To one pound of lean meat there should be about one quart of broth. A teacupful to begin with is enough for a meal, and it is often necessary to give less than this. The gravest mistake is to be in a hurry about returning to full meals. The remarks about moderate feeding also apply to milk and fruit juices.
Ordinarily, fasts are not broken on starchy foods, but this may be done at times to advantage, especially in cases that have been accustomed to large quant.i.ties of starch and but little of the fresh raw foods. The starch must, however, be in an easily digestible state and should be in the form of a very thin gruel made of oatmeal or whole wheatmeal. It should be cooked four to six hours and dressed with nothing but a little salt. A few can break the fast on a full meal without any bad results, but most people can not do it without suffering and the results may be fatal. So it is a safe rule to break the fast on simple liquid food, taken in moderation.
Four or five days after breaking the fast, one should be able to eat the ordinary foods. The following is a suggestion of the manner in which to feed immediately after a fast of about two weeks:
First day: Tomato broth once; mutton broth twice.
Second day: Breakfast, orange juice. Lunch, b.u.t.termilk. Dinner, sliced tomatoes.
Third day: Breakfast, b.u.t.termilk. Lunch, salad of lettuce and tomatoes, dressed with salt. Dinner, poached egg, celery.
Fourth day: Breakfast, baked apple and milk. Lunch, toasted bread and b.u.t.ter. Dinner, lamb chops, stewed green peas, celery.
If a meal causes distress, omit the next one and continue omitting meals until comfort and ease have returned. If the digestion is very weak, or if the illness has been protracted, do not feed solids as soon as recommended above. In all cases it is necessary to exercise self-control, moderation and common sense.
The meals must be moderate. Gradually increase until the amount of food taken is sufficient to do the necessary bodily rebuilding. The longer the fast, the more care should be exercised in the beginning. It is no time to experiment.
If the fast is to be of permanent benefit it is necessary to learn how to eat properly afterwards, and to put this knowledge into practice.
This is the most important part to emphasize, yet all the books I have read on the subject have failed to pay any attention to it. In nearly every case the fast is necessary because of repeated mistakes in eating and drinking. Those mistakes built bodily ills in the first place and if the faster goes back to them they will do it again. The disease does not always take on the same type as it did in the first place, but it is the same old disease. During a fast there is recuperation because the body has a chance to become clean, and a clean body can not long remain unbalanced, provided there are no organic faults. By making mistakes in eating after the fast is over, the body again becomes foul and full of debris and that means more disease. Perhaps it may not require more than one-third as much abuse to cause a second break-down as it did to bring about the first one.
Some people fast repeatedly, and are somewhat proud of it. They should be ashamed of the fact that they must fast time after time, for it shows either ignorance or a weak, undeveloped will power. The fast should teach every intelligent being that it is an emergency measure, and emergencies are but seldom encountered in a well regulated life.
Food debauches following fasts should be avoided. A little will power properly applied will prevent them. Gross eating may compel another fast. We must eat and it is better to eat so that we can take sustenance regularly than to be compelled to go without food at various intervals.
He who is moderate in his eating, uses a fair degree of intelligence in the selection of his food, is temperate in other ways and considerate and kind in his dealings with others will not be ill.
A fast is efficacious in clearing up a brain that is unable to work well because it is bathed in unclean blood. It is remarkable how well the brain works when the stomach is not overworked. Overfeeding the body causes underfeeding of the brain. On a correct diet the brain is efficient and clear and able to bear sustained burdens.
There is no question but that a fast, followed by a light diet, containing less of the heavily starchy and proteid foods and more of the succulent vegetables and fresh fruits, with their cleansing juices and health-imparting salts, would result in the recovery of over one-half of the insane. Most of them are suffering functionally and here the outlook is very hopeful. Christ cured a lunatic "by prayer and fasting." Proper feeding would work wonders in prisons. It would also be very beneficial for wayward girls and young men who are pa.s.sion"s slaves. St. Peter recommended fasting as an aid to morality, which is another evidence of the profundity of his wisdom.
How long should a fast last? Until its object has been accomplished. It is rarely necessary to fast a month, but sometimes it is advisable to continue the fast for forty days, or even longer. If the fast is taken on account of pain, continue until the pain is gone. If for fever, until there is no more fever. In chronic cases it is not always necessary to continue the fast until the tongue is clean. When the patient is free from pain and fever and comfortable in every way, start feeding lightly.
People who are thin and have sluggish nutrition, one symptom of which is dirty-gray mucous membrane in mouth and throat, should not be fasted any longer than it is absolutely necessary, for they generally react slowly and poorly.
If people would miss a meal or two or three as soon as they begin to feel bad, no long fasts would be necessary, because when the system first begins to be deranged it very quickly rights itself when food is withheld. It is impossible for a serious disease to develop in a fasting person, unless he is in an exceptionally bad physical condition at the beginning of the fast, for when food is withheld there is nothing for disease to feed upon. No new disease can originate during a fast.
