FASTING FOR HEALTH.

Bruce Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 41, 26 May 1910, Page 3

FASTING FOR HEALTH.

THE NO-FOOD CURE. A STRIKING RESULT. Perfect health'! This is the ideal for which the whole world is seeking, and while for so many millions the search has been in vain, Mr Upton Sinclair, tho famous American novelist, declares that lie lias at last discovered the secret. It may be summed up in one small phrase—To obtain perfect health you must fast. "For ten years I have been studying the ill-health of myself and of the men and women around me," writes Mr Sinclair in the 'Contemporary lieview,' "and I have found tho cause and the remedy. I have found not only good health, but perfect health. "1 havo found a new state of being, a new potentiality of life, a sense of lightness, and cleanness, and joyfulness such as I did not know could exist in the human body. 'I like to meet you on the street,' said a friend the other day. 'You walk as if it were such fun.' "

Mr Sinclair for years was a sufferer from headaches, colds, and dozens of other worrying complaints to which flosli is heir. Then he began a search for health. "I made about every mistake that a man could make," lie says, "and tried every remedy, old and new, that anybody had to offer me." So matters stood when he chanced to meet a lady "whose radiant complexion and extraordinary health were a matter of remark to everyone." For ten or fifteen years she had been a bedridden invalid. Among the complaints from which she had suffered were sciatica, acute rheumatism, chronic intestinal trouble, intense nervous weakness, melancholy, and chronic catarrh, causing deafness. A Woman's "Cure."

"This was the woman," says Mr Sinclair, who rode on horseback with mo up Mount Hamilton, in California, a distance of 28 miles, in one of the most terrific rainstorms I have ever witnessed! We had two untamed young horses, and only leather bits to control them with, and we were pounded and Hung about for six mortal hoirs which i shall never forget if 1 live to be a hundred. "And this woman when she took tho ride had not eaten a particle of food for four days previously 1 That was the clue to her escape; she had cured herself by a fast. She had 'abstained from food for eight days, and all her trouble had fallen from her."

These facts made an immense impression on Mr Sinclair. He devoted some time to the study of the question of fasting, reading up the subject wherever lie could find any information on it, and at last he begali the treatment on himself. He thus describes his impressions : "I was very hungry for the first day ■ —the unwholesome, ravening sort of hunger that all dyspeptics know. 1 had a little hunger the second morning, and thereafter, to my great astonishment, no hunger whatever —no more interest in food than if I had never known tho taste of it.

"Previous to tho fast I had a headache every day for two or three weeks. It lasted through the first day and then disappeared —never to return. I felt verv weak the second day, and a little dizzv on arising. 1 went out of doors and lav in the sun all day reading; and the saino for the third and fourth days —in intense physical lassitude, but with great clearness of mind. Lost Weight. "After the fifth day I felt stronger, and, walked a good deal, and I also began some writing. No phase of the experience surprised me more than the activity of my mind; I read and wrote more than 1 had dared to do for yea is before.

During the first four days I lost loll) in weight. Thereafter 1 lost only 2lh in eight days. I slept well throughout the last. About the iniddio of each dav I would feel weak, but a massage nnd a cold shower would refresh me. "Towards the end I began to find chat in walking about I would grow tired in the legs and as I did not whh to lie in bed 1 broke the last aftei the twelfth day with some orange-juice. "I took the juice of a dozen oranges during two days, and then went on the milk diet, as recommended by Macfadden. I took a glassful of warm milk every hour the first day, every tlneequarters of. an hour the next day, and iinally every halt-hour —or eight quarts a day. This is, of course., much move than can be assimilated, but the balance serves to flush the system out. 'The tissues' arle bathed in nutriment, and an extraordinary recuperation is experienced. In my own case I gained 4j 1 b in one day—the third—and gained a" total of 221b in 24 days." The general effect of the fast is summed up as follows:—"I had always been lean and dyspeptic-looking, with what my friends called a 'spiritual' expression. I now became as round as a butter ball, and so brown and rosy in the faco that I was a joke to all who saw me. "Those who liave made a study of the fast explain its miracles in the following way," continues Mr Sinclair: "Superlluous > nutriment is taken into the system and fcrihents, and the body is filled with a greater quantity of poisouoits matter than the organs of elim-

ination can handle. The result is the clogging of theso organs and of the blood-vessels —such is the meaning of headaches and rheumatism, arteriosclerosis, paralysis, apoplexy, Brighfc's disease, cirrhosis, etc. Human House-cleaning. "As soon as the fast begins, and th,> first hunger has been withstood, the secretions cease, and the whole assimilative system which takes so much of the energies of tho body goes out of business. "The body then begins a sort of house-cleaning. The tongue becomes coated, the breath and perspiration offensive, and this continues until the diseased matter has been entirely cast out, when the tonguo dears and hunger reasserts itself in unmistakable form. "There are two clangers to be feared in fasting. Tho finjjb is that of fear. Ido not say this in jest. No one should begin a fast until lie has read up on the subject, and convinced himself it is the right thing to do. If possible, he should have with him someone who has already had the experience. He should not have about him terrified aunts and cousins who tell him that he looks lkie a corpse, that his pulse is below forty, and that his heart may stop beating in the night. "The other danger is in breakng the fast. A person breaking a fast should regard himself as if ho were liable to seizures of violent insanity. I would dwell more on this topic were it not for my discovery of the 'milk diet.' When you drink a glass of milk every halfhour you have no chance to get_ really hungry, and so you glide as if by magic from a condition of extreme emaciation to one of blooming rotundity." . 1 , Mr Sinclair concludes his article by giving a number of true stories of people suffering from all kinds of diseases who have tried the fast cure with success, and he concludes, "I regard the fast as Nature's own remedy for all other diseases."