Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/179

 the body is covered with a substance that is impervious to air, such as gold-leaf. Here the symptoms are those that accompany asphyxiation.

Ages of submission to conventionality have compelled skin covering, and have evolutionally made of this organ a partial functioner. Since clothing is an essential of civilization, the remedy lies in making it as light and as pervious to air as is consistent with decency, and in caring for the surface of the body with constancy and diligence.

SLEEP. Nature's law of recuperation is that of rest, of relief from labor. The instrument of thought and of motive government, the brain, obtains its repose in regularly recurring periods of unconsciousness and cessation. of bodily activity the hours of sleep. It is then that the cells of the human battery are recharged, that the working principal receives its potential for transformation during conscious moments. Sleep is a physiological necessity and death results within a few days if it be denied. In the fast, due to slight brain congestion produced by excessive elimination in the prior stages, inability to slumber is sometimes present, but attention to the bath and to the ventilation of the