Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/257

 dangers of inadvised and promiscuous fasting at unintelligent hands.

The fast cannot cure disease in a body organically imperfect, but the natural physician may direct its use for short periods in such manner as to ameloriate existing conditions and to restore the patient to comparative health. The real state of the body organism is so perfectly uncovered by abstaining from food that the individual thereafter is enabled to live within the limitations of his organs. When the presence of organic defects of more than ordinary seriousness has been determined, the protracted fast is most inadvisable, for, in this event, it is certain that the avenues of elimination will prove inadequate to exacted demands.

The intoxication that results from absorption of eliminative products has been said to cause delirium sometimes. This condition, present in the fast at times, gives rise to the contention that protracted abstinence from food occasions insanity in the patient. Nothing can be further from the truth, for, when elimination is successfully accomplished, mentality is at its highest; and, on the other hand, cases of mental aberration due to auto-