Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/118

 a clear insight into the matter of diet, hygienic care, and exercise after abstinence is ended.

An experienced director of the method is only too well aware that there are subjects, whose number entitles them to be distinguished as a class, who, through physical defect, store within the system extraordinarily excessive accumulations of food poison. These cases are grouped under Class 2 in the division of general disease symptoms noted in a previous chapter. In them constant stimulation prevents recognition of the presence of toxic products until some serious indiscretion overturns the balance, and a fast is begun, usually without preparation or direction. Once elimination has commenced, no return is possible until the logical end of the cleansing process is reached, and often alarming symptoms develop ere the first week has elapsed. The attempt is made at once to supply nourishment, and digestive trouble more severe in kind is produced, for the alimentary canal is filled with the products of elimination, and food but adds fuel to the combustion in progress. Fear now takes possession of the family and, more often than not, of the patient as well, and the