FOOTNOTE:[1]The first two of these, Edmond Kelly and Ben Hanford, have since died.
[1]The first two of these, Edmond Kelly and Ben Hanford, have since died.
[1]The first two of these, Edmond Kelly and Ben Hanford, have since died.
In relation to the article, "Perfect Health," I received some six or eight hundred letters from people who either had fasted, or desired to fast and sought for further information. The letters showed a general uniformity which made clear to me that I had not been sufficiently explicit upon several important points.
The question most commonly asked was how long should one fast, and how one should judge of the time to stop. I personally have never taken a "complete fast," and so I hesitate in recommending this to any one. I have fasted twelve days on two occasions. In both cases I broke my fast because I found myself feeling weak and I wanted to be about a good deal. In neither case was I hungry, although hunger quickly returned. I was told by Bernarr Macfadden, and by some of his physicians, that they got their best results from fasts of this length. I would not advise a longer fast for any of the commoner ailments, such as stomach and intestinal trouble, headaches, constipation, colds and sore throat. Longer fasts,it seems to me, are for those who have really desperate ailments, such deeply-rooted chronic diseases as Bright's disease, cirrhosis of the liver, rheumatism and cancer.
Of course if a person has started on a fast and it is giving him no trouble, there is no reason why it should not be continued; but I do not in the least believe in a man's setting before himself the goal of a forty or fifty days' fast and making a "stunt" out of it. I do not think of the fast as a thing to be played with in that way. I do not believe in fasting for the fun of it, or out of curiosity. I do not advise people to fast who have nothing the matter with them, and I do not advise the fast as a periodical or habitual thing. A man who has to fast every now and then is like a person who should spend his time in sweeping rain water out of his house, instead of taking the trouble to repair his roof. If you have to fast every now and then, it is because the habits of your life are wrong, more especially because you are eating unwholesome foods. There were several people who wrote me asking about a fast, to whom my reply was that they should simply adopt a rational diet; that I believed their troubles would all disappear without the need of a fast.
Several people asked me if it would not be betterfor them to eat very lightly instead of fasting, or to content themselves with fasts of two or three days at frequent intervals. My reply to that is that I find it very much harder to do that, because all the trouble in the fast occurs during the first two or three days. It is during those days that you are hungry, and if you begin to eat just when your hunger is ceasing, you have wasted all your efforts. In the same way, perhaps, it might be a good thing to eat very lightly of fruit, instead of taking an absolute fast—the only trouble is that I cannot do it. Again and again I have tried, but always with the same result: the light meals are just enough to keep me ravenously hungry, and inevitably I find myself eating more and more. And it does me no good to call myself names about this, I just do it, and keep on doing it; I have finally made up my mind that it is a fact of my nature. I used to try these "fruit fasts" under Dr. Kellogg's advice. I could live on nothing but fruit for several days, but I would get so weak that I could not stand up—far weaker than I have ever become on an out-and-out fast.
One should drink all the water he possibly can while fasting, only not taking too much at a time. I take a glass full every hour, at least; sometimes every half hour. It is a good plan to drink a greatdeal of water at the outset, whenever meal time comes around, and one thinks of the other folks beginning to eat. I drink the water cold, because it is less trouble, but if there is any hot water about, I prefer that. Hot water between meals is an immensely valuable suggestion which I owe to Dr. Salisbury.
One should take a bath every day while fasting. I prefer a warm bath followed by a cold shower. Also one should take a small enema. I find a pint of cool water sufficient. I received several letters from people who were greatly disturbed because of constipation during the fast. People apparently do not realize that while fasting there is very little to be eliminated from the body. (Of course, there are cases, especially of people who have suffered from long continued intestinal trouble, in which even after three or four weeks the enema continues to bring away quantities of dried and impacted fæces.)
Many of the questions asked dealt with the manner of breaking the fast; I suppose because I had been particular to warn my readers that this was the one danger point in the proceeding. I told of my experience with the milk diet, and I received many inquiries about this. My answer was to refer the writers to Bernarr Macfadden's pamphlet on the milk diet, as I took this diet underhis direction and have nothing to add to his instructions. I might say, however, that I was never able to take the milk diet for any length of time but once, and that after my first twelve-day fast. After my second fast it seemed to go wrong with me, and I think the reason was that I did not begin it until a week after breaking the fast, having got along on orange juice and figs in the meantime. Also I tried on many occasions to take the milk diet after a short fast of three or four days, and always the milk has disagreed with me and poisoned me. I take this to mean that, in my own case, at any rate, so much milk can only be absorbed when the tissues are greatly reduced; and I have known others who have had the same experience.
While I was down in Alabama, I took a twelve-day fast, and at the end I was tempted by a delicious large Japanese persimmon, which had been eyeing me from the pantry shelf during the whole twelve days. I ate that persimmon—and I mention that it was thoroughly ripe; in spite of which fact it doubled me up with the most alarming cramp—and in consequence I do not recommend persimmons for fasters. I know a friend who had a similar experience from the juice of one orange; but he was a man with whom acid fruit has always disagreed. I know another man who broke hisfast on a Hamburg steak; and this also is not to be recommended.
It has been my experience that immediately after a fast the stomach is very weak, and can easily be upset; also the peristaltic muscles are practically without power. It is, therefore, important to choose foods which are readily digested, and also to continue to take the enema daily until the muscles have been sufficiently built up to make a natural movement possible. The thing to do is to take orange juice or grape juice in small quantities for two or three days, and then go gradually upon the milk diet, beginning with half a glass of warm milk at a time. If the milk does not agree with you, you may begin carefully to add baked potatoes and rice and gruels and broths, if you must; but don't forget the enema.
People ask me in what diseases I recommend fasting. I recommend it for all diseases of which I have ever heard, with the exception of one in which I have heard of bad results—tuberculosis. Dr. Hazzard, in her book, reports a case of the cure of this disease, but Mr. Macfadden tells me that he has known of several cases of people who have lost their weight and have not regained it. There is one cure quoted in the appendix to this volume.
The diseases for which fasting is mostobviously to be recommended are all those of the stomach and intestines, which any one can see are directly caused by the presence of fermenting and putrefying food in the system. Next come all those complaints which are caused by the poisons derived from these foods in the blood and the eliminative organs: such are headaches and rheumatism, liver and kidney troubles, and of course all skin diseases. Finally, there are the fevers and infectious diseases, which are caused by the invasion of the organism by foreign bacteria, which are enabled to secure a lodgment because of the weakened and impure condition of the blood-stream. Such are the "colds" and fevers. In these latter cases nature tries to save us, for there is immediately experienced a disinclination on the part of the sick person to take any sort of food; and there is no telling how many people have been hurried out of life in a few days or hours, because ignorant relatives, nurses and physicians have gathered at their bedside and implored them to eat. I can look back upon a time in my own experience when my wife was in the hospital with a slow fever; they would bring her up three square meals a day, consisting of lamb chops, poached eggs on toast, cooked vegetables, preserves and desserts; and the physician would stand by her bedside and say, in sepulchral tones, "If you do not eat, you will die!"
