Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/261

 begins when the fast ends, or at the return of hunger.

The points of difficulty related heretofore are in a sense technical in character, but there are objections, that at times develop into obstacles, that embody personal opinion and prejudice. In bygone days, when medicine failed to relieve, the sufferer was left without hope, and friends and family prepared for the inevitable. Thoughtful minds, still in the minority, unbiased by tradition, have to-day reverted to nature for help in physical distress, and the natural school of treatment has at last secured itself upon firm foundations. In applying the fast and other natural means of cure, the tendency of tradition-bound intellect is at first to regard these methods as inefficacious because of the absence of nostrum, pill, and plaster. Nothing seems in process of action. The silent and hidden ways of nature, needing no bolus, cannot yet efface impressions transmitted through centuries of inherited belief in remedies for the suppression of symptoms. Complete revolution of this idea cannot be hoped for until education on broader lines gives universal independence of thought.

While fasting has been known for ages