Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/56

50 trembling with excitement, sat down to nurse her baby. A few minutes after, the child began to twist as in a fever fit, and died in convulsions, though medical assistance had been instantly summoned.

It has also been noticed that the bite of tortured animals often becomes poisonous. In a last resort of self-defence the organism has evolved an avenging virus, but observes the precaution to cut off the appetite for food, in order to lessen the risk of the envenomed saliva entering the circulation and its blood-poison reaching the wrong address.

More or less every disorder of the organic function involves a risk of food turning into poison, and thus suggests a secondary significance of the fasting instinct.

In other words, food, eaten in the crisis of a serious disease, would not only hamper the work of cure, but might expose the system to an added peril.

Over-eating has become a vice of enormous prevalence, and for millions a protracted fast would prove a specific for the cure of ailments that defy medication. Diarrhœa, for instance, admits of no readier or more harmless remedy. It