My friend, Mr. Arthur Brisbane, wrote me a gravely disapproving letter when he read that I was fasting. I had a long correspondence with him, at the end of which he acknowledged that there "might be something in it." "Even dogs fast when they are ill," he wrote; and I replied, "I look forward to the time when human beings may be as wise as dogs." I read the other day an amusing story of a man who made himself a reputation for curing the diseases of the pampered pets of our rich society ladies. They would bring him their overfed dogs, and he would shut them up in an old brick-kiln, with a tub of water, and leave them there to howl until they were hoarse. In addition to the water he would put in each cell a hunk of stale bread, a piece of bacon rind, and an old boot. He would go back at the end of a few days, and if the bread was eaten he would write to the fond owner that the dog's recovery was assured. He would go back in a few more days, and if the bacon rind was eaten would write that the dog was nearly well. And at the end of another week, he would go back, and if the old boot was eaten he would write to the owner that the dog was now completely restored to health.
Several people wrote me who were in the last stages of some desperate disease. Of coursethey had always been consulting with physicians, and the physicians had told them that my article was "pure nonsense"; and they would write me that they would like to try to fast, but that they were "too weak and too far gone to stand it." There is no greater delusion than that a person needs strength to fast. The weaker you are from disease, the more certain it is that you need to fast, the more certain it is that your body has not strength enough to digest the food you are taking into it. If you fast under those circumstances, you will grow not weaker, but stronger. In fact, my experience seems to indicate that the people who have the least trouble on the fast are the people who are most in need of it. The system which has been exhausted by the efforts to digest the foods that are piled into it, simply lies down with a sigh of relief and goes to sleep.
The fast is Nature's remedy for all diseases, and there are few exceptions to the rule. When you feel sick, fast. Do not wait until the next day, when you will feel stronger, nor till the next week, when you are going away into the country, but stop eating at once. Many of the people who wrote to me were victims of our system of wage slavery, who wrote me that they were ill, but could not get even a few days' release in which to fast. They wanted to know if they couldfast and at the same time continue their work. Many can do this, especially if the work is of a clerical or routine sort. On my first fast I could not have done any work, because I was too weak. But on my second fast I could have done anything except very severe physical labor. I have one friend who fasted eight days for the first time, and who did all her own housework and put up several gallons of preserves on the last day. I have received letters from a couple of women who have fasted ten or twelve days, and have done all their own work. I know of one case of a young girl who fasted thirty-three days and worked all the time at a sanatorium, and on the twenty-fourth day she walked twenty miles.
A most discouraging circumstance to me was the attitude of physicians, as revealed in the correspondence that came to me. Mostly I learned of this attitude from the letters of patients who quoted their physicians to me. From the physicians themselves I heard practically nothing. We have some one hundred and forty thousand regularly graduated "medical men" in this country, and they are all of them presumably anxious to cure disease. It would seem that an experiencesuch as mine, narrated over my own signature, and backed by references to other cases, would have awakened the interest of a good many of these professional men.
Out of the six or eight hundred letters that I have received, just two, so far as I can remember, were from physicians; and out of the hundreds of newspaper clippings which I received, not a single one was from any sort of medical journal. There was one physician, in an out-of-the-way town in Arkansas, who was really interested, and who asked me to let him print several thousand copies of the article in the form of a pamphlet, to be distributed among his patients. One single mind, among all the hundred and forty thousand, open to a new truth!
In theEnglish Reviewfor November, 1910, I find an article entitled "Bone-setting and the Profession, by Fairplay." It is a narrative of the experience of the writer and some of his friends with Osteopathy, being a defence of that method of treatment in cases of bruises and sprains. I quote the following paragraph:
"Harvey's statement about the circulation of the blood was met with scorn by the doctors, who called him in derision the 'Circulator.' Simpson's discovery of the use of chloroform was scouted by them as incredible, some even declared it to be'impious,' and a 'defiance of the will of God.' Elliotson's use of the stethoscope called forth the rage of the protected society as a body: theLancetdescribed him as a 'pariah of the profession.' The ignorant scorn and slander broke his heart; but to-day the stethoscope is in constant use, and is recognized as one of the most important aids to a correct diagnosis."
It might also be of interest to quote the note which one finds appended to this remarkable article: "The Editor was amused to find that theLancetrefused the advertisement of the above article, thereby confirming what the writer alleges against the ring."
Of course I realize what a difficult matter it is for a medical man to face these facts about the fast. Sometimes it seems to me that we have no right to expect their help at all, and that we never will receive it. For we are asking them to destroy themselves, economically speaking. We do not expect aid from eminent corporation lawyers when we set out to overthrow the rule of privilege in our country; and it must be equally difficult for a hard-worked and not very highly paid physician to contemplate the triumph of an idea, which would leave no place for him in civilization. In an article contributed toPhysical Culturemagazine for January, 1910, I stated that in the course ofmy search for health I had paid to physicians, surgeons, druggists and sanatoriums not less than fifteen thousand dollars in the last six or eight years. In the last year, since I have learned about the fast, I have paid nothing at all; and the same thing is true, perhaps on a smaller scale, of every one who discovers the fasting cure. As one man, who wrote me a letter of enthusiastic gratitude, expresses it: "I have spent over five hundred dollars in the last ten years trying to get well on medicines. It cost me only thirty cents to use your method, and for that thirty cents I obtained relief a million-fold more beneficial than from five hundred dollars' worth of medicine."
Not so very long ago I saw a report in some metropolitan newspaper to the effect that the medical profession was greatly alarmed over the decrease in its revenues—it being estimated that the income of the average physician to-day was less than half of what it had been ten years ago. All this, I think, is directly attributable to the spread of knowledge concerning natural methods in the treatment of disease—and, more important yet, of natural methods in the preservation of health. Only the other day I was talking with a friend who was a teacher in a small college in the Middle West. There was a physician regularly employed to attend the girl-students, but severalof the teachers became interested in the fasting cure, and whenever they learned of any illness they would go to the girl and start her on a fast; as a result, the physician lost considerably more than half his practice. In the same way, I myself recently started several people in a small town to fasting, and every time I saw the local physician driving by in his carriage I marvelled at the courtesy and cordiality he displayed; for before I had left that place I had cured half a dozen of his permanent customers—people to whom he had been dispensing pills and powders every few weeks for a dozen years.
At the time of writing these words, it has been just six months since I published my first paper upon fasting, and I am still getting letters about it at the rate of half a dozen a day. The tent which I inhabit is rapidly becoming uninhabitable because of pasteboard boxes full of "fasting-letters"; and the store-keeper who is so good as to receive my telegrams over the 'phone, is growing quite expert at taking down the symptoms of adventurers who get started and want to know how to stop. I could make quite a postage-stamp collection from these letters—I had one from Spain and one from India and one from Argentina all in the same day. I am sure I might have kept a sanatorium for those people who have begged me to let them come and live near me while they were taking a fast. One woman writes to ask me to name my own price to take charge of a case of elephantiasis which has been given up by all the experts in Europe!
