Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/58

52 of the drug; but the first return of functional energy will be used to eject the poison.

That new protest is silenced by the same argument; for awhile the exhaustion of the whole system is mistaken for a sign of submission, till a fresh revolt calls for a repetition of the coercive measures. In the meantime the organism suffers under a compound system of starvation; the humors are surcharged with virulent matter, the whole digestive apparatus withdraws its aid from the needs of the vital economy, and the flame of life feeds on the store of tissue; the patient wastes far more rapidly than an unpoisoned person would on an air-and-water diet.

It is not too much to say that the timely application of the fasting cure would have saved such patients nine-tenths of their time and trouble. Denutrition, or the temporary deprivation of food, exercises an astringent influence as part of its general conservative effect. The organism, stinted in its supply of vital resources, soon begins to curtail its current expenditure. The movements of the respiratory process decrease; the temperature of the body sinks; the secretion of bile and uric acid is diminished, and before long the retrenchment of the assimilative functions