Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/347

 had suffered since childhood with acute digestive ailments, which were treated as is usual in orthodoxy. Malnutrition finally became so pronounced that the subject decided that medicine could suggest nothing that would alleviate the condition, and he entered a fast of his own volition, coming for consultation some days after its beginning. He died at the end of twenty-one days of abstinence from food. In the state in which this patient was at the first examination, the uselessness of attempting to cope with the organic symptoms that were plainly apparent was so certain that it was deemed best to inform him that recovery was out of the question. Food was administered at this point, but the stomach was unable to retain it, and repeated trials at feeding met with the same result. The fast was perforce continued, and death came, as stated, after twenty-one days.

The post mortem examination revealed an interior with heart, lungs, and digestive organs so extremely arrested in development that, had it not been for the adult body in which they were enclosed, they would have been taken for the organs of a child four years of age. If comment is needed upon