Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/225

CHILDREN IN THE FAST their detrimental influences upon infant digestion.

When infantile disease is manifested, a medically treated child is still more hampered in its physical processes. Drugs are poisons, and their introduction into the body of an infant suffering from food excess or from the results of erroneous diet in the mother, works havoc with tender nerves and tissue, horrifying to the mind trained on lines of natural remedy. Drugs aim at the suppression of the symptom and not at the removal of the cause, and many an adult body is compelled to struggle through life handicapped by undeveloped, partially paralyzed mechanism, as the result of dosage in infancy.

The disease symptoms of childhood frequently assume what is known as epidemic form. Contagion and infection depend absolutely upon the physical condition of the system and not upon the germ, always present or introduced from other sources. The care of the parent should be directed toward the preservation of health, with its resistive qualities in the body of the growing child; and, if through carelessness, or ignorance, or accident, this condition may fail of conserva-209