Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/246

 mal in quality, and if cleanliness, especially in the female, is properly observed. The former condition is promptly effected by the fast, and the latter is a matter of ordinary personal care. The irritating symptoms of local venereal infection yield to the treatment in few days, and convalescence brings no supervening annoyance, as expressed in urethral stricture, prostatic congestion, etc.

The taint of syphilis, congenital or acquired, if treated before its characteristic organic lesions have developed, is eradicated with equal success, but with somewhat more difficulty, since this disorder is deeply seated, and, affecting the composition of the blood, partakes of the nature of structural defect in vital organs.

Masturbation, a habit of more widely common practice in both sexes than is generally believed, may have its origin in the curiosity of pubescence stimulated by vicious influences. But its development into habitual form requires a constitutional derangement of the functions of nutrition, and the vice of self -abuse is purely a symptom, not a cause of disease. Digestive ferment, occasioning excitement of the nerve centers controlling