Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/279

 the fast, the patient had tentatively followed a diet, and had noted decided improvement in general health, but no cessation of the attacks peculiar to the disease named. Medical attendance had been continuous for years, and no improvement had resulted ; rather the reverse, for the epileptic seizures had increased in number and in severity as time elapsed. At the beginning of the fast the attacks were recurring at intervals of two weeks, and the latest seizure had happened but three days before. For fifty-six days food was denied, and, from the moment of the inception of the fast to this present writing not a single convulsion has occurred, nor any semblance of an attack, while the general health of the patient has been better than at any time of her life.

The fast in this instance is to be noted in several minor ways, one of which is the fact that on each of the fifty-six days the patient walked a distance of at least two miles; another, that on the fortieth day of abstinence a large mass of dead intestinal worms passed from the bowels in the enema. Improvement was constant from the first, but, after the evacuation of these parasites, it was increased most rapidly, and natural hunger asserted it-