Starving for Health’s Sake

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVI, Issue 23, 6 December 1911, Page 42

Starving for Health ’s Sake

A REPLY TO MY CRITICS.

BY

UPTON SINCLAIR.

IT is now some time since. 1 first published an account of my discovery of the means of attaining Perfect Health,' and I. am fljll getting letters about it at the rate bf a dozen a day. I could make quite k postage-stamp collection of these lettorsi I had oiie from Spain and one from Jndia and one from Argentina ail in the same day. It is a curious .commentary upon the alertness and open-mindedness of the inedieal fraternity that not one in two hundred of my letters comes from a doctor. Quite recently I. was talking with a physician—a successful and wellknown physician—who refused point blank to believe that a human being Could subsist five days without any sort of nutriment. There was no use talking about was a physiological imposgibpity; and even when I offered him the names and addresses of a hundred people who have done it,-he went .oil unconvinced. And yet that some physician professes a religion which through pearly two thousand years has recomprended "fasting and prayer’ as the Eietbod of the soul’s achievement, and e will go to church and listen reverbn'tly to accounts of a forty-day fast in the wilderness. tn' truth, the •■fastj» lj j cure’’ is no new discovery. The . have been teaching ft for centuries, aim the late Dr. Dewey tvas making a practice of it before I was !»♦»»• ilrVhen I yas a very small boy I recall that a Dr. Tanner took a forty day fast In a museum in New York; and T recollect well the conversation in our family; how Obvious it was that the thing must be A fake, and how foolish people were to be taken in by so absurd a fake. "He «[eta something to eat when nobody’s ooking,’’ we would say. I recollect reading a diverting accomrt of the fasting cure, in which the victim was portrayed as haunted by tlie><jhoets Of beefsteaks and turkeys. But the per-

Bon who is taking the fast knows noth- . ing of. these troubles, nor would there lx- much profit in fasting if he did. ’ ! The fast.is not an qrdeal. it is a rest; - ami 1 have known- people to lose interest in food completely as if jtfiey had • Dever tasted any in their lives. ' I one lady who, to the consternation of her friends and relatives, began a fast three days before Christmas ami continued it until three days after New if ear's Day. and on both the looked a turkey and served it lor Children. ( I myself took a twelve days' fast whil* living alone with my little hoy, and three times every day I went into the

pantry and set out a meal for him. I was not troubled at all by the sight of the food. . . ...

The longest fast of which I had heard was seventy-eight days, but that record has since been broken by a man named Richard Fausel. Mr. Fausel, who keeps a hotel somewhere in North Dakota, had presumably partaken too generously of the good cheer intended for his guests, for he found himself at the inconvenient weight of three hundred and eighty-fivo pounds. He went to a sanatorium in Battle Creek, and there fasted for forty days (if niy recollection serves me), and by dint of vigorous exercise meanwhile he got rid of one hundred and thirty pounds.) < ■■ :ims* :--.i i . I think I never saw a funnier sight than Mr. Fausel, at the conclusion of. this, fast; wearing ‘the’ same, pair of; trousers that he .had worn* of it. But the temptations of hotel-keeping are severe, he. ;went;ba.ek home ho, found himself? goingjupcin,-.weight again. This time he ’concluded-. to do .the job thoroughly,'’and went-to .Macfaddqn’3 place in Chicago and set out.upon a. fast of ninety'days. ---That, is; a new- recojrdj though I sometimes wonder if-it is,.quite fair, to call it "fasting” .when a n.i.an-is simply living upon an internal Iprder of fat-lu ’’ 1 It must be-a .curious experience, to. gq for .'three' montlis witliput Tasting food, It is’"no wonder-that the-stomach’ aiid’all the organs'of assimilation forget how tq do work.' ’ the one .danger in fasting‘treatment is' that when, ypu hreajc the . fast hunger is .apt -to ’coipe back with a rush??. while. ’ On the other,.hand, the stomach is weak, and the, utmost .caution is heeded. If yoti yield, to your cravings you’ may . fill ~ your whole system with toxins and undo all the good of .the treatment; but it you go slowly and restrict yourself to very small quantities of the most easily assimilated foods, then in an incredibly short time the body will have regained its strength. My experience has taught mo that it is well not to be too proud at such a time,

