Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/300

 sical tone seems rather to induce a habit of this kind, and the young man was no exception to the rule. For five months a regime of restricted diet and of fasting was pursued. The absolute fast intermittently included in this time occupied a total of sixty days. Symptoms gradually subsided, and the recurrence of the epileptic seizures became reduced to such an extent that, at the end of the second short fast, four weeks intervened between attacks ; and, when feeding was permanently resumed, no further seizures were apprehended. The weight of the patient was reduced before disease was eliminated to fifty-eight pounds, but, from the breaking of the fast, a gradual increase took place, and, at the end of dieting, he had regained his normal of 148 pounds.

A woman, 36 years of age, at the end of the third month of pregnancy developed severe bilious symptoms. Vomiting of dark green bile, and a condition verging upon coma demanded immediate action, so the fast was begun and copious enemas were administered twice daily. The latter brought from the bowels dark discharges, which continued with no apparent improvement until the seventeenth day of abstinence. On the fifteenth,