Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/92

 latter is, of course, responsible for the larger number of symptoms that appear here and hereafter in the fast. After the first indications vanish, in cases of purely functional disease, the patient discovers that his strength has apparently increased, and that he is, in most instances, able to attend without difficulty to ordinary labor and to approach it with brain marvelously clear. In other words, with the loss of stimulation due to food poison, disease decreases, and real strength is manifest. The patient is not less weak nor more strong than at any time during his previous diseased existence when living under stimulation. The fast has but uncovered the true state of affairs, and it has demonstrated that a sick man is not of necessity a weak man, for weakness is absence of strength due to systemic poison alone, and, in the early stages of illness, strength is only dormant. This seemingly paradoxical statement is explained by the fact that in disease all avenues for the passage of energy and vitality are so clogged by cumulative waste products as to be rendered almost useless for the expression of these forces.

The subject of food stimulation has not received the attention that it deserves in any