The glycogen available for the body effort is largely used up early in the fast, and while muscular effort may be unimpaired, yet continued effort would be seriously hampered on account of this lack of fuel, and much harm might be done the muscles themselves by injudicious effort too long continued.

It is a beautiful thing to watch the external parts of the body renewing themselves during the fast, and to know that the internal parts are pursuing the same course.

On beginning the fast the skin is often dry and scaly and lifeless, and before this has proceeded further than the beginning of the third week, usually, there is an entire change in feel and appearance of the skin.

It becomes gradually soft and moist, the pink at base of the nail is life-like again, the eye clears, the color of the sclera lightens, all yellowness disappears, the injection of the corneal vessels declines or disappears, the eye brightens, the hair becomes soft and lustrous, and there is a general appearance of a rebirth.

If it were possible to see the internal changes they would no doubt be still more striking, but we can judge of these only by the external changes and the excretory testimony, as by urinalysis.

Where albumen and casts have been present these clear up, the urine becomes concentrated and dark at first, and later clear and limpid in appearance.

Many a case whose urine will not permit of life insurance takes the fast and presents himself for examination and passes with flying colors, which is not fair to the company, unless at the same time he makes such permanent changes in his dietary habits as will continue the improvement, and he usually does, after such demonstration.

The writer has fitted many such kidney cases for life insurance who could not otherwise get it, but always on condition that the way of living was to be continued, and he cannot recall a single case where the company was ever a loser on such a condition.

The blood during a fast undergoes no visible changes as to cell count, unless markedly abnormal when the fast is begun, in which case there is a return to the normal.

Progressive pernicious anemia recovers quite regularly under a rather protracted fast, generally two weeks or more, as did the first thirteen cases under this plan of feeding; the fourteenth, in almost dying condition when she arrived, being the first to fail to recover normal count.

For most of two weeks the red, or erythrocyte, count continues to fall before there is regeneration in the blood-making organs; then gradually the microscopic picture begins to show new round erythrocytes with regular edges, no crenations or irregularities, and soon there is noticeable increase in number of these, with gradual disappearance of the adventitious cells present in the beginning.

Not unusually there is a gain during the succeeding two weeks that brings the total back to the normal five million erythrocyte count, even though this may have been at or below one million in the beginning of treatment.

In all, during the past twenty-four years, one hundred and five cases have been treated by these simple methods, detoxication, colonic irrigation and corrected diet, but eight of whom failed of initial recovery, some of these continuing to live so as to prevent return of the blood disorder, while others returned measureably to their former habits, being generally in environment uncongenial to marked dietary changes, and relapsed to anaemic state again, some dying in this return, and some again coming back to normal through a repetition of the simple plan administered here.

Progressive pernicious anaemia is considered an incurable disease, and so the writer always regarded it, and it was a case of this kind that started serious thoughts in his mind before his own physical breakdown, thoughts that perhaps colored his views of his own recognizably incurable state of disease.

He was at that time practicing in a rather small town in western Pennsylvania, in general and surgical practice, of which railroad surgery took a part of his time.

An intimate and highly respected professional friend in dying left him the care of his family's health, among which was the aged father of his wife, then far gone with progressive pernicious anaemia.

This case had expert counsel from the very beginning, and after the writer took charge he continued to have the most eminent counsel that could be secured.

None criticized the diagnosis or the treatment, declaring that all was being done that could be done, and according to the light on the subject at that time this verdict was no doubt true.

As the disease progressed downward about as predicted and expected, the patient reached a condition of complete coma, when nothing more than an occasional teaspoonful of water could be swallowed. Treatment had been by hypodermic very largely for some time, but when coma developed we all quit and waited daily for the end. This was unaccountably delayed, however, and day after day he showed no change in condition, yet treatment of all kind was withheld, as it was so palpably useless. After ten days it was apparent that there was an increase in hemaglobin, as the color was plainly coming back in lips and fingernails, yet no comparison was made at this time, still waiting for the end.

