Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/54

 exclusion of the disturbance producing it. When a symptom of disease appears in aggravated form after years of intermittent occurrence, experience leads to the conclusion that organic change has taken place, and that disease is due no longer to functional derangement, but to actual organic defect. Here the partial or the interrupted fast is found desirable, not because the protracted fast would not accomplish the results with better prospect of successful outcome, but because the average patient regards the symptom as the cause, and fails to appreciate what its temporary aggravation in the protracted fast implies. Increase in severity of symptom may occur and does occur in periods of dieting also.

An organ mechanically defective, especially if it be eliminative in function, cannot be expected to work to full capacity. It may be able partially to perform its task, but, pushed beyond a point, it will assuredly fail to respond. In the fast all vital parts are engaged in a supreme process of purification of casting out waste matter. And, when it is seen, through aggravated symptoms, that one or other of these is incapable of full duty, the progress of elimination may be checked by