This section is from the "Scientific Fasting: The Ancient and Modern Key to Health" book, by Linda Burfield Hazzard. Also available from Amazon: Scientific Fasting: The Ancient and Modern Key to Health
It is to be remarked that the children of these two mothers are not only physically excellent examples, but are also mentally intelligent to a marked degree. These gratifying characteristics are to be attributed in great part to the purification of body undergone by the pregnant women at a stage of gestation early enough to provide for tissue structure in the forming fetal bodies unvitiated by disease in the systems of the mothers.
The statement descriptive of the following case is given in the language of the father of the patient:
"During several weeks prior to his sixth birthday, our oldest
boy had complained of sore throat and general lassitude. This finally
developed into an acute tonsilitis. On the third or fourth day he
complained of pain in both knees, and by evening these joints were
swollen and red, and the pain had become so intense that the weight of
the bedclothes was unbearable. The physician whom we called--one of
the regular school--promptly diagnosed the case as one of inflammatory
rheumatism. He advised the use of hot applications to subdue the pain,
and insisted on putting the left knee, which was the worse, in a
splint so that it could not be moved. On his second or third visit he
discovered mitral regurgitation, that common and ominous symptom,
showing that the systemic poisoning had affected the valves of the
heart. His prognosis was most unfavorable. He said that the acute
stage would last probably six weeks, and that it would leave the
patient with organic heart trouble.
"At this point
we decided to resort to a method in which we had long believed, but
which we had failed to try at the outset of this sickness because we
had not realized the seriousness of the case. We discharged the
physician and began the treatment described herein under the direction
of the author. She took off the splint and gave both knees a careful
but thorough rubbing. They had been apparently too sensitive to touch
before this, but by the time she had finished the massage, the child
said that they felt better. She told us not to bother about his heart
or anything else in the line of symptoms, but to stop feeding him, to
give him daily baths, enemas, and manipulations--and to watch nature
do the rest.
"The pain kept up at intervals,
intervals that grew steadily longer, however, for two days, and then
it ceased entirely. Before the end of the week, the patient was able
to be taken down town on a street car for manipulative treatment. His
fast lasted twelve days.
"Later in the summer he
had a recurrence of old eye trouble, one resulting from an impure
condition of the blood. He had been treated the summer before for
this trouble, which had lasted several months. This time we at once
began another fast, which continued for twenty-two days. At its end
he stripped the bandage off: his eyes one evening and looked at us and
we knew that the thing was conquered. During a few of the twenty-two
days he had a little orange juice, and at all times he had all the
water that he desired. A daily bath and rub were given with a copious
enema each morning and evening.
"At the time of
writing, two years from the date of the last fast, there has been no
recurrence of either the throat trouble, rheumatism, or eye trouble,
and a regular physician, a friend of the family, who examined the boy
a few months ago, pronounced his heart perfect."
The next case is that of a cancer located on the right eyelid of a man sixty-two years old. This malignant sore had been in evidence for twelve years and the patient had been operated upon for its removal twice in this period. Its third appearance was made in virulent form and consultation with a medical specialist resulted in renewed recommendation of the knife, to which this time the patient refused to submit. He began preparation for a fast which lasted forty-five days, at the expiration of which all that remained of the suppurating sore was a reddish scar of its former seat. Four years later his personal report of the case shows no symptom of recurrence upon eyelid or elsewhere, and an excellent state of general health.
The eradication of this symptom of extreme blood impurity by means of the fast fixes the value of the method in forms of disease that are supposedly incurable. It bears out the contention that disease is one with cure, that cure lies in the application of the single method of nature, elimination, which is one with purification. Cancer is but a symptom of general disease, and it may be eradicated when its ravages have not involved an organ to the degree of rendering it incapable of function.
A cancer, a tumor, are evidences of the economy of nature in gathering her forces of relief at a single point. This single point, the symptom, is ordinarily plainly apparent. Medicine seeks to "drive it in"; surgery to "cut it out"; and neither, when applied, succeeds in removing the cause. Even though the actual growth and its nearby ramifications are extirpated by means of the knife, nature is still impelled to rid the body of its circulating impurity by the construction of destructive cells, and only blood purlfication can accomplish a cure.
The next subject, a woman twenty-seven years old, suffered constantly from pain, more or less acute, in the left costar region, near the cardiac orifice of the stomach. She had severe headaches, coupled with nausea and vomiting of bile. Medical diagnosis varied with each physician consulted, and the young woman was treated within a period of several years for ailments ranging from ulceration of the stomach to appendicitis. In the course of her search for health she had made visits to famed sanatoria, but her condition steadily grew worse, and, because of it, she was rapidly verging upon melancholia. Hearing of the fast, she was at first interested, then hopeful, and on her own initiative she undertook short periods of abstinence with decided relief. The case was one that, when first observed, showed signs of obstinate intestinal obstruction, which might or might not prove to be a morbid growth, and caution was essential even during the preparatory work. But it was finally determined that a soup and salad regimen be followed, and the dietary indicated was continued for four months with gradual but not permanent relief. However, at the end of this time an attempt was made to change to solid food, when the system at once strongly rebelled, and the patient was actually forced into total abstinence. She fasted forty-three days.
 
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