Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/319



CHAPTER XVIII

DEATH IN THE FAST

DEATH under medical treatment, in the majority of instances, results from disease that is functional, not organic. In the experience of the writer, death in the fast never has occurred when merely FUNCTIONAL disease was present, and never has resulted from abstinence from food, but was the inevitable consequence of obstruction by ORGANIC imperfection of the avenues through which the energy of the body is expressed. In this chapter medical evidence in cases of death from alleged starvation is compared with first-hand knowledge obtained in applying the fast for the cure of disease, and from post mortem examination of the bodies of patients who died while under treatment.

The immediate cause of the cessation of life is discovered in the fact that the brain becomes unable, through disease or shock, to draw upon its reserve store of sustenance