Also, I could fill an article with the "humors" of these letters. One woman writes a long and anxious inquiry as to whether it is permissible todrink anywaterwhile fasting; and then follows this up with a special delivery letter to say that she hopes I will not think she is crazy—she had read the article again and noted the injunction to drink as much water as she can! And then comes a letter from a man who wants to know if I really mean it all; do I truly expect him to eat nothing whatever—or would I call it fasting if he ate just nuts and fruit now and then? Quite recently I was talking with a physician—a successful and well-known physician—who refused point-blank to believe that a human being could live for more than four or five days without any sort of nutriment. There was no use talking about it—it was a physiological impossibility; and even when I offered him the names and addresses of a hundred people who had done it, he went off unconvinced. And yet that same physician professes a religion which through nearly two thousand years has recommended "fasting and prayer" as the method of the soul's achievement; and he will go to church and listen reverently to accounts of a forty-day fast in the wilderness! And he lives in a country in which there are sanatoriums where hundreds of people are fasting all the time, and where twenty or thirty-day fasts occasion no more remark than a good golf-score at a summer hotel!
If you have any doubt that such fasts are taken, you can very quickly convince yourself. Less than a year ago I saw a man completing a fifty-day fast; I talked with him day by day, and I knew absolutely that it was all in good faith. The symptoms of fasting are as distinct and unmistakable as are, for instance, those of smallpox; you could no more persuade an experienced person that you are fasting when you are not fasting, than you could persuade a bacteriologist that you had sleeping-sickness when you were merely lazy.
When I was a very small boy, I recall that a Dr. Tanner took a forty-day fast in a museum in New York; and I 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 gets something to eat when nobody's looking," we would say.
But then what about his weight? Here is a man, going along day by day, year in and year out, weighing in the neighborhood of a hundred and fifty pounds; and now, all of a sudden, he begins to lose a pound a day, as regularly as the sun rises. How does he do it?
"Well," we would say, "he must work hard and get rid of it."
But how can a man do that, when he had no longer enough muscular tissue left to support his weight? And when his pulse is only thirty-five beats to the minute?
Then, says the reader, perhaps he goes to a Turkish bath, and sweats it off.
But ask any jockey how he'd like to take a Turkish bath every day for fifty days! And how he would stand it when his arms and thighs were so reduced that you could meet your thumb and forefinger around them, and could plainly trace the bones and the blood vessels! And then again, there is the tongue. If you take a fast and really need the fast, you will find your tongue so coated that you can scrape it with a knife-blade. And if you break your fast, your tongue will clear in twenty-four hours; nothing in the world will coat it again but several days more of fasting. How would you propose to get around that difficulty?
Such ideas have to do with fasting as seen by the outsider. I recollect reading a diverting account of the fasting cure, in which the victim was portrayed as haunted by the ghost of beefsteaks and turkeys. But the person who is taking the fast knows nothing of these troubles, nor would there be much profit in fasting if he did. The fast is not an ordeal, it is a rest; and I haveknown people to lose interest in food as completely as if they had never tasted any in their lives. I know one lady who, to the consternation of her friends and relatives, began a fast three days before Christmas and continued it until three days after New Year's; and on both the holidays she cooked a turkey and served it for her children. On another occasion, during a week's fast, she "put up" several gallons of preserves; the only inconvenience being that she had to call in a neighbor to taste them and see if they were done. I myself took a twelve-day fast while living alone with my little boy, 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 when my article was written 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-five pounds. He went to a sanatorium in Battle Creek and there fasted for forty days (if my recollection serves me), and by dint of vigorous exercise meanwhile, he got rid of onehundred and thirty pounds. 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 at the beginning of it. But the temptations of hotel-keeping are severe, and when he went back home, he found himself going up in weight again. This time he concluded to do the job thoroughly, and went to Macfadden's place in Chicago, and set out upon a fast of ninety days. That is a new record—though I sometimes wonder if it is quite fair to call it "fasting" when a man is simply living upon an internal larder of fat.
It must be a curious experience to go for three months without tasting food. It is no wonder that the stomach and all the organs of assimilation forget how to do their work. The one danger in the fasting treatment is that when you break the fast, hunger is apt to come back with a rush, while, on the other hand, the stomach is weak, and the utmost caution is needed. If you yield to your cravings, you may fill your whole system with toxins, and undo all the good of the treatment; but if 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 me that it is well not to be too proud at such a time, but to get some one to help you. And it ought to be some one who has fasted, for a person at the end of a fast is an agitating sight to his neighbors, and their one impulse is to get a "square meal" into him as quickly as possible. Quite recently there was one of my converts camping on my trail in New York City, and he called at the home of a relative of mine, an elderly lady, who does not take much stock in my eccentricities. I shall not soon forget her description of his appearance—"I 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 the apartment. "I know you'll get into trouble," added my relative, "if you don't stop advising people to do such things!"
I was interested enough in the question of fasting to spend some time at a sanatorium where they make a specialty of it. One can see a sicker looking collection of humans in such a place than anywhere else in the world, I fancy. In the first place, people do not take the fasting cure until they are looking desperate; and when they have got into the fast they look more desperate. At the later stages they sometimes take to wheelchairs; and at all times they move withdeliberation, 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 anesprit de corps, as it were—though that sounds as if I were trying to make a pun.
All this may not seem very alluring; but it is far better than a life-time 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, were it not for the fact that now they are getting well. The reader may answer sarcastically that theythinkthey 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 I am 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.
Recently I published a request that those who had tried the fast as the result of my advocacy would write to advise me of the results. I stated that I desired to hear unfavorable results as well as favorable; that I wanted to get at the facts, and would tabulate the results exactly as they came. The questions asked were as follows:
1. How many times have you fasted?2. How many days on each occasion?3. From what complaints did you suffer?4. Were these complaints ever diagnosed by regular physician? If so, give the names and addresses of these physicians.5. Do you consider that you were definitely benefited by the fasts? If so, in what way?6. For how long did the benefit continue?7. Do you consider that you were completely cured?8. Do you consider that you were definitely harmed? If so, in what way?9. Have you ever been examined by any regular physician since the cure? If so, give name and address.10. Are you willing that your name and address should be quoted for the benefit of others?
1. How many times have you fasted?
2. How many days on each occasion?
3. From what complaints did you suffer?
4. Were these complaints ever diagnosed by regular physician? If so, give the names and addresses of these physicians.
5. Do you consider that you were definitely benefited by the fasts? If so, in what way?
6. For how long did the benefit continue?
7. Do you consider that you were completely cured?
8. Do you consider that you were definitely harmed? If so, in what way?
9. Have you ever been examined by any regular physician since the cure? If so, give name and address.
10. Are you willing that your name and address should be quoted for the benefit of others?
The total number of fasts taken was 277, and the average number of days was 6. There were 90 of five days or over, 51 of ten days or over, and 6 of 30 days or over. Out of the 109 persons who wrote to me, 100 reported benefit, and 17 no benefit. Of these 17 about half give wrong breaking of the fast as the reason for the failure. In cases where the cure had not proved permanent, about half mentioned that the recurrence of the trouble was caused by wrong eating, and about half of the rest made this quite evident by what they said. Also it is to be noted that in the cases of the 17 who got no benefit, nearly all were fasts of only three or four days.
