri-beri, scurvy, rickets, etc...

Chapter XXVII Symptomatology Of The Fast

The symptomatology of fasting forms a most interesting study, which can be fully appreciated only by the man or woman who studies it at first hand, by carefully observing fasting individuals, and by p...

Subjective Symptoms

Under his discussion of Subjective Impressions arising during the fast, Benedict says, It is commonly believed that the withdrawal of food for one or two meals results in dizziness, a feeling of fa...

The Pulse

The pulse varies greatly during a fast. It may run up to 120 or even higher, or it may drop as low as 40, per minute. Indeed, Mr. Macfadden records a case in his practice in which the pulse went down ...

Symptomatology Of The Fast. Appetite

The first day of fasting is seldom accompanied with any noticeable change in the usual demand for food. On the second day there is usually a big demand for food. By the third day this has greatly abat...

The Tongue And Breath

These are interesting studies during a fast. The tongue becomes heavily coated in almost every instance (I have seen five or six exceptions) and remains so throughout the fast, gradually clearing up, ...

Temperature

When we observe body temperature during a fast, we are presented with a paradoxical series of phenomena which prove both interesting and highly instructive. For example, temperature tends to remain no...

Feeling Of Chilliness

Despite the fact that the faster maintains normal temperature on a fast, or even has a slight rise in temperature, there is commonly a feeling of chilliness in a moderate temperature in which he ordin...

"Famine Fever"

In many cases, particularly of overfed individuals, we have what is called famine fever when a fast is entered upon. It is a slight elevation of temperature which may last from one to several days. ...

Sleep

It is the usual thing for the fasting person to sleep no more than three to four hours out of each twenty-four hours, and this frequently causes worry. Three general causes for this sleeplessness are ...

Chapter XXVIII Progress Of The Fast

The man or woman who has never undergone a fast, or who has never had opportunity to watch the varied phenomena that are to be seen in cases of fasting, labors under the belief that a fast must be a v...

The Early Days Of The Fast

Dr. Shew says of the first few days of fasting: A feverish excitement of the system, together with a feeling of debility, faintness and depression is generally experienced. The patient becomes discou...

Disappearance Of Symptoms

As the fast progresses, the symptoms grow less and less marked until they cease entirely. Many things that the sick customarily do are more disagreeable than the most disagreeable symptoms that ever d...

Increase Of Symptoms

I have emphasized the gradual disappearance of symptoms. I must also emphasize the fact that there is sometimes a temporary increase in symptoms during the early days of a fast. Headache may sometimes...

Crises During The Fast

Crises developing during the fast are not different from those developing at other times and are not to be cared for any differently. They are all orthopathic in character and, although often disagree...

Crises During The Fast. Continued

Nausea: This seems to be an expression of a sudden decrease of the normal tension of the stomach. It may be induced by a foul odor, a bad taste, a disgusting sight, or an emotional shock. Severe pain,...

Dangerous Complications

Under the head of danger signals or complications, works on fasting usually list uncontrollable vomiting, persistent hiccoughs, a persistent, very erratic pulse, extreme weakness, fear of starvation, ...

Strength And Weakness

Benedict devotes consideration to strength tests during the fast. He says The tests made by Luciani on Succi in which a dynamometer was used to measure the strength of the right and left hands, showe...

Chapter XXIX Hygiene Of The Fast

Fasting is not a toy to be played with by the ignorant nor should it be looked upon as a stunt. There have been stunt fasters, but we do not advise one to undertake stunt fasts. Nor do we advise indis...

Conservation

All of our care of the faster should be designed to conserve in every possible manner, his energies and reserves. Every method of care and every influence in the environment of the patient that occasi...

Rest

The hibernating animal possesses sufficient reserves to maintain a minimum of physiological and little or no physical activity throughout a prolonged period of abstinence, but in the case of a fasting...

Mental Influences

Somewhere in the Bible is the statement that a man's foes shall be they of his own household. How true this is may be discovered by anyone who undertakes a fast at home. Even missing one meal is oft...

Exercise

For a number of years I continued exercise through the fast of most chronic sufferers. My rule was: Chronic sufferers, unless otherwise contra-indicated, should have daily exercise while fasting. I ...

