Two days after the beginning of the fast, an abscess broke through the surface of the skin at the base of the spine immediately over the sacrum. The discharge from this sore was most profuse and offensive, and the area affected spread until it was at least three inches in diameter, with depth such that within ten days after the skin had broken the periosteum of the sacrum was exposed. For a week hot fomentation were continuously applied, and gangrenous tissue in process of formation was cauterized by carefully focusing the rays of the sun upon the ulcer with a large reading glass. By the tenth day the discharge ceased being offensive, and shortly thereafter healthy granulation or healing began. When the fast was at an end, the sole evidence of the existence of this sore was a circular spot of slightly reddish normal skin of which a subjacent cushion of soft and healthy tissue showed that natural work of repair had proceeded despite total abstinence from food. This is undoubtedly the point of greatest interest and import to be noted in the treatment and progress of the case, for it is to be remembered that the blood of this woman had in all probability been tainted from birth, and that it had been poisoned and repoisoned for years by continuous addition to accumulated toxic substances. Elimination of body waste had never been successfully accomplished in this patient, but once it could proceed undisturbed in function, nature was able not only to cast out existing impurity, but also to repair diseased tissue by selecting healthy pabulum from the store of nutriment husbanded within.

The discharges resulting from copious daily enemas were noticeable for their exceeding foulness, and for excessive amounts of dark bilious fluid evacuated until about the thirtieth day of the fast. Loss in weight was not exceptional, totaling, as it did, but 20 pounds. When it is considered that the patient weighed but 85 pounds at the beginning of the fast, it is seen that, proportionally speaking, this loss conforms with results tabulated later in the text.

Dates are also of interest in this case, which was under treatment during the winter of 1907-8. The woman died of pneumonia early in 1923. In the interim of full fifteen years, she was able to get about in a wheeled chair, was in good general health, and conducted a business of her own, the only inconvenience she suffered being that incident to her incurable paralysis.

Another instance is that of a woman twenty-eight years old in whom poor nutrition and what is called a bilious temperament occasioned a condition of disease that was expressed in periodical headaches and in melancholia with a tendency toward mania. But for the care and devotion of an older sister, the patient, long before coming under observation, would have been placed in an institution for the insane. In fact, it was because the physician last consulted had recommended that she be restrained that her relatives in despair resorted to the fast.

Examination discovered a pulse continually at 128 or thereabouts with temperature varying from above to below normal by several degrees. Diet had consisted largely of meat and its extracts, this being at once changed to vegetable broths. Daily enemas were thoroughly administered and at first hot towel packs were used upon the spine in order to control circulation and to steady the fluctuating pulse, but these were discontinued shortly as heart action made constant improvement from the beginning of treatment. Dark, foul-smelling discharges that did not cease until the latter portion of the fast formed the bulk of the liquid in the return from the enemas.

This patient also showed extraordinary vigor and vitality throughout a period of forty-two days of abstinence from food, and she daily walked a distance of several miles, underwent manipulative treatment, and returned to her home without undue fatigue. Towards the end of the fast she was able and desirous of increasing the amount of exercise, and her mental condition exhibited improvement from the inception of the work. On the thirtieth day of the fast and thereafter the young woman performed her portion of the housework well and cheerfully. Hunger returned on the forty-first day, and the fast was broken at the end of the forty-second. Two weeks later the sisters sailed for their home abroad, and letters written by the patient since their arrival show a mind in every respect rational.

Tuberculosis of the lungs is a symptom of disease that needs to be uncovered and treated in its early stages if recovery is to be hoped for, and the case of a woman thirty-two years old is cited to illustrate the treatment of a consumptive, the outcome of whose case proved a cure. This patient abstained from food for twenty-four days, but preparation, the fast, and the period of dieting after the latter was concluded, covered full six months. When first under observation, the sputum contained the bacilli typical of the symptom; both lungs were affected; the characteristic cough, high temperature and pulse, were present; in fact, the case displayed all of the signs that distinguish the symptom. The fast was begun after usual preparatory diet, and was continued as noted for twenty-four days, during which no unfavorable symptoms occurred. However, from the latter part of the preparatory period there was excessive discharge of sputum, but during the fast this showed daily diminution in amount, and there was also pronounced decrease in the number of bacilli at the several periodical examinations made. The enemas were charged with bilious products and old feces, these toxic disturbers disappearing only during the last week of abstinence. Fever had vanished as had also the cough by the fourteenth day, and, when the sputum was examined on the twenty-second day of fasting there were no traces of bacilli tuberculosis.

To anticipate successful issue, the treatment of tuberculosis of the lungs should be undertaken before the stage of excessive structural break-down of lung tissue has been reached. If the treatment outlined is begun at this time a cure is altogether probable. Otherwise, the case classes itself with that of advanced organic disease, which, in the light of previous discussion, bars remedy.