After three weeks this old gentleman, seventy years of age, opened his eyes and asked for something to eat, and he got up again, reopened his office, and for a year and a half after this seemingly miraculous recovery he continued to look the best he had looked for ten years, but suddenly relapsed and promptly died, from a return to exactly the same causes as produced the condition originally, an acidosis largely of colonic origin.

For six months after this incident the writer awoke on many an otherwise peaceful night with the startling question: "Why did this case die according to program while we were doing all that science knows to be of use, and when we quit doing anything at all he recovered?" The only possible answer was that we must not have been doing the right things.

In about six months after this unexpected recovery another case occurred in a lady of seventy-four years in the same town, and she was told the story of the former case and agreed to allow her colon to be kept empty and her diet to be interdicted till a definite appetite appeared. The result was another complete recovery, not through food, but absence of food, and with only a sensible treatment of the colon, wholly without drugs or medicines or serums or camouflage of any sort whatever, simply through the body's own efforts relieved of all visible handicaps. So followed ninety-seven recoveries out of one hundred and five cases, all of which recovered in the same way, by not doing the things that interfere with Nature at work, fasting playing the major role in all, later proper diet and proper colon toilette.

Not long after this second recovery, when the entire medical conception of disease and its proper mode of treatment seemed turned upside down, the writer's own breakdown occurred. While this was seemingly in no way related to these two upsetting recoveries, yet, no doubt, it was these results that had much to do with shaping his determination to look for relief through diet. This was the more especially so as he was well aware that, from the medical point of view, he had no chance at all for more than a very few months of life, and these months filled with such agony as he had been forced to witness in many fatal endings of the same condition in his patients for sixteen years--a frightfully common ending.

It was not till after he had applied the very same principles to his own case, without the absolute fast which was not then practicable while continuing his work, but through the one vegetable meal a day plan, that he got relief. Even then he was unwilling to believe that such simple conception of disease and its treatment could ever apply to more than a very limited number of the most palpably toxic states.

Then followed four years of application of the principles of this theory to all manner of chronic states, till he was finally forced to accept it as a main principle in practice, so dropped his work, went to New York for a thorough course of nutritional study, and opened a sanatorium for the treatment of those conditions in which medicine failed always to improve the state.

It did not take long for word to be passed that here in this little obscure town was hope for those who have been condemned, and they came from everywhere. The longer the principles have been applied the deeper the conviction that we verily can do nothing to improve on Nature's own plan of physical regeneration, and that all we can do is to cease doing the things that deter her best efforts, chief among which are feeding and drugging the sick.

He now considers it malpractice to give food to the seriously ill, and looks on drugs in the same way, yet his medical brethren who have not had the same experience cannot, of course, be expected to agree with him or even to understand the objects of his peculiar aims or methods.

This is not their fault but that of their training, and again Dr. Leonard Williams is right in thinking that for the omissions in medical training, in the matter of food and nutrition, someone should be hanged, but again, who?

So fasting has its place in treatment of the sick, but do not make the mistake of thinking that either foods or fasting are curative, for only the body's own resources are in any sense the agents of cure.

What fasting does is just what right food does, the mere relieving of the system from former handicaps, and while right foods in the right combinations will relieve a former handicap of wrong foods (or wrong foods in wrong combinations, which is the usual thing), yet even right foods in right combinations may be a handicap when the body is not able to handle even these, and desires in no unmistakable voice to be let strictly alone. It is then that the fast is clearly indicated, and this indication should be as faithfully respected as any other indication in disease or in health, and no food of any kind should be offered or taken till the body announces through normal hunger a return of need for nourishment. Then the need for fasting has passed and feeding may be resumed, and it is then that care must be exercised not to create again a toxic state that will make another such cataclysm necessary.

Thus fasting and feeding, as resting and exercise, emphasize again the great law of compensation, of give and take, of action and reaction, each having its definite place in the body's scheme of keeping her balance or regaining it when lost.