Following is the complete list of diseases benefited—45 of the cases having been diagnosed by physicians: indigestion (usually associated with nervousness), 27; rheumatism, 5; colds, 8; tuberculosis, 4; constipation, 14; poor circulation, 3; headaches, 5; anæmia, 3; scrofula, 1; bronchial trouble, 5; syphilis, 1; liver trouble, 5; general debility, 5; chills and fever, 1; blood poisoning, 1; ulcerated leg, 1; neurasthenia, 6; locomotor ataxia, 1; sciatica, 1; asthma, 2; excess of uric acid, 1; epilepsy, 1; pleurisy, 1;impaction of bowels, 1; eczema, 2; catarrh, 6; appendicitis, 3; valvular disease of heart, 1; insomnia, 1; gas poisoning, 1; grippe, 1; cancer, 1.
There follows a brief summary of some of the most interesting cases. A number of longer letters will be found in the Appendix.
Mrs. Lulu Wallace Smith, 324 W. White Oak Ave., Monrovia, Cal. Age 28. Fasted 30 days for appendicitis and peritonitis, diagnosed by four physicians. "Yes, indeed, I have definitely been benefited by fasting. My stomach is not distressed after meals, I have regular evacuations of the intestines, which I had not had since I was seventeen. I feel perfectly healthy and look the same."
William N——. Syphilis, with advanced ulcers in throat. Physicians declared the case hopeless. Complete disappearance of symptoms after four day's fast, but they gradually reappeared, and longer fast intended.
Dora Jordan, Connersville, Md. Indigestion, extreme nervousness, neuralgia in its worst form. Fasted thirty days; did most of cooking for a family of five, was at no time tempted to eat. "I am no longer troubled with the old diseases, and weigh more than ever before. After my fast I felt as happy and care free as a little child."
C. L. Clark, Greenville, Mich. Nervous, poor digestion. Fasted nine days. "I have beenwonderfully benefited, and am a rabid convert. Alas, for the poor mortal who shows the faintest spark of interest in my fast—I hand him the whole works, lock, stock and barrel! I feel a new power and new incentive in life. Whenever I see a sick person, I feel like telling him that for all he knows to the contrary, good health has been and may be only eight or ten days away and waiting for years for him to claim it."
T. S. Jacks, Muskegon, Mich. Twenty days, followed by shorter fasts, for stomach trouble, diagnosed by Dr. M—— as cancer. "He advised me to be operated on. Since my fast, three years ago, I have had no trouble with my stomach. I am entirely cured, and am enjoying fine health."
Gordon G. Ives, 147 Forsythe Bldg., Fresno, Cal. "Have fasted a good many times since 1899, to cure catarrh of stomach, constipation, deafness of four months' standing, neuralgia, etc. Duration, from one to sixteen days. Never failed in accomplishing a cure. Benefit continued until I had over-eaten for a long time. Complaints were never diagnosed by regular physicians, as I got on to them in 1894. Use my name if it will help the truth."
Mrs. Maria L. Scott, Boring, Ariz. Reports case of husband, who fasted seven days for constipation and deafness; had been obliged to take enema daily for several months. Complete cure.
Mrs. A. Wears, De Funiak Springs, Fla. "Age forty-two, subject to severe colds and sorethroat all my life, chronic catarrh of head and throat, in bed two winters with bronchitis and asthma. Did not take complete fast. My catarrh is much improved. I feel perfectly well and enjoy life so much more than I did before the fast."
Mrs. Mae Bramble, Alba, Pa., R. F. D. 70. One fast of thirty days, another of three days; nervous prostration the first time, appendicitis the second time. "The first complaint was diagnosed, the second was not; as I am a professional nurse, I understood the symptoms myself." Complete and permanent cure. "I have never had a return of the nervous trouble, and am well of the other complaint. It is five years since the first fast."
M. E. Beard, Corning, Cal. Fasted nine days for scrofula. Had been diagnosed. Complete cure, permanent since 1908. Age forty-seven. "Five years ago I broke down. Physicians never could tell me what ailed me. I kept busy during my fast physically and mentally; worked over the cook stove and outdoors. Felt no weakness."
Joseph L. Lewis, Hatfield, Ark. Fasted three days, and then four days. "During the last ten days have felt better than at any time during the last seven years."
Monroe Bornn, Port of Spain, Trinidad. Fasted seven days on three occasions, for liver trouble. "I had been treated by three physicians. I consider that I was completely cured. Ihave been examined by regular physicians since the cure."
E. B. Bayne, White Plains, N. Y. Sends record of fasts taken by two people, Mr. and Mrs. A. Mr. A. fasted for rheumatism, which had caused kidney and bladder trouble of years' standing, and iritis; fasted five days and then four days and was completely cured. Mrs. A. Neuralgia and catarrhal deafness. Completely cured. "Finds that exposure to draughts has no effect upon her whatever, heretofore she would catch cold upon the least exposure."
Mrs. Charles H. Vosseller, Newark, N. J. "I don't agree with you or Bernarr Macfadden in not recommending fasting for tuberculosis. My case was diagnosed by Dr. B. G——, New Brunswick, N. J. I fasted nineteen days and was completely cured; I received no harm, and have been examined since by a physician. I weigh 114 lbs. now and before my fast weighed 100 lbs. I never felt better in my life than I do at present. Do not know that I have a pair of lungs."
In connection with the above tabulation of results, it should be specified that it does not include any of the cases quoted elsewhere in the book; it includes some of the letters given in the Appendix, but not all. Thus it will appear that there are many more than 277 cases of fasting recorded in this volume. The reason that I did notsummarize in the tabulation all the letters I have received is, that I wished to give only those which were sent to me in answer to my definite series of questions, so that I might be sure of getting the unfavorable as well as the favorable reports. Recently a well-known physician who edits a magazine of health came out in vehement opposition to the fasting cure, maintaining that we hear only of the cases which are successful, and do not hear of the disastrous failures. In reply to this, I wrote to him suggesting that he publish my series of questions in his magazine, thus giving his readers an opportunity to make me acquainted with the unsuccessful cases. This, however, the physician declined to do.
There was much newspaper discussion of my fasting papers—most of it being sarcastic. The most biting comment that I recall came from somewhere out West, and ran about as follows: "A Seattle man fasted forty days for stomach trouble. His stomach is troubling him no longer. He is dead." I set to work to find out about this case, and I give the facts on page 137. I also saw a report from the LondonDaily Telegraphto the effect that a man had died in SouthAfrica as a result of trying my "cure." How many thousands of people tried it and lived, I do not know; but horrified relatives and enterprising newspaper writers would see that the public was informed about any that died.
As to the possibility or probability of death during a fast, I have 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 them. 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.
