Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/63

Rh lung-filling enough to compensate the system for weeks of air-famine. One patient of my acquaintance had suffered such misery from suffocating fits that he felt as if the grip of a demon had been relaxed when his lungs began to work freer, and rather than forfeit his hard-won deliverance, hesitated to break his fast that day or the next. "I would rather drink my fill of air than of boarding-house coffee," he whispered, "and, as for hunger, I have really no time to notice the slight beginnings of that, I'm so busy feeling blest."

Fasters generally notice that the first two days of total abstinence are the worst, a sensation of general languor continues to increase, but by that time denutrition has begun to relieve all sorts of incidental affections, and the net result is a feeling of relief similar to that of a convalescent from a fever fit.

The effect of a fasting cure depends often upon its length, and upon no other point of an admittedly important problem the impressions of the general public are more contradictory and vague.

"You cannot expect a sick person to fast all day?" inquires Mrs. Hearsay, who would not