Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/353

 body ceases, and relief that simulates recuperation is manifested despite structural deficiency in the machine. These favorable symptoms continue until elimination of refuse is well under way and proves a task beyond the organs to accomplish when decline begins and progresses until nerve centers and brain can no longer receive adequate support, and the body dies. In Cases 3 and 4 the relief experienced after the first fast in each case was sufficient, with organs still partially able to function, to enable the system to maintain itself until accumulation again became too great to permit of balance. The defects in structure, too serious to have been corrected in the earlier treatment or in the interim, now reached the stage of disintegration or of atrophy, and the liberation of the life principle was no longer possible.

At the time of consultation the presence of serious organic defect cannot always be determined, but no doubt is permitted shortly after the fast begins, for within a week or ten days symptoms are displayed that fix conditions as they exist. The third week positively decides the outcome. In the two cases last described the signs of organic