Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/82

 stomach. Ordinarily here, food stimulation dominates elimination, for a foul tongue is only an indication of the attempt of nature to cast out impurity from the system. Except as previously stated, a clean tongue is one of the unfailing signs of a complete and successful fast, and it may take months to accomplish.

Like the tongue, the breath becomes loaded with evidences of the internal condition, and its odor is most offensive for the greater part of the fasting period. This, too, is an indicator of the progress of the cleansing process which the body is undergoing, and the termination of the fast is heralded by its becoming odorless.

One of the products of fermentation within the body is known by the chemical name of acetone. There is no doubt that acetone, the result of the decomposition of organic matter, is present to greater or less degree in many cases undergoing the fast. It is not necessarily a product of the albumen of the food, but is more probably the result of the destruction of that part of the body albumen that has come from the breaking down of the tissue cells. In other words, the producing material has served its purpose as living cell growth. In cases treated medically its