The fast as a means of physical and spiritual purification has its origin so far back in history that no one knows from what period it dates, if indeed it does not much antedate man himself.

All through the animal kingdom fasting is the instinctive means used to recover from injury or illness, man alone adhering to appetite even when ill.

It is even considered scientific by the medical lights of all time to feed in illness, and the more desperate the character of this or the more protracted its outlook the more importance is attached to concentrated nutrition, "to keep up the strength."

If this is scientific then all Nature is wrong, the animals in their native environment all need intelligent keepers, and a sick body should not rest, but should work at increased rate.

When illness sets in the first thing that happens is a total and complete loss of all desire for food, even not infrequently a repugnance to foods that produces nausea or vomiting at the mere thought of food, or its odor or sight.

Nature as it expresses itself in the sick body must be all out of time with science if such a case should be fed, but it is fed, and the more serious the illness the more importance does nourishment seem to have with the average prescriber.

It is thus that little illnesses become big, that short illnesses draw out into weeks, and it is just thus that so many that should get well are unable to withstand the unnatural character of their treatment and succumb, not to the disease, but to the great aggravation of the toxic state caused by feeding unwanted foods and taking unnatural drugs.

Fasting almost went out for ages, until Dr. Tanner's public demonstration in New York a number of years ago again excited a little interest in the theme, but it is doubtful if one per cent, of the present population, if they still remember the incident, actually believe that Dr. Tanner had not some way of securing nourishment that they did not know about.

In fact, his medical attendants at the time expressed some doubt on this point, not being willing to receive the witness of their own eyes that this man actually went for forty days without nourishment of any kind whatever.

Fasts of ninety days have been accomplished, while one enforced fast was that of a young girl of fifteen years. She had swallowed concentrated lye, thus closing the lower end of her aesophagus, and for this reason was unable to swallow anything at all for 180 days. This was perhaps the longest recorded existence without nourishment.

The longest fast under the writer's personal care was for fifty-five days, in a fleshy woman of forty-two years who had preceded this twice during the same year with shorter fasts, one of twenty-eight days and one of thirty-three, the longer fast of these preceding by only two weeks the fifty-five day fast.

She weighed 235 lbs. before the first fast, which was taken in August, but by February she had regained all that was lost during this fast, which was about thirty pounds, and when completing the thirty-three day fast she still weighed 200 lbs.

In the two weeks following this she had regained twenty pounds, as she did not stick to directions for diet, so again undertook a fast till the weight was reduced to comfortable proportions, which to her was fixed at 160 lbs.

At the end of the fifty-five days she had lost sixty pounds, and having achieved the figure set, she broke the fast, though there was no hunger at this time and she was feeling as fit as at any time in her life before.

During all three of these fasts she continued her usual household duties, getting meals for her husband and his brother, frying meats, and preparing the usual savory dishes of which they were fond, but after the first three days this was always without the semblance of appetite.

Various troubles, from which she was suffering before fasting had disappeared, and her health had improved in every way, and from being almost helpless from her flesh she grew to be very handsome and attractive, and was so light at her work that she said she had forgotten the sense of fatigue.

One case fasted forty-three days while continuing his work, which was clerical, and after breaking the fast his weight returned at the rate of two pounds a day, although his entire food for the twenty-four hours weighed less than this total.

The writer's experience has been chiefly with the shorter fasts, and when he hears some one who believes in the physiological fast say that it is dangerous to break off any fast till the body itself announces a return of hunger he knows that such observer's experience has been limited to the long or complete or physiological fast, for no one who has instituted, carried through, and arbitrarily broken several thousand short fasts could ever make such a statement.

The fast is a physiological rest, a rest internally as well as externally, and whether long or short it is none the less a rest that has allowed of a certain housecleaning and readjustment that cannot fail to do great good, unless all the possible good effects have been dissipated by the manner of breaking off and resuming the feeding.

The writer does not hesitate to break any fast at any point, and can see no harm in doing so, nor does he believe it can ever be harmful, unless the return to feeding is too rapid or the selection and combination of food such as to set up a new intoxication on top of the one even partially eradicated.

If the fast is for even one week, and followed by a proper selection and combination of foods, there is certain to be great good realised from it, and the appetites will have been broken and opportunity offered for the creation of newer and better ones.

The fast was quite generally practiced at the time of Jesus' ministry, and it is not to be supposed that there was anything miraculous about His fast of preparation for His earth ministry, for He was preceded by such men as Elijah, Moses, and many prophets who always prepared for every great undertaking by a prolonged fast, the favorite length of this seeming to be forty days.