Working During The Fast

On general principles working during a long fast is to be severely condemned. It has been done. It can often be done. But it should not be done. Perhaps the first fast of any length in which the faste...

Bathing

Bathing during the fast should follow the rules laid down for bathing in a preceding volume. The faster in particular should avoid extremes of temperature. Wash the body quickly and do not stay in the...

Sunbathing

Sun bathing is as beneficial and useful during the fast as at other times. The chronic sufferer should have these throughout the course of the fast. Certain precautions are essential. As the fast prog...

For The Bad Taste

Throughout most of the fast, the fasting individual is annoyed by a very bad taste in the mouth. This may be alleviated somewhat by a daily scrubbing of the tongue with a toothbrush. This should not b...

Water Drinking During The Fast

Most fasting advocates advise drinking much water while fasting. This is done on the theory that water aids in eliminating toxins from the body. Levanzin expresses this theory as follows: as a rule, ...

Seasonings For The Water

Due to the bad taste in the mouth while one is fasting, the water is likely to appear to taste badly. At other times patients complain of the water being too sweet. They frequently request permission ...

Feeding Intervals

Tilden says: A fast must not be continued when the patient is suffering greatly, it matters not in what way. * * * Some patients will start without food and within a week they are very sick--sick b...

The Enema During The Fast

Dr. Hazzard, Mr. Carrington, Mr. Sinclair and others, regard the enema as almost indispensible during the fast. This arises out of a distrust of the body's powers of self-adjustment. There is no more ...

The Gastric Lavage During The Fast

Certain advocates of fasting employ the lavage as a routine practice. Dr. Tilden formerly employed it as a daily measure. This proved to be too great a tax upon his patients so he reduced its use to t...

False Teeth

Fasters who have false teeth should keep their teeth in during the fast and should bite on them sufficiently often to keep the gums tough. The gums will shrink somewhat in the general loss of weight s...

Forcing Measures

The lingering faith in forcing measures is a hold-over from the time we still had faith in the drugs of the physician. When we lost our faith in his poisons, we adopted a heterogeneous array of drugle...

Chapter XXX Breaking The Fast

The proper conduct of the fast is vitally important. There are really very few practitioners of any school who know how to conduct a fast or how to properly break one. A naturopath in New York City br...

Breaking The Fast. Continued

The primary indication that the fast is to be broken is the return of hunger; all the other indications which I have enumerated are secondary. Often one or more of these secondary signs are absent whe...

Hunger After The Fast

My experience agrees well with that of Carrington, who says that after a long fast the faster is ravenous and eating must be kept under control at all costs for the few days during which it lasts. H...

Food After The Fast

After a fast the diet should be of the very best from the standpoint of its nutritive qualities. No canned and bottled juices should be used in breaking the fast. Only fresh fruits and fresh vegetable...

Chapter XXXI Gaining Weight After The Fast

The gain in weight after a fast is usually very rapid. Often it is almost as rapid as the loss during the fast. People that were formerly always underweight and emaciated, due to impaired digestion an...

Chapter XXXII Living After The Fast

The fast is in vain, says Tilden, if the patient returns to his old habits. This is true of convalescing in general. The results of the fast will be more or less temporary unless one lives properl...

Chapter XXXIII Fasting In Health

Writing in Physical Culture (May, 1915), Mr. Carrington says: If a well man starts going without food, he begins to starve (not fast). The nearer well you are the less you should fast. Mr. Macfadden...

Chapter XXXIV Fasting In Acute Disease

Instead of using medicine, rather fast a day, wrote Plutarch. Someone else has said: Wise people, falling into any ailment, take a bath, go to bed, and fast, leaving nature to do her own work of cu...

False Teachings Of Medical "Science"

Physicians have taught the people that there are specific diseases requiring specific causes and that the sick must be fed to keep up their strength. while being cured of their diseases. So long a...

Instinctive Repugnance To Food In Acute Illness

Animals will not eat when sick. It has long been known that when animals are severely injured they refuse food. Shock, severe injury of any kind, fever, pain, inflammation, poisoning, reduce or suspen...

Feeding To Keep Up Strength

The idea that dominates the physician, the nurses and the relatives of the sick person is that the vital power or strength must be supported with food while the conflict with disease rages. This s...