Second, people might die very frequently, without that being an argument against the cure. It might simply be a consequence of the desperately ill class of people who were trying it. A doctor who had a new method of healing, and was permitted to use it only upon those whom all other doctors had given up, would be considered successful if he effected even an occasional cure. I would wager that of the people who read my article and set out to fast, practically all had been suffering for many years, and had given the "regular" physicians unlimited opportunity to work on them.
Third, it may be set down as absolutely certainthat no one ever died of starvation while fasting. The essential feature of the fast is that after the first two or three days all hunger ceases; and that any one could die of lack of food without feeling a desire for food, is absurd upon the face of it. Nature simply does not work that way. It reminds me of a young lady who once told me that she would not go to sleep with a mouse in the room, because she imagined the mouse might nibble off her ear without waking her!
As to the possibility that you might starve, during those first days while youarehungry—the answer is simply that youdon't. It is perfectly true that men have died of starvation in three or four days; but the starvation existed in their minds—it was fright that killed them. That they did not truly starve is proven by my letters from several hundreds of people who have fasted over that time, and who are alive to tell of it.
There are conditions in the human 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, and dies in spite of the fast, the papers of course declare that he died because of the fast. Dr. L. B. Hazzard of Seattle has published a very useful little book, "Fasting for the Cure of Disease," in which she tells of two cases of "death fromfasting," where the autopsy revealed conditions with which the fast had no connection, and which made death certain. Chances of that sort one has to take in life. You may have a blood vessel in such a state that when you run after a street car the increased pressure will cause it to burst; but you do not on that account declare that no man ought to exert himself violently.
As an example of the part that mental 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 her 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 complete collapse. No doubt if there had been a physician in the neighborhood, there would have been another tale of a "victim of a shallow and unscrupulous sensationalist." Fortunately, however, business called the husband away again, and the next day the woman was all right, and completed an eight-day fast with the best results. Bear this in mind, so that if you wake up some morning and find your temperature sub-normal and your pulse at forty, and your arms too weak to lift you, and if your friends get round you and tell you that youlook like a mummy out of a sarcophagus of the seventeenth dynasty, and that I am a Socialist and an undesirable citizen—you may be able to smile at them good naturedly and tell them that you will never again eat until you are hungry.
I have thought over the cases of failure of the fast, where I have been able to inquire into all the circumstances, and I think I can make the statement that I do 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 letters was one with a printed account of the disastrous results of a three weeks' fast taken by a woman. It is an example of about all the blunders that I can think of. She describes herself as occupying "a responsible office position," which taxed her strength to the utmost; and she tried to do this work all the time she was fasting. She would get up and go to work when she was "scarcely able to drag one foot after another." On about the nineteenth day her mother arrived, and then I quote: "She almost dropped at sight of me, for I had not given a hint as to my condition; but despite my protests, she sent for the doctor at once. My! Didn't he scold, and tell me what was what! Mother's heart was so torn with sorrow and pity that she hadn't the heart to reproach me for my three weeks' orgyof fasting. She thought I had paid dearly for my folly." I don't think it necessary to say anything more, except that I feel sorry for the victim, and that I am glad to know this happened two years ago, so that I am not to blame for the results.
By way of contrast with this case I will quote the following letter, which will show the reader the kind of experience that makes fasting enthusiasts: "My wife and I have each nearly reached our seventy-second year. I was born a physical wreck. A dozen years ago we began taking short fasts, from three to eleven days' duration, for all our ills of the flesh. But each of us had chronic troubles of forty years' standing, which seemed growing no better. And finally, two years ago last July, my wife said she was going to take a 'conquest fast' if it killed her, for she was tired of living with her present ills. I thought it a good time to try a little conquest fasting on my own hook. I had no fear of the result. I knew that nature would tell me when I had fasted long enough. So we began an absolute fast from all food except distilled water and fresh air. We lived in fresh air night and day. We took copious enemas daily, and I took a cabinet sweat, followed by a cold plunge every other day. I knew that I must have many years of filth accumulation in my bowels. And the amount of putridity thatcame from my bowels the first twenty-five days of the fast was amazing.
"After fasting twenty-eight days I began to be hungry, and broke my fast with a little grape juice, followed the next day with tomatoes, and later with vegetable soup. My wife began to be hungry after fasting thirty-one days, and broke her fast in a similar manner to myself.
"It is now two years since we took the conquest fast, and my wife has no return of her former troubles. And I am enjoying all the mental and physical pleasures which come from clean bowels. We think we have learned how to live that we will never need another fast. Soon after the fast I was examined by Dr. S——, the leading surgeon of Los Angeles and Southern California, who pronounced me as being the most wonderful person he ever met regarding softness of arteries, and suppleness of body, for my age."
The reader will observe that I discuss this fasting question from a materialistic view-point. I am telling what it does to the body; but besides this, of course, fasting is a religious exercise. I heard the other day from a man who was taking a forty-day fast, as a means of increasing his"spiritual power." I am not saying that for you to smile at—he has excellent authority for the procedure. The point with me is that I find life so full of interest just now that I don't have much time to think about my "soul." I get so much pleasure out of a handful of raisins, or a cold bath, or a game of tennis, that I fear it is interfering with my spiritual development. I have, however, a very dear friend who goes in for the things of the soul, and she tells me that when you are fasting, the higher faculties are in a sensitive condition, and that you can do many interesting things with your subliminal self. For instance, she had always considered herself a glutton; and so, during an eight-day fast, just before going to sleep and just after awakening, she would lie in a sort of trance and impress upon her mind the idea of restraint in eating. The result, she declared, has been that she has never since then had an impulse to over-eat.
There are many such curious things, about which you may read in the 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. Earlier in this book I told how I had been able to write the greater part of a playwhile 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 I would fast, and save the eating time, and the digesting time as well. So I would sit and work for sixteen hours or more a day, sometimes for six hours at a stretch without moving. After two 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. I 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 I 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 be great poetry written some day, when our 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 youa new standard of health. You have been accustomed to worrying along somehow; but now you discover 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 steam-heated rooms; above all else, it means giving up self-indulgent eating.
A couple of years ago my wife and myself made the acquaintance of a young lady patient in a sanatorium, who was in a much run-down condition, anæmic and nervous. We persuaded her to take a fast of five or six days, and afterwards take the milk diet, as the result of which she went back to her home in Virginia with what she described as "smiles and dimples and curves and bright eyes." She was so enthusiastic about the cure that she proceeded to apply it to all her family and her friends; and some time afterwards she wrote my wife a most diverting account of her adventures. After some persuasion I secured her permission to quote her letter, having duly omitted all the names. It makes clear the thorny path which the fasting enthusiast has to travel in this world.
