Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/290

 ress under the fast. This patient abstained from food for twenty-four days, but preparation, the fast, and the period of diet after the latter was concluded, covered a time of full six months. When first under observation, examination of the sputum showed numbers of bacilli typical of the symptom; both lungs were affected; chills with fever occurred daily in the afternoon; in fact, the case displayed all the signs characteristic of the symptom named. After a liquid diet for several weeks, the fast was undertaken, was continued for twenty-four days, and no unfavorable conditions of any kind developed. From the beginning an excessive discharge of sputum occurred, but this gradually diminished until evidences of the return of hunger appeared, and, at the several periodical examinations made during the time of fasting, general decrease in the number of bacilli was observed. The enemas were constantly charged with bile and with old feces, and these products disappeared only during the last week of the fast. The chills and the fever vanished by the fourteenth day, and, when the sputum was examined on the twenty-second day of abstinence, there was no trace of micro-organisms. General health