No Power To Digest In Acute Sickness

Beaumont showed that there is no digestion in serious acute illness. He says of one of his experiments, that, this experiment has considerable pathological importance. In febrile diathesis, very litt...

No Nourishment Without Digestion

In all types of acute disease the whole organism is engaged in the work of eliminating toxins, not in that of assimilating food, hence, it is perfectly natural that the body should rebel against food....

Rectal And Skin Feeding

It may be objected to all of this that the patient should be fed so-called pre-digested foods. Our reply is that there are no predigested foods and little ability to absorb them if there were. Efforts...

Gastro-Intestinal Decomposition

If bacteriologists desire to make cultures of pathogenic organisms, they use meat broths, meat jellies and boiled milk. These substances provide equally as good culture media for microbes in the dig...

The Stomach And Intestines In Acute Illness

A standard medical author thus describes the stomach in acute gastritis: The gastric mucous membrane of such a stomach is red and swollen, it secretes little gastric juice, and this contains very lit...

Nausea And Vomiting

Nausea and vomiting are common symptoms in acute disease of all forms. If food is taken it is commonly vomited. Where vomiting does not take place, the food is likely to be thrown out by means of a di...

Feeding Increases Suffering

To feed under such conditions causes the temperature to rise and the pains and general discomfort of the patient to increase. Much of the restlessness and uneasiness usually observed in fever patients...

Compensation

Disease is labor, action, struggle--it is often violent action. Rapid heart action, rapid breathing, vomiting, diarrhea, etc., etc., represent increased effort. This uses up energy. It often leaves th...

Physiological Rest

Nothing is remedial, wrote Trall, except conditions which economize the vital expenditures. The amount of work done by the heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, glands, etc., is largely determined by the ...

Prevention

Tilden says: All acute disease could be prevented if anticipated by a fast of sufficient duration to lower the accumulated toxins below the toleration point. An anticipatory fast establishes a depend...

No Danger Of Starvation

There is no danger of the patient dying of starvation in the process of getting well. Let us bear in mind that the body is possessed of reserve food stores which will meet its needs for nutriment for ...

Pain

Pains that seem unbearable without the use of narcotics and anodynes rapidly lessen while one fasts, so that within a short time to a few days the patient is comfortable. Repeatedly have I watched the...

Torture Of Hopeless Cases

Feed the patient anything his fancy may desire; he is going to die anyway, is the advice frequently given by physicians when the patient has been brought so low that death seems inevitable. This is ...

Fasting In Fevers

Trall insisted that strictly speaking, fever and food are antagonistic ideas. No simple fever, if well-managed, requires dieting in any way, save the negative one of starvation, until its violence is...

Typhoid

Typhoid fever patients become comfortable in three to four days if the fast is instituted at the onset of the disease, and in from seven to ten days are convalescing. The patient will have such a ...

Pneumonia

If fasting is instituted at the very outset in pneumonia, the patient will not be very sick, the exudate into the lungs will not be great and resolution will be hastened. Death in pneumonia will be ve...

Appendicitis

All medical authorities admit the great value of fasting in appendicitis and recommend its employment, if the patient refuses an operation, or, if for some other reason an operation is considered inad...

Rheumatism

Page quotes Casey A. Wood, M.D., Professor of Chemistry in the Medical Department of Bishop's College, Montreal, in an article in the Canada Medical Record, entitled Starvation in the treatment of Ac...

Coughs

Most coughs can be stopped by a twenty-four to seventy-two hours fast; then, if the errors in eating are corrected, the cough is gone forever. Relief comes in the very worst cases of bronchial asthma ...

Diarrhea - Dysentery

Vomiting, restlessness, diarrhea and gross fatness are some of the symptoms of the surfeit disease and its proper cure is--not soothing syrups, but--fasting. Imagine feeding a patient who is having tw...

Wasting By The Acutely ILL Despite Feeding

Dewey emphasized the fact that the bodies of the acutely ill always waste, no matter what they are fed nor how much. Indeed, he insisted that in typhoid and other severe fevers, the patient that is fe...

Weakness

Weakness in acute disease is not properly attributed to the fast. Indeed, the fasting patient will not become as weak as the eating patient. He is more likely to grow stronger as the fast progresses...

