THE DIARY OF A FAST

Otago Witness, Issue 3870, 15 May 1928, Page 77

THE DIARY OF A FAST

.Every animal when sick refuses to eat. It fasts until it is well. But man, the superior animal, allows reason to replace instinct with disastrous consesequences in treating his diseases. He tries short cuts to health and they are often the longest way round. It was easy previously to write of the theory of nature cure. I come now to a less personally agreeable task, the description of what fasting did for me a year ago; yet I feel it a duty to do so, for there must be millions of people with symptoms much worse than mine who might thereby be helped. My maladies were not complicated. I was under-exercised and over-fed, like 90 per cent, of the people I meet in London, and had had a good deal of illness during my service in India. When staying ' with a friend in Hertfordshire, I had heard of Mr. Lief’s health home at Champneys, Tring, and wrote an article on the subject. Some hundreds of letters reached me as the result of that article; the next step was an experinientum in corpore vili. I would not recommend anyone to fast, by the way, without expert advice. When I arrived at Champneys, I was thoroughly overhauled and told, “ You can begin your fast at once. Eat an orange every hour to-day, beginning at noon and nothing else. You can go up to London for your work whenever you want.” Below are some excerpts from my diary:— April 15, 8 p.m.—Have now eaten eight oranges, walked four miles, read two books, practised some mashie shots. A week of this will send me mad. Indeed I already feel a little light-headed. But hungry, No! April 16, 8 p.m.—Have walked four miles and driven 30 in .the car; pottering about in the open all day. Now I feel cold and head-aehey and restless. This is inevitable, I fancy. Had an hour’s massage this morning, followed by osteopathic and other treatment. The man in the next room to mine has fasted 41 days. He looks thin, but is of good colour, and walked 10 miles to-day. (I interrupt the narrative here to say that my next-door-neighbour fasted 63 days eventually to cure himself of long-standing digestive trouble. When I saw him three months later I could scarcely believe my eyes; the erstwhile skeleton had become a hale and hearty youth.) Another man has fasted 18 days and says he has felt hungry all the time. As for me, J don’t. I feel the cold greatly. I hear more keenly. I taste better—at least the oranges taste delicious—l was given only four of them to-day. I feel disinclined for concentrated thought. The full moon is gorgeous, but looks rainy. April 17, 8 p.m.—The days are starting to fly. I can’t think what I have done, except eat three oranges. I feel far stronger than yesterday. My rest last night was curious. I didn’t sleep for more than four hours, but I lay quiet for another six like a* contented animal—a dog on a hearthrug. A verse in to-day’s Observer describes it: Caught in a golden web of night and moon, Content I lie, a moth In a cocoon. April 18. —A glorious day. I lay out in the sun after my massage and electric heat bath. I feel well and strong and not in the least hungry. Tomorrow morning Pam driving up to London. April 19. —To-day I have done a full day’s work in London and feel as if I could easily go another month eating nothing but an occasional orange, but I am told that I shall stop fasting fairly soon and that I shall then be given a milk diet. I am told the most difficult patients to cure are those who have been drugged and inoculated for years. My system is fairly clean, except for that cursed quinine. There is no doubt that these three days of fasting have given me a feeling, no, more than a feeling, an inner certainty, that I am making a friend of my body, getting to know it for the first time "in my 40 years of life. I feel I am helping it instead of coercing it with medicine. April 20, 8 p.m.—Another full day’s work in London on an empty stomach. Felt rather faint during the afternoon while dictating. Fasting isn’t good for thinking; one needs gentle exercise in the open air and mild amusement, not the birth-pangs of journalism. Left at 6.7 for Berkhampstead. Saw the weekly cinema on my return and shall be in bed by 10.30 and glad to get there. April 21, 8 p.m.—Last night as soon as I lay down, my heart started palpitating as it does if I drink black coffee. I have been told the thing to do was to get up and sip cold water, and above all, not to be in the least alarmed. So little alarmed was I that I did nothing. I let it palpitate until I went to sleep, which was quite soon. I woke feeling very fresh and fit after eight hours’ dreamless sleep (longer than usual) and went out to the lawn, to join the exercise squad. Then to my morning orange. I forgot .to say that each of these days I have been having only three oranges a day and as much , water as I can conveniently drink. To my surprise I discovered that I had been, taken off the orange diet, and was ordered a glass of milk every two hours. At first I refused it and went for a stroll on the lawn to consider whether I should ask Mr. Lief to let me go on fast-

ihg. On reflection, I decided not to. Have fasted six full days already, and he knows what’s good for me with his huge experience of this sort of thing. Still, I feel a fortnight would have been more heroic. The theory is to take no food until one’s tongue. is absolutely clean in the morning, which .is Nature’s signal she has tidied up and is ready to begin normal life again. As I returned for the milk my mouth began to water. I seized the glass and hurried back to my room, where I could drink it quietly and alone. I think I should have bitten anyone who tried to take it away from me. I used to say that I disliked cold milk and that it didn’t agree with me. That was because I drank it with other things. Taken by itself milk is good and kind and clean and is said to have a wonderful faculty of eliminating poisons from the system. Is it fantastic to suppose that we absorb some, of the qualities of the animals we eat and that there is placidity in the products of the cow ? I wonder. The rest of the story is soon told. On April 22 I was drinking a glass of milk every hour. On the 23rd I increased the quantity and by the 24th I was taking no less than six quarts, or thirty tumblers of milk a day. I sipped it ceaselessly. The ecstatic feeling of the fast had now left me, and I seemed to be swelling visibly’, although as a matter of fact I only put on three pounds of weight I had lost during my’ orange diet. On April 26 I was at my office again, and caused some amusement by ordering a gallon and a-half of milk; a large railway milk-can stood on the floor, and I kept filling my glass as I worked. • From April 27 until May 5 my’ regimen was the same. On May 5, I was ordered: to stop milk at 1.30 p.m. and take nothing else till 6.30, when I was to have a vegetarian dinner. My teeth after having had nothing to do for nearly three weeks felt very strange chewing a salad and some apples. After a week of ordinary food (except meat) I left Champneys, feeling better than I had ever felt before in my life, in fact, as well as it is possible to feel. I may add that I have not had a day’s illness since, and that I have learned what seems to me to be a valuable lesson and one which should be widely known. Our average way of living is wrong. We eat too much; when our organs protest we try to whip them into submission with medicine; the result is disastrous. Better by far is to co-operate with the Power that resides in each of us, the rhythm that moves our blood as it sways the tides.—F. Yeates-Brown, in the Spectator.