Dr. Tanner went further than this in later years, and, as he says in a letter to the author of date February 23, 1912: "My second fast, publicly given, was called the 'Great American Sensation', and its novel incidents were wired to the ends of the telegraphic world. My advisers planned for me wisely. My object was not money, but to relieve myself of the odium unjustly heaped upon me by the medical enemies of all righteousness. Right triumphed, and the very javelins of hate hurled at me, in their recoil held up the medical profession to the derision of the world. Every prediction of failure was nullified, and I came off conqueror and more than conqueror, in spite of the medical Goliaths arrayed against truth."

This statement was made by Dr. Tanner thirty-two years after he underwent his famous second fast in the City of New York. The fast began on June 28,1880, and ended at noon, August 6,1880, full forty days.

To go into the controversies that this public demonstration occasioned would be futile here. It is sufficient to say that Dr. Tanner successfully vindicated his cause, and that he proved his contention that mere man might refrain from eating for forty days and still live. In addition, he showed that the physical state of his body was materially improved by his experience, and that the therapeutic value of abstinence from food was an established fact. As a result of this test Dr. Tanner's name became a household word, and to this day in works not allied at all to the subject references are met with the good old doctor as their theme.

Dr. Henry S. Tanner was born in England in 1831. He died in San Diego, California, in comparative obscurity in 1919. Eighty-eight years of life, most of which was devoted to contending with the orthodox members of his profession! Yet he never lost his mental poise nor his well developed sense of humor. Nor did he ever descend to the meannesses of petty controversy, although outspoken to the end. Throughout his practice, and he was always actively engaged in the work of his profession, he decried the use of drugs, depending entirely upon natural therapy. When his purse was full, his funds were at the disposal of those in need, and his whole personality was one that carried with it and expressed the Golden Rule.

Dr. Tanner, from 1877 on, employed the fast in his practice. He slightly antedates Dr. Edward Hooker Dewey in this regard, but he did not, as did Dr. Dewey, make of his knowledge the basis of a cult, the foundation of a school.

When in 1911 the author was persecuted by the political members of the orthodox branch of medicine, and was accused of having caused the death of one of her fasting patients by starvation, Dr. Tanner rose to the occasion, as evidenced in the following letter: "Our local papers have published matter in regard to you professionally. As I am the father of fasting, I'm an interested party in your welfare. If I can be of service, command me, and to the extent of my ability to help, I will cheerfully respond."

One could not ask for more than this, yet Dr. Tanner did more. Testimony from witnesses not directly connected with the case was barred at the trial by a prejudiced judge, so it was not possible to take advantage of the doctor's offer at this time. But later, while the case was pending in the higher courts, Doctor Tanner came to Seattle, and he and the author appeared many times jointly on the platform to the great good of the cause of therapeutic fasting. He was then eighty-one years of age and in possession of all of his faculties, save that he was slightly deaf. Upon his return to Los Angeles, where he then made his home, he continued practicing "natural methods" under medical license.

Dr. Tanner died of sheer old age in 1919 at San Diego. It is a sad resection upon those who should have felt the obligation, that the last days of this gentle but firm-principled man should have been spent in the County Hospital. The author had been absent abroad for nearly four years and had lost touch with the doctor, only to discover on her return to this country after his death the facts as here recorded. Eighty-eight years of existence, forty-two of which were devoted to the advancement of that method of healing by which his own life had been saved and prolonged, and devoted as well to teaching others the natural way to health, with what far reaching effects none of us may ever know! In that he advocated and practiced fasting and other natural therapeutic measures for the long space of forty-two years, and that he was first to attract public attention to the possibilities of the fast as a curative means, to Dr. Henry S. Tanner is justly entitled the first place among the pioneers of therapeutic fasting.

Just about the time that Dr. Tanner in Minneapolis discovered for himself the worth of abstinence from food as a therapeutic measure, another medical physician in Meadville, Pennsylvania, by what may be called pure accident, was given a revelation of the power of nature in disease along lines similar to the Tanner experience. Wonder is occasioned at the coincidence in time and in circumstance. Dr. Tanner says definitely that his first trial of the fast was a personal and experimental one, and that he began his initial experience on the 17th day of July, 1877. Dr. Edward Hooker Dewey, on page 48 of his True Science of Living, states: " On a hot day in July, 1877, I entered a home to assume charge of a case of typhoid fever that was to arouse every possible faculty as by an electric charge." The doctor began to treat this case in orthodox medical manner, and in order to support strength and vital power, from the medical viewpoint it was his duty to enforce feeding. But, fortunately for the patient and for the future of scientific fasting in disease, every dose of drugs or of food, every drink of water, was instantly rejected by the stomach, and this condition persisted for over three weeks. In this connection Dr. Dewey remarks: "I was a very surprised physician, for, even without food, I found the tongue cleaning and a manifest gain in both mental and physical strength that became even marked at the time, when, to my continued surprise, food might be borne. I, however, determined to let nature continue to have her way, and from the end of the third week I watched, without trying enforced feeding, until the thirty-fourth day, when my patient, with natural hunger in evidence, began to eat and to rebuild with ultimate return to normal vigor.