but to get someone to help yon. Ami it -ought to be someone who has fasted, for a'.persoh at the ciid of a fast is an agitating sight to his neighbours, and their one impulse is to’get a “square meal’’ into him its quickly as possible. Quite recently there was one of my converts camping on my trail in New York City, and lie called at the home of a relative of niine, an elderly lady, who does not take much stock in my eccentricities. T shall not Soon forget her description of his appearance: "J thought he was going to die right there before my eyes!” she said. And no wonder, since the poor fellow had climbed four flights of stairs to thq apartment. “I know you’ll get into

troubfr’,” added my relative, “if you don’t stop advising people to do such things.” I was interested enough In the question of fasting to <meud_aome time at a sanatorium where they make speciality of it. One can see a sieker looking Solleetiou of people in such a place than anywhere else in the world, I fancy. In the first place, people do not take the fasting eur.e until they are looking des-

penate, and when they Jrayei got into the fast they took' iiiore desperate. At the .later stages they- sometimes take to wheeljchairs, - and.. at -all .times they mo ve with-deliberation,-and their faces-wear serious expressions. They -gather- in little groups and discuss-their symptoms; there is nothing so interesting in the world when you are fasting as to talk .symptoms with a lot of . people who are doing the same thing. There are some who are several days ahead of you and who make you ashamed of your doubts, and others, who are behind you and to whom you have to appear as an old campaigner. So you develop an esprit de corps, as it were —though that sounds as if I were trying to make a pun. Alt this may not seem very alluring, hut it is far better than a lifetime of illness, such as many of these people have known before. I never knew that there was such terrible suffering in the world until I heard "some of their stories; they would indeed- be depressing company wore it not for tiie fact that now they are getting well. The reader may answer sarcastically that they think they are. But every Christian Scientist knows that this comes to the same thing, and I have talked with not less than a hundred people who have fasted for three days or more and out of these there were but two or three who did not report themselves as greatly benefited. So lam accustomed to say that I would rather spend-my time in a fasting sanatorium than in an ordinary “swell” hotel. The people in the former are making themselves well, and know it; -while the people in the latter are making themselves ill, and don’t know it. • As to the possibility or probability of death during a fast, I havc one or two points to note: First, a good many sick people are dying all the time. It would be an argument for fasting if it saved any of then!. It is no argument against fasting that it fails to save them all. No one would think of bringing it up against his surgeon or his family physician that he occasionally lost a patient. Secondly, people might die very frequently without that being an argument against the cure. If. might simply be a consequence of the desperately ill class of people who Avcre trying it. A doctor who had a new method of healing, and was permitted to use it only upon those whom iiU other doctors had given up, Would bo considered successful if lie effected even an occasional cure. Thirdly, it may be .set down as absolutely certain that no one ever died of

• starvation while fasting. The eseentM feature of tlie fast is that after the firs] two or three days all hunger eeaaes, a r .j that anyone could die of lack ot without feeling a desire for fond is ajj, surd on the face of it. Nature simpls does not work that way. It reining me of a young lady who once told u*4 that she would not go to sleep with 3 mouse in the rpom because she imagined

the mouse tnigC.L nibble off her ear witln out waking her! As to, the possibility that you niiglij starve during those first days while yeti are hungry, the answer is simply that you don't. It is perfectly true that men have died of starvation in three oE four days;-but the starvation existed in their minds —it vyas fright that killed them. That they did not truly stand is proven by letters from people whd have fasted over that time and who are alive to tell of it. There are conditions in the huniaii body which lead to death inevitably, and some of these conditions are. beyond the power of the fast to remedy. When a person so afflicted sets out to fast, an., dies in spite of the fast, the papers of course declare that he died because of the fast. As an example of the part that menial disturbances may play’ in the fast I will cite the case of a woman friend who started out to fast for a complication of chronic ailments. She was rather stout and did not mind it at all—was going cheerfully about her daily' tasks: but lieE husband‘heard about it, and came home to tell her what a fool she was making of herself, and in a few’ hours she was in a state of collapse. No doubt, if theie Jiadl been a physician in the neighbourhood, there would have been another tale of a “victim of a shallow, and. miserppulous sensationalist.(l cpmte tio precious language of a meltropolnaii newspaper.) I have thought over the cascsof fadufj of the fast, where I have been able to inquire into all the circumstances, and * think I Can make the statement that not know a case, which might not be attributed either to the influence of nervous excitement or to unwise breaking of the fast. In the last batch of leitv.S was one with a printed account olio disastrous results of a three weeks la J taken by a woman. It is an examp e about all the blunders that I can thnm of. . She describes herself as f “a responsible ' office position, - w taxed her strength to the uitmo-<. ant she tried to do this work.all the t , she was fasting. She would get up ai, go 'io work when she was ‘ scaicmy l to drag one foot after anothei. Ld about the nineteenth day her molhtf' rived, amt then I quote: "She dropped at the sight of me. fm I han hot given a hint as to my eonJihon, W despite my protests she sent 10l doctor at once. My I d*dn tJie tell me what was what! Mother:**#-» Was so torn with sorrow and pity »hf hadn't ths heart to reproach «>ft