I will try in a very limited space of time to tell you what keeps me a slave here at home. I got Mr. X—— down from —— to put papa and mamma on the fasting cure—papa had a bad case of grippe—mamma had indigestion. My oldest married brother is in dreadful health, and his wife and baby are not well. I wore myself nearly out trying to get them well, and at the same time trying to pick up some threads of long neglected social duties. People were beginning to call me "stuck-up" (horrid vulgar term), so unless I wanted to make enemies of the wives and daughters of papa's and brother's business friends, I had to go to a few parties and pay some long-neglected calls. I did it all, and then decided to have Mr. X—— come to help me. I got papa and mamma and M—— andher baby(!) on a fast—and then woe is me—I had to get them off again! They had various and alarming symptoms due to their ignorance of the methods, and the wild interest of the town medicine-men. The family doctor gave me a "straight talk" and asked me if I was going to tryto kill my father and mother. Papa would not give up his cigarettes, and a "toddy" now and then. M——'s baby lost four pounds while his mother was fasting. All the doctors' wives came to call, and beset me with questions—and I had the d—— of a time. But I stood by my guns. When the overfed, self-indulgent family all got to vomiting at once, my hands were full, and I nearly had nervous prostration before I got order out of the bedlam I had stirred up.Well, they got over the fast and on to the milk. Then I had to tend to the milk myself or they refused to drink it. Finally mamma got to feeling so well that she sat up, and planned big course dinners and invited people to eat them. She began to order new clothes for the kids, new furnishings for the house, and started in to live her disorderly, ungodly "Southern hospitality" life all over again. Our senator died and mamma got into politics in the new election; and Cousin J—— got drunk, and I had to go with him to the Keeley Institute, etc., etc. Surely there is a heaven for saints like me. I did not fly the roost as I was tempted to do, but I answered midnight calls of the spoiled, nauseated ones, and fixed hot-water bags, quelled riots among the meat-eating servants and hungry children—and swore I'd win! I did. Well, I got things going in fine order at last, with papa cured of his grippe and an old case of kidney trouble. Mamma is now comfortably eating boiled ham and stuffed peppers, and fruit cake and cherry pie, and green olives and what not at the same meal. She is well, though. But of course she will get sick again. Papa, the only sane member of our family, is still holding on to the milk, taking four quarts of buttermilk a day, and he is flourishing, thank heaven! M—— is still bilious, having broken her fast with hard-boiled eggs and pork chops. And I am still living, in spite of having been to Keeley, and incidentally having danced all night (with a low-neck, short-sleeved gown on!) at the —— Club ball, sat through several dinners and bridge partiesinto the "wee sma' hours," and had two men propose to me with the prelude, "You are the nicest, most refined, and most lovable girl in the world if youarea crank." Wasn't that a nice beginning for a proposal of marriage? I accepted them both on condition that I be allowed to remain a crank.Well, the next chapter began with an old lover who had married another woman. He came to see me and said he had a tape-worm! Ye gods—such romance! His wife had stomach and intestinal trouble. I turned Mr. X—— over to them, and them over to Mr. X——. The lady got along, but the poor man with a wild beast inside him got so sick after an eight-day fast that he wanted to have me mobbed, sent for two trained nurses and four doctors—this is no exaggeration—the doctors looked at me, and looks were as plain as words—"You little devil! You did it for pure meanness." For three days my poor friend had the doctors giving him hypodermics, and he never stopped vomiting until we were all nearly dead. Then he quieted down, got well, ate a beef-steak with a few dozen oysters and mushrooms, and took me riding in his new automobile. The grim humor in the whole thing is that if I had not gotten my roses and dimples and curves and bright eyes back by fasting, this man would never have taken me riding in his new automobile. Take a tip from me—all the good nursing and friendly efforts in behalf of the health of my friends did not endear me to them one half as much as the plump, rosy smile I wore with mynew silk gown. The first day our sick friend went out in his car—alas for the ways of human nature—masculine human nature, I mean—I told him so. And he agreed with me and ended by saying, "Darn an ugly woman—I'll forgive a pretty oneanything."
I will try in a very limited space of time to tell you what keeps me a slave here at home. I got Mr. X—— down from —— to put papa and mamma on the fasting cure—papa had a bad case of grippe—mamma had indigestion. My oldest married brother is in dreadful health, and his wife and baby are not well. I wore myself nearly out trying to get them well, and at the same time trying to pick up some threads of long neglected social duties. People were beginning to call me "stuck-up" (horrid vulgar term), so unless I wanted to make enemies of the wives and daughters of papa's and brother's business friends, I had to go to a few parties and pay some long-neglected calls. I did it all, and then decided to have Mr. X—— come to help me. I got papa and mamma and M—— andher baby(!) on a fast—and then woe is me—I had to get them off again! They had various and alarming symptoms due to their ignorance of the methods, and the wild interest of the town medicine-men. The family doctor gave me a "straight talk" and asked me if I was going to tryto kill my father and mother. Papa would not give up his cigarettes, and a "toddy" now and then. M——'s baby lost four pounds while his mother was fasting. All the doctors' wives came to call, and beset me with questions—and I had the d—— of a time. But I stood by my guns. When the overfed, self-indulgent family all got to vomiting at once, my hands were full, and I nearly had nervous prostration before I got order out of the bedlam I had stirred up.
Well, they got over the fast and on to the milk. Then I had to tend to the milk myself or they refused to drink it. Finally mamma got to feeling so well that she sat up, and planned big course dinners and invited people to eat them. She began to order new clothes for the kids, new furnishings for the house, and started in to live her disorderly, ungodly "Southern hospitality" life all over again. Our senator died and mamma got into politics in the new election; and Cousin J—— got drunk, and I had to go with him to the Keeley Institute, etc., etc. Surely there is a heaven for saints like me. I did not fly the roost as I was tempted to do, but I answered midnight calls of the spoiled, nauseated ones, and fixed hot-water bags, quelled riots among the meat-eating servants and hungry children—and swore I'd win! I did. Well, I got things going in fine order at last, with papa cured of his grippe and an old case of kidney trouble. Mamma is now comfortably eating boiled ham and stuffed peppers, and fruit cake and cherry pie, and green olives and what not at the same meal. She is well, though. But of course she will get sick again. Papa, the only sane member of our family, is still holding on to the milk, taking four quarts of buttermilk a day, and he is flourishing, thank heaven! M—— is still bilious, having broken her fast with hard-boiled eggs and pork chops. And I am still living, in spite of having been to Keeley, and incidentally having danced all night (with a low-neck, short-sleeved gown on!) at the —— Club ball, sat through several dinners and bridge partiesinto the "wee sma' hours," and had two men propose to me with the prelude, "You are the nicest, most refined, and most lovable girl in the world if youarea crank." Wasn't that a nice beginning for a proposal of marriage? I accepted them both on condition that I be allowed to remain a crank.
Well, the next chapter began with an old lover who had married another woman. He came to see me and said he had a tape-worm! Ye gods—such romance! His wife had stomach and intestinal trouble. I turned Mr. X—— over to them, and them over to Mr. X——. The lady got along, but the poor man with a wild beast inside him got so sick after an eight-day fast that he wanted to have me mobbed, sent for two trained nurses and four doctors—this is no exaggeration—the doctors looked at me, and looks were as plain as words—"You little devil! You did it for pure meanness." For three days my poor friend had the doctors giving him hypodermics, and he never stopped vomiting until we were all nearly dead. Then he quieted down, got well, ate a beef-steak with a few dozen oysters and mushrooms, and took me riding in his new automobile. The grim humor in the whole thing is that if I had not gotten my roses and dimples and curves and bright eyes back by fasting, this man would never have taken me riding in his new automobile. Take a tip from me—all the good nursing and friendly efforts in behalf of the health of my friends did not endear me to them one half as much as the plump, rosy smile I wore with mynew silk gown. The first day our sick friend went out in his car—alas for the ways of human nature—masculine human nature, I mean—I told him so. And he agreed with me and ended by saying, "Darn an ugly woman—I'll forgive a pretty oneanything."