Chapter XXXV Fasting In Chronic Disease

Nobody who thoroughly understands fasting, harbors any doubts about its possibilities and limitations. Most people who have voluntarily resorted to fasting for recovery from chronic illness, have done...

Dieting Versus Fasting

A light diet, such as the eliminating diet, is offered as a substitute for fasting, particularly in chronic disease, While we employ such diets quite often and recognize their value and utility, the...

Lost Appetite

One of the most common complaints of the chronic sufferer is this: I have lost my appetite. Frequently the complaint takes this form: I eat, but I do not enjoy my food. Another very common complai...

Plenty Of Good Nourishing Food

'Nourishment!' is the prevailing cry of those who would cure us, says Adolph Just in his Return to Nature; 'you need more nourishment!' But how can a body be nourished when it is incapable of absor...

Fear Of Fasting Unfounded

The thin and weak individual, knowing little or nothing of fasting, may be excused for his fear of fasting, but the plethoric and overweight individual certainly cannot be excused. The bear eats heart...

Starvation From Over-Feeding

Great numbers of the chronic sufferers who habitually over-eat are very thin and grow progressively thinner with the passage of time. Indeed, one frequently hears them remark the more I eat the thinn...

Fictional Desire For Food

Many chronic sufferers think they are ravenous. They feel that their supposed desire for food should be satisfied. There is a great mass of chronic sufferers who eat three square meals and two lunches...

Undigested Food In The Stomach

It is not unusual, in certain cases, of indigestion, to have food remain in the stomach two or three days. Beaumont found that food taken in certain morbid states remains undigested for twenty-four o...

Instinctive Eating

There have been men who approved of fasting in acute disease, but not in chronic disease, on the ground that so long as nature demands food, food should be taken. They have insisted upon being guided ...

Nature Accepts The Fast

In chronic disease digestion is not suspended. In many cases it seems not to be impaired. Appetite may and may not be present. There is not, therefore, the same necessity for fasting in chronic dis...

Elimination

Due to many causes waste accumulates during the entire life period of the body. The older the body and the more gluttony and sensuality have been indulged in, the greater the toxin saturation. These t...

Fasting and Physiological Rest

It should be obvious that when energy is low and functions are inefficient, a period of physiological rest will be beneficial. When the digestive function is so badly impaired that every meal is follo...

Relief Of Pain

Fasting not only brings absolute comfort to those who have a fatal disease, but it brings comfort in every other disease, cuts all diseases short, and gives the sick man or woman the very best o...

Pleasures Of The Practitioner

Dr. Arthur Vos grows poetic in his praise of the benefits of fasting in chronic disease. He says: I can conceive of no greater pleasure in the pursuit of my profession; than to witness a patient su...

Some "Orthodox" Testimony

Asclepiades used fasting 2,000 years ago, as did Thessalus of Tralles; Celsus employed fasting in jaundice and epilepsy; Avicenna used to fast his patients four or five weeks. Even Paracelsus declared...

A Few Diseases Considered

It is not intended here to do more than consider a few so-called diseases, as object lessons in the use of the fast, as these are covered in greater number in Vol. VII of this series. Denutrition, or...

Fasting In Nervous Diseases

In many quarters there exists a strange prejudice against the employment of the fast in what are called nervous diseases. It is customary to recommend a full diet in both nervous and mental diseas...

Chapter XXXVI Fasting In Drug Addiction

Alcoholism Dewey seems to have been the first to call attention to the great value of fasting in alcoholism. His book, Chronic Alcoholism, first published in 1899 is devoted to this subject, although...

Nicotinism

Let us look at tobacco next. Nicotinism, like alcoholism, is a chronic illness that is more or less willfully, although largely ignorantly cultivated. Young people usually begin the use of tobacco bec...

Coffee, Tea, Cocoa

It should not be necessary to devote space to coffee, tea, chocolate and cocoa addiction. These poisonous substances (caffeine-containing drugs) are used by many millions of people for the same reason...

Other Poison Habits

Other drug habits, such as the opium and morphine habit, the cocaine habit, the chloral habit, etc., are developed in much the same manner and follow much the same course in their development as the t...