(nv three weeks’ org.v of fasting. She thought,! had paid dearly forjny folly.” }'don’t* think it necessary to say any-thing-more, except that I feel sorry for {he victim, and that f am glad to know this happened two years ago, so that I 'am hot to blame for the results. The reader will observe "that I discuss Illis fasting question from a materialistic viewpoint- I am telling wfiat it. does to the body; 'but besides this, of course, fasting is'a'religious Exercise. I heard the other*day from a rfari who web txt'ing a fdrty-day fast as a means of mcreas’mg'.fiis ‘-•spiritual power.” I am not saving tlihVfot you to smile athe has excellent'' authority - for ./the : procedure. The point with me is that, find life so full of interest just now that I don’t have 'much’ time about, .niy “soul-.” F-gel- so; much pleasure out of a haudful’of raisins, or a fold bath,-or.a fame of tennis 'that 1 fea” it is,interfering wilFi’ my spiritual development, I have, howf-ver, a very 1 desir if riend who goes in for the things of the soul, and She tells 4>e tlipt. when you are fasting the lpgh< t faculties aiv‘ _in a sensitive condition, do many, interesting’, things with .' your subliminal self. For instance, site had.always considered herself a glutton, and so during, an eight-day- fast, just, before going t - sleep and just after awakening;., shit’ would lie in a sort of. trance and impress upon diet' min’d "'the" idea . oLrewt rnint’. iff: eating. The result, she declared, has befin • that she has*never since (hen had an impulse to over-eat. There are many such curious things about which you may read in t lie books of the Yogis and the theosophists, who were fasting in previous incarnations when you and I were swinging about in the tree-tops by our tails.. But I ought to report upon one fasting experiment which resulted disastrously for me. In “Starving for Health’s Sake” I told how 1 had been aide to write’ the greater part of a play -while fasting. Shortly afterwards I plunged into the writing of a new novel, and as usual I got so much interested in it that I wasn’t hungry. I said that ,1 would fast and save the eating time and the digesting time as well. So 1 would sit and work for sixteen hours or ihore a day. sometimes for six hours at a stretch without moving. After iwo or three days of this I would be hungry, and would eat something; but, being too much excited to digest it, I would •say, “Hang eating, anyhow!" and go on for another period of work. T kept that up for some six weeks, and I turned out an appalling lot of manuscript; but I found that I had taken off twenty-five pounds of flesh, and had got to such a point that 1 could not digest a little warm milk. I cite this in order that the reader may understand just why I take a gross and material view of fasting. My advice is to lie round in the sun and read story-books and take care of your body, and leave the soul exercises and the nervous efforts until the fast is over. But all the same I know that there will he great poetry written some day when bur poets have got on to the fasting trick, and when our poets care enough about their work to be willing to feed it with their own flesh.

The great thing about the fast is that it sets you a new standard of health. You have been accustomed to worrying along somehow; but now you discuss your own possibilities, and thereafter you are not content until you have found some way to keep that virginal state of stomach which one possesses for a month or two after a successful fast. It must mean, of course, many changes in your life, if you really wish to keep it. It means the giving up of tobacco and alcohol, and a too sedentary life, and steamheated rooms, and, above all else, it means giving up self-indulgent eating.