Many people write me, begging me to outline for them the ideal diet. I used to do that sort of thing, but I have stopped; having come to realize that we are still at the beginning of our diet-experiments. I have done a good deal of experimenting myself, and have made some interesting discoveries. I have lived for a week on fruit only, and again on wheat only; I have lived for three weeks on nothing but milk, and again on nothing but beef-steak. I have lived for a year on raw food, and for over three years I professed the religion of vegetarianism. For the last two months I have lived on beef-steak, shredded wheat, raisins and fresh fruit; but by the time this book appears I may be trying sour milk and dates—somebody told me about that the other day, and it sounds good to me. Some of my correspondents object to my willingness to try new diets; they write me that they find it bewildering, and think it indicative of an unstable mind. They do notrealize that I am exacting in my demands—I want a diet which will permit me to overwork with impunity. I haven't found it yet, but I am on the way; and meantime I make my experiments with a light heart, for I always know that if anything goes wrong, I can take a fast and start afresh.
The general rules are mostly of a negative sort. There are many kinds of foods, some of them most generally favored, of which one may say that they should never be used, and that those who use them can never be as well as they would be without them. Such foods are all that contain alcohol or vinegar; all that contain cane sugar; all that contain white flour in any one of its thousand alluring forms of bread, crackers, pie, cake, and puddings; and all foods that have been fried—by which I mean cooked with grease, whether that grease be lard, or butter, or eggs or milk. It is my conviction that one should bar these things at the outset, and admit of no exceptions. I do not mean to say that healthy men and women cannot eat such things and be well; but I say that they cannot be as well as they would be without them; and that every particle of such food they eat renders them more liable to all sorts of infection, and sows in their systems the seeds of the particular chronic disease that is to lay them low sooner or later.
There are a number of other things, which I do not rate as quite so bad, but which we bar in our family—simply because they are not so good. For instance, I am inclined to regard beans as being too difficult of digestion and too liable to fermentation to be eaten by any one who can get anything better. And I personally do not eat peanuts, because I have found that I do not digest them; and I do not use milk (except in the exclusive milk diet), because it is constipating, and I have a tendency in that direction. Almost everyone will discover idiosyncrasies of that sort in his own system. One person cannot digest cheese, another cannot digest bananas, another cannot stand the taste of olive oil. You may read a glowing account of some diet system by which some other person has worked miracles, and you may try it, and persist in it for a long time, and finally come to realize that it was the worst diet you could possibly have been following. I have always counted orange juice as the ideal food with which to break a fast; yet a friend whom I was advising broke his fast with the juice of half an orange, and had a violent cramp. He had been so confiding in my greater knowledge that he had omitted to tell me that any sort of acid fruit had always made him ill.
Such things as this are of course not natural;but a perfectly normal and well person is, under the artificial conditions of our bringing up, a very great rarity; and so we all have to regard ourselves as more or less diseased, and work towards the ideal of soundness. We must do this with intelligence—there is no short cut, no way to save one's self the trouble of thinking.
I used to think there was. I would discover this or that wonderful new diet-wrinkle, and I would go round preaching it to all my friends, and making a general nuisance of myself. And some one would try it, and it would not work; and often, to my own humiliation, I would discover that it was not working in my own case half so well as I had thought it was.
By way of setting an ideal, let me give you the example of a young lady who for six or seven months has been living in our home, and giving us a chance to observe her dietetic habits. This young lady three years ago was an anæmic school-teacher, threatened with consumption, and a victim of continual colds and headaches; miserable and beaten, with an exopthalmic goitre which was slowly choking her to death. She fasted eight days, and achieved a perfect cure. She is to-day bright, alert and athletic; and she lives on about twelve hundred calories of food a day—one half what I eat, and less than a third of the old-schooldietetic standards. Occasionally she will eat nut butter, or sweet potato, or some whole wheat crackers with butter, or a dish of ice-cream; but at least ninety per cent of her food has consisted of fresh fruit. Meal after meal, day after day, I have seen her eat one or two bananas and two or three peaches, or say, a slice of watermelon or canteloupe; at some meals she will eat only the peaches, and then again she will eat nothing. A dollar a week would pay for all her food; and on this diet she laughs and talks, reads and thinks, walks and swims with my wife and myself—a kind of external dietetic conscience, which we would find it hard to get along without. And tell me, Dr. Woods Hutchinson, or other scoffer at the "food-faddists," don't you think that a case like this gives us some right to ask for patient investigation of our claims? Or will you stand by your pill boxes and your carving-knives and the rest of your paraphernalia, and compel us to cure all your patients in spite of you?
I am asked many questions as to my attitude toward the question of meat-eating. I was brought up on a diet of meat, bread and butter, potatoes, and sweet things. Four years ago when I found myself desperately run down, suffering from nervousness, insomnia, and almost incessant headaches, I came upon various articles written by vegetarians, and I began to suspect that my trouble might be due to meat. I went away on a camping-trip for several weeks, taking no meat with me, and because I found that I was a great deal better, I believed that the meat had been responsible for my trouble. I then visited the Battle Creek Sanitarium, and became familiar with all their arguments against meat, and thereafter I did not use it for three years. I called myself a vegetarian; but at the same time I realized that I differed from most vegetarians in some important particulars.
For instance, I had never taken any stock in the arguments for vegetarianism upon the moral side. It has always seemed to me that humanbeings have a right to eat meat, if meat is necessary for their best development, either physical or mental. I have never had any sympathy with that "humanitarianism" which tells us that it is our duty to regard pigs and chickens as our brothers. I was listening the other day to one of these enthusiasts, who had been reading aloud one of the "Uncle Remus" stories, and who went on in touching language to set forth the fact that his vegetable garden constituted one place where "Bre'r Rabbit" was free to wander at will and to help himself; and he described how happy it made him to see these gentle animals hopping about among his cabbages, having lost all their fear of him. That sort of thing will work very well so long as it is confined to one farm, and so long as there is a hunting season upon all the other farms in the locality; but let the humanitarians proceed to apply their regimen in a whole state, and they will soon have so many billions of rabbits hopping about among their cabbages that they will have to choose between shooting rabbits or having no cabbages.
The reader, I presume, is familiar with calculations which show the rate at which rabbits multiply, how many tens and hundreds of millions would be produced by a single pair of rabbits in ten years. It should be quite obvious that thetime would come when all human beings would be spending their energies in planting gardens to support rabbits; and that if ever they stopped planting gardens, there would be a famine for the rabbits, with infinitely more suffering than is involved in the present method of keeping them down. Also, even though the humanitarians might have their way with men, the hawks and the owls and the foxes would probably remain unregenerate. I remember, when I was a small boy, being sternly rebuked by an agitated maiden lady who discovered me throwing stones at a squirrel. Not so many days afterwards, however, the lady discovered the squirrel engaged in carrying off young birds from a nest outside her window, and she found her theories about "kindness to dumb animals" rudely disturbed.