Opium Addiction

The opium and morphine habits are often the result of the use of these drugs by the physician in the treatment of some disease that can be more readily, and certainly more rationally cared for by Hygi...

After-Care Of The Addict

It seems necessary to point out that any return to the prior mode of living, after the fast, will reproduce a state of enervation and toxemia, thus giving rise to more suffering, which may tempt the ...

Chapter XXXVII Fasting Versus Eliminating Diets

There is today much loose talking and writing about fasting by writers and lecturers and doctors who have never conducted and in the majority of instances, never even so much as observed a single fast...

Food Cures

Diet cures are quite popular at this time and are now exploited from the housetops by all and sundry. There are grape cures, lemon cures, orange cures. onion cures, garlic cures and similar ...

Deficiencies

The other half-truth upon which diet cures are based is that diseases are due to nutritive deficiencies, and cure follows an adequate supply of the deficient element or elements. Efforts to meet thi...

Less Food Better

Writing in Physical Culture, May, 1915, Dortch Campbell says: There is nothing that can be found as an actual substitute for fasting, nothing which will give the full benefits of the fast. He is dis...

Helio-Hygiene (Sunbathing)

MAN wants but little here below, and between meals a pickaninny will content itself with liberty, light and air, and a couple of rag-babies. Felix L. Oswald THOUSANDS of sickly nurslings, pining ...

Chapter XXXVIII Sun-Bathing

Life is a sun-child, says Dr. Oswald; nearly all species of plants and animals attain the highest form of their development in the neighborhood of the equator. Palm trees are tropical grasses. The ...

Sun-Bathing. Continued

Arnold Rikli, who died in 1907 at the age of 97, is regarded as the originator of the modern practice of sun-bathing. For over half a century he prescribed sun-baths in his institution established at ...

Chapter XXXIX Sunlight

Scientists have made many efforts to define light and many more to determine what it is. So far no fully satisfactory definition has been formulated and no one would be so dogmatic as to claim he know...

Chapter XL The Use Of Sunshine

Dr. James C. Jackson wrote: I think it may be said with perfect truth, that no living organism, of whatever species, whose subject has a brain, a pair of lungs, stomach, bowels and back-bone, can eve...

The Use Of Sunshine. Continued

Plants turn their leaves and flowers to face the sun, and some of these, like the sun-flower, follow the sun around, seemingly in order to have the largest possible area exposed to its radiations. Bon...

Sunshine And Resistance

Saleeby says: That a properly aired and lighted skin becomes a velvety, supple, copper coloured tissue, absolutely immune from anything of the nature of pimples or acne, incapable of being vaccinated...

Sunshine And Mental Efficiency

As might have been expected, any influence which produces such marked effects upon nutrition and occasions such profound changes in the superficial as well as the deeper tissues of the body, as does s...

Sunshine For The Unborn

Sunshine stimulates the growth of hair. Under its influence, breathing becomes deeper and slower; sleep sounder, blood-pressure is diminished, and urinary excretion is increased. Ulcers, sores, skin d...

Sunshine Assures Better Milk

Sunbaths before and after childbirth increase the mother's ability to nurse her baby and improve the quality of the milk, while they tend to prevent tiredness, backache, nausea, loss of appetite, emot...

Sunshine For Mothers

The subjection of a pregnant woman to daily sunbaths will benefit both her and the developing foetus, and I am convinced, will also do much towards lessening the pains that now make childbirth a harro...

Sunshine In Growth

Sunlight is also especially important during puberty and adolescence, when profound internal reorganizations are taking place. After a fast or a wasting illness, when it is desired to build up a lot ...

Sunshine For Preservation Of Health

If sunlight is so necessary to the perpetuation of life, and the production of normal development, it is equally necessary to the preservation of health and the prevention of disease. if it is as ne...

Chapter XLI Sunshine In Sickness

It should not be assumed that sunlight is, in itself, a cure for disease. It is supplementary to other hygienic or nutritive factors--it is not a cure. It may be used in building health, in improvin...

Sunshine In Sickness. Continued

Dark-skinned races do not absorb sunshine as rapidly as the lighter skinned peoples and, consequently, when housed, clothed and transplanted to regions where there is less sunshine, suffer more from l...

