Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/252

 If human bodies continued to exist throughout life in the normal state they should possess at birth, when functional disease appeared the application of the fast would prove perfectly easy in all cases. But, through constant wrong living, through chronic abuse of the vital processes, and, more than all else, through the paralyzing effects of drug dosage, the average man has acquired defects in organic structure.

In infancy, when disease develops, a drug is given for the suppression of the symptom. In some cases the children die ; in others, the paralysis, the functional ruin, of some portion of the intestinal tract or other organ is caused; in still others, the resistive powers of the infant are such as to permit it to survive despite the dose. In any event no true benefit has been derived, and, since the harm was done during the growing state, retardation of development occurs, and, in future years, disease symptoms may be traced directly to the points affected in infancy. With functional troubles continually recurring, these deficiencies in organism finally cause almost absolute cessation of the processes of elimination.

Careful observation of several thonsands