Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/206

 like manner affect the mind? Observation shows not only that it does influence brain function, but that the results of disease are always and continuously displayed mentally. In many of the ordinary hypochondriacal disturbances, in melancholia, and in the various manias, other forms of treatment should be accompanied by correction of deranged digestive function.

In health the constructive and destructive changes that take place in the human body progress without noticeable diminution or increase in excellence of brain quality, so long as waste material is promptly removed and suitable food is supplied and properly assimilated.

In conditions of debility and weakness, whenever the influx is too large for the demand, or the waste too great for disposal by the organs of elimination, absorption of the poisons generated in fermenting food rubbish retained in the intestinal tract is continuously occurring, and the subject becomes a victim of auto-intoxication, is drunk with the products of his own decomposition. This condition, if long continued, is no less baneful in effect than that of alcoholic saturation, and, in some cases, it may take the form of