Chapter XLII Suntan And Sunburn

Prolonged exposure of the unprotected skin to the sun's rays results in severe and painful burning, prostration and even death. Necessary and useful as is sunshine, it is a powerful chemical agent aga...

Tanning

The bronzing or browning of the skin due to a deposit of pigment (melanin granules) around the nuclei of the epidermal and basal cells, following exposure to the rays of the sun, constitutes suntannin...

Precautions For Heliophobes

Individuals whose skins redden, blister and sizzle, but never tan, are said to be heliophobes, and are advised to stay out of the sun. I think this is pernicious advice. These people also need sunshin...

Lotions And Suntan Preparations

Articles on sunbathing which appear in popular magazines and newspapers tend to emphasize the dangers of sunbathing on the one hand, and the virtues of sun-tan lotions, on the other hand. Rarely do ...

Thickening Of The Corneum

The second protective mechanism developed by the body is a thickening of the corneum. This is the horny or uppermost layer of the skin. The pigment is in the skin layer that is below the sun-sensitive...

Avoiding The Sun

The body's third defense against the sun is that of getting out of it before an over-dose has been received. Even animals whose bodies are not nude, but are covered with hair, feathers or thick, heavy...

Chapter XLIII Substitutes For Sun-Bathing

In some form or other radiant energy plays many parts in all animal as well as plant activity, so that an investigation of the whole effects of the sun's actions on animal life is desirable. We know t...

Chapter XLIV Objections To Sun-Bathing

In an article appearing in The Cosmopolitan, July, 1949, under the title In Defense of Dermathermy, Wolcott Gibbs presents the following objections to sunbathing: sunburn, or tan, according to the ...

Chapter XLV The Sun Bath

Efforts are made in many quarters to convince everyone that the sunbath is a complicated and extremely hazardous procedure that can be applied only by a technically trained man from the laboratory, or...

First The Tan

One of the first things necessary in taking sun-baths is to acquire a good coat of tan. Women and others who do not desire a dark tan on their faces, necks and arms, may cover these when taking sun-ba...

Enervation From Over-Sunning

Excess sunbathing proves to be very enervating and Tilden says he has seen patients who had so greatly enervated themselves by sunbathing, they were two years in recovering full nerve energy. I have s...

How To Sun-Bathe

Sunbathing is entirely different from the popular practice of enjoying the fresh air. The bath is taken with all of the clothing removed. Care must be taken not to burn the body. Too little, rather th...

Natural Protection Alone Needed

Protection of the head and eyes is usually strongly urged. This advice is pernicious. Man does not require goggles or bonnets any more than do the lower animals. Sunlight is distinctly beneficial to t...

Eating And Sunbathing

Some caution against eating during or immediately following a sunbath. I know of no reason for either rule. It will be noticed that the lower animals usually get their food and sunshine together and t...

Light Vs. Heat

The devitalizing influence of the hot sun is well known. People who lounge on the sand at the beaches at winter or summer resorts become lazy and indifferent, when they could, by moderate indulgence i...

Time Of Day

A sun-bath taken at any time of the day will be beneficial and a busy person should take one at any time he or she can. But as the intensity of light and the length of time of exposure play important ...

Sunbathing Comfort

The sun-bath should be pleasant and, if it is taken progressively, will never cause discomfort. Care must be observed in the employment of sunbathing, in cold or damp weather. Only the hardy can enjoy...

A Way Can Be Found

The excuse often offered for not getting sunbaths, that there is no place to take them, is a lame one. Some day all cities will be equipped with solaria. There will be solaria on the roofs of tall bui...

Signs Of Excess

Excesses in sunbathing are usually quick to make themselves known. If headache, fatigue or upset stomach follow a sunbath, this indicates an overdose. Harm results from over-sunning just as it does fr...

Precautions For Invalids

Sick and weak individuals need sunbaths most; yet these must observe greatest care in taking them. A headache, indigestion, or any other evidence of impaired health means that resistance is low and on...

Chapter XLVI The Air Bath

Sun-baths, light-baths, and air-baths are collectively referred to by Rikli, Monteuius and others as the atmospheric cure. The literature on the subject is so confused that one often has difficulty in...