Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/207

 insanity, while, in all, diminished brain power is evident.

The digestion of a meal, with the subsequent forcing of food waste through the bowels, consumes brain energy in greater amount than does any ordinary work of muscle or of mind, and the result is apparent in weakened vitality, which overfeeding never fails to show. Sufficient food, perfectly digested, produces a body with brain equal to clear thought and maximum of energy. More than this entails excessive labor upon the organs of digestion and consequent overtax of vitality.

The cause of mental disease is one and the same with that of physical disturbance. The physical signs precede the mental danger signals and should be heeded and remedied when first displayed.

The close connection between mental and physical functions is always prominently exhibited in the consequences of the fast, and never more so than in the treatment of those morbid depressions that often lead to confinement in state institutions. These cases originate in the abuse of the digestive organs, which, coupled with hereditary tendencies, affects the nerve centers and ultimately the