Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/59

Rh on the intestinal organs; the colon contracts and the smaller intestines retain all but the most irritating ingesta.

A persistent hunger-cure will eliminate even an active virus by a gradual molecular catalysis and removal of the inorganic elements. No deepest-seated microbes have a living chance against that method of expurgation. With no digestive drudgery on hand, Nature employs the long-desired leisure for general house-cleaning purposes. The accumulations of superfluous tissue are overhauled and analyzed; the available component parts to be turned over to the department of nutrition, the refuse to be thoroughly and permanently removed. Germ diseases are swept out together with other rubbish. Influenza (La Grippe) can be nipped in the bud by a few days of total abstinence. Its microbes are preparing to feed on pulmonary tissues, but are bundled out before they have time to entrench their position. Catarrh ("colds") and incipient consumption can be cured in the same manner, and a U. S. army surgeon reports the case of a patient wrecked on the coast of southern Texas and reaching civilization only after a month of dreadful hardships, that reduced him to a living skeleton, but permanently