The same thing, it seems to me, is still more true of domestic animals. Domestic animals survive on earth solely because of the protection of man, and for the sake of the benefits they bring to him. If it is necessary to human health and well-being to slaughter a cow rather than to wait and let her die of old age and lingering disease, it seems to me that nothing but mawkish sentimentality would protest.
It is pointed out to us what places of cruelty and filth our slaughter-houses are; the reader maybelieve that I learned something about this in my preparations for the writing of "The Jungle." But then this is not necessarily true about slaughter-houses—any more than it is necessarily true that railroads must kill and maim a couple of hundred thousand people in this country every year. In Europe they have municipal slaughter-houses which are constructed upon scientific lines, and in which no filth is permitted to accumulate; also they have devised means for the killing of animals which are painless. In the stockyards I have seen a man standing upon a gallery, leaning over and pounding at the head of a steer with a hammer, and making half a dozen blows before he succeeded in knocking down the terrified animal. In Europe, on the other hand, they fit over the head of the animal a leathern cap, which has in it a steel spike; a single tap upon the head of this spike is sufficient to drive it into the animal's brain, causing instant insensibility.
And it must be borne in mind also that the sufferings of dumb animals are entirely different from our own. They do not suffer the pains of anticipation. A cow walks into a slaughter-house without fear, and stands still and permits a leathern cap to be fitted over its head without suspicion; and while it is placidly grazing in the field, it is untroubled by any consciousness of the fact thatnext week it will be hanging in a butcher's shop as beef. I recall in this connection an observation of that wise philosopher, Mr. Dooley, concerning the inhumanities of vegetarianism. He said that it had always seemed to him a very cruel thing "to cut off a young tomato in its prime, or to murder a whole cradle full of baby peas in the pod."
These things will convince the devotee of the religion of vegetarianism that I am a lost soul, and always have been. Perhaps so. I try to guide my conduct by scientific knowledge; what I ask to know about the question of meat-eating is the actual facts of its effect upon the human organism—the amount of energy which it develops, the diseases which it causes, or, on the contrary, the immunity to disease which it claims to confer; also, of course, its cheapness and convenience as an article of diet. Some evidence of this sort we possess; but very little, it seems to me, in proportion to the importance of the subject. Professor Fisher has conducted some thorough experiments as to the influence of meat-eating upon endurance, which seem to develop the fact that vegetarians possess a far greater amount of endurance than meat-eaters. These experiments are what we want, but they seemed to me, when I read them, to be weak in one or twoimportant particulars. They did not tell us what the vegetarians ate, nor what the meat-eaters ate. Those who are vegetarians at the present day are very apt to be people who have given some thought to the question of diet, and have attempted to adopt sounder ways of life; while, on the other hand, meat-eaters are generally people who have given no thought to the question of health at all—they are very apt to be smokers and drinkers as well as meat-eaters. Also it is to be pointed out that endurance is not the only factor of importance to our physical well-being.
There have been numerous expositions of the greater liability of meat to contamination. Dr. Kellogg, for instance, has purchased specimens of meat in the butcher-shops, and has had them examined under the microscope, and has told us how many hundreds of millions of bacteria to the gram have been discovered. This argument has a tendency to appal one; I know it had great effect upon me for a long time, and I took elaborate pains to take into my system only those kinds of food which were sterilized, or practically so. This is the health regimen which is advocated by Professor Metchnikoff; one should eat only foods which have been thoroughly boiled and sterilized. I have come, in the course of time, to the conclusion that this way of living is suicidal, and thatthere is no way of destroying one's health more quickly. I think that the important question is, not how many bacteria there are in the food when you swallow it, but how many bacteria there come to be in food after it gets into your alimentary canal. The digestive juices are apparently able to take care of a very great number of germs; it is after the food has passed on down, and is lodged in the large intestine, that the real fermentation and putrefaction begin—and these count for more, in the question of health, than that which goes on in the butcher-shop or the refrigerator or the pantry.
Do not misunderstand what I mean by this. I am not advocating that anyone should swallow the bacteria of deadly diseases, such as typhoid and cholera; I am not advocating that anyone should use food which is in a state of decomposition—on the contrary, I have ruled out of my dietary a number of foods in common use which depend for their production upon bacterial action; for instance, beer and wine, and all alcoholic drinks, all kinds of cheeses, sauerkraut, vinegar, etc. My point is simply that the ordinary healthy person has no reason for terrifying himself about the common aërobic bacteria—which swarm in the atmosphere, and are found by hundreds of millions in all raw food, and in cooked food whichhas not been kept with the elaborate precautions that a surgeon uses with his instruments and linen; also that the real problem is to take into the system those foods which can be readily digested and assimilated, and which afford the body all the elements that it needs to keep itself in the best condition for the inevitable, incessant warfare with the hostile organisms which surround it.
So far as meat is concerned, of course no sensible person would use meat which showed the slightest trace of being spoiled, nor any meat which had been canned, or ground up and made into messes, such as sausage. If one uses reasonably fresh meat, the bacteria which may be on the outside of it will be killed by proper cooking. And so the question is, it seems to me, what does meat do after it gets into the stomach? And that is a matter for practical experiment, which very few people have made, so far as I have any information. Innumerable people are eating meat, of course; but they are eating it in combination with all other kinds of destructive foods, and they are eating it prepared in innumerable unwholesome ways. So far as I know, no scientist has ever taken a group of normal men and kept them for a certain period upon a rational vegetarian diet, and then put them for another period upon a diet containingbroiled fresh meat, and made a thoroughly scientific study of their condition, as, for instance, Professor Chittenden did for his "low proteid" experiments.
For about a year previous to reading about Dr. Salisbury's "meat diet," I had been following the raw-food regimen. I had gained wonderful results from this, and I had written a good deal about it; but I had got these results while leading an active life, and not doing hard brain-work. I found continually that when I settled down to a sedentary life, and to writing which involved a great nervous strain, I began to lose weight on raw food; and if I kept on with this regimen, I would begin to have headaches, and other signs of distress from what I was eating. As an illustration of what I mean, I might say that quite recently I plunged into a novel in which I was very much absorbed, and I lost twelve pounds in sixteen days; and this, it must be understood, without changing my diet in the slightest particular. I went on with the work for about six weeks, and by that time I had lost twenty pounds. In explaining this to myself, I was divided between uncertainty as to whether I was working too hard, or whether I was eating too much. Finally I took the precaution to weigh what I was eating, and to make quite certain thatI was eating no more than I had been accustomed to eat during periods when I had remained at my normal weight. I then cut the quantity of my food in half, and found that I lost much less rapidly. This served to convince me that the trouble lay in the fact that I had not sufficient nervous energy left to assimilate the food that I was taking.