Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/108

 nor in structure unless they themselves are organically diseased. Even in instances of death from alleged starvation, nerve tissue shows no loss. It makes use of the normal food reserve stored in the interstices of muscular tissue, and; fasting or feeding, it draws upon this accumulation for support. The whole nervous system regains its energy by rest alone, but it maintains its substance at par by the means described. Hence, so long as there remain tissue and blood sufficient to carry on the work of the functions and of the circulation, brain and nerves must continue their directing task, and they cannot waste in the process.

The statement, that a supply of healthy tissue-food exists during a fast and is not exhausted until natural hunger returns, does not rest for proof upon the mere assertion of medical observation in alleged starvation. In the chapter of the text devoted to cases cured by fasting an instance is cited of healing by first intention during a fast of fiftyeight days of a sore three inches in diameter, so virulent in character that the .periosteum of the sacrum was exposed. Two cases of pregnancy are also noted in which the mothers fasted twenty-two and thirty days