Fasts often bring people back to health, who can not recover through any other means known to man, unless it be eating almost nothing--a semi-fast. Occasionally a patient dies while on a long fast or immediately thereafter, but please remember that millions die prematurely on this earth every year who never missed their meals for one day. Also remember that those who go on prolonged fasts are generally "hopeless cases," who have been given up to die by medical men. People who fast generally become comfortable, so why envy a few men and women an easy departure when they are no longer able to live, and why heap undeserved censure on those who are doing their best to ease the sufferers by means of our most valuable therapeutic measure, fasting?
There is much prejudice against fasting, but a calm study of the facts will remove this. Typhoid fever, conventionally treated, often proves fatal in 15 per cent. or more of the cases and those who survive have to undergo a long, uncomfortable illness which often leaves them so weakened and with such degenerated bodies that the end is frequently a matter of a few months or years. Pneumonia and tuberculosis find a favorable place to develop and in these cases prove very fatal. On the other hand, cases of typhoid treated by the fast, and the other hygienic measures necessary, recover in a short time, there are no evil sequels and the body is in better condition than it was before the onset of the disease. I have never seen a fatality in a properly treated case, and the mortality is conspicuous by its absence. It is the same in curable chronic diseases. Where feeding and medicating add to the ills, fasting with proper living afterwards brings health.
It is also well to remember that where one individual dies while fasting (not from the effects of fasting, but from the disease for which the fast was begun), perhaps one hundred thousand starve because they have too much to eat. Silly as this may sound, it is the truth, and this is s the explanation: Overfeeding causes digestive troubles and a breakdown of the a.s.similative and excretory processes. The more food that is taken while this condition exists the less nourishment is extracted from it.
The food ferments pathologically, instead of physiologically, and poisons the body. The more that is eaten under the circ.u.mstances, the worse is the poisoning and at last the tired body wearily gives up the fight for existence, perhaps after a long chronic ailment has been suffered, or perhaps during the attack of an acute disease. The chief cause of death is too much food.
Avicena, the great Arabian physician, treated by means of prolonged fasts.
For the benefit of those who fear the effects of fasts of a few days"
duration a few quotations are given from various sources:
"My next marked case is a wonderful ill.u.s.tration of the self-feeding power of the brain to meet an emergency, and a revelation, also, of the possible limitations of the starvation period. This was the case of a frail, spare boy of four years, whose stomach was so disorganized by a drink of solution of caustic potash that not even a swallow of water could be retained. He died on the seventy-fifth day of his fast, with the mind clear to the last hour, and with apparently nothing of the body left but bones, ligaments, and a thin skin; and yet the brain had lost neither weight nor functional clearness.
"In another city a similar accident happened to a child of about the same age, in whom it took three months for the brain to exhaust entirely the available body-food."--Dr. E. H. Dewey.
This shows the groundlessness of the fear parents have of allowing their children to fast when necessary. It is beneficial for even the babies who need it. In the cases quoted above the conditions were very unfavorable, for the children were suffering from the effects of lye burns, yet they lived without food seventy-five and ninety days, respectively. If necessary, deprive the children of food, and keep them warm. Then comfort yourself with the fact that they are being treated humanely and efficiently.
Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard, in the latest edition of her book, Fasting for the Cure of Disease, states that she has treated almost two thousand five hundred people by this method, the fasts varying in duration from eight to seventy five days, many of them being over a month. Sixteen of her patients have died while fasting and two on a light diet. This is far from being a mortality of 1 per cent. When the fact is taken into consideration that the people she treated were of the cla.s.s for whom the average medical man can do nothing the mortality is surprisingly small.
However, she has lost a few, and as she is a fighter for her beliefs the prejudice against her and her method of treating disease have proved strong enough to cause her to be imprisoned. Dr. Hazzard has perhaps the widest experience with fasting of any mortal, living or dead. Her book is well worth reading.
Upton Sinclair has also written a book on this subject, ent.i.tled the Fasting Cure. He writes from the viewpoint of an intelligent layman whose observations are not very extensive. The book contains many good ideas. This is from page fifty-seven:
"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 one hundred 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-keepers 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."
Bernarr Macfadden has also written considerable about fasting. C. C.
Haskell is an advocate and director of such treatment. Many physicians employ this healing method. Some day the entire medical profession will realize the worth of fasting as a curative agent.
As a reminder, please allow me to repeat: When reading and studying about the subject of fasting, do not think of it as a complete cure, for those who return to their improper mode of living will again build disease. After the fast, live right.
The efficient body is clean internally. An unclean skin is bad. A foul alimentary tract is worse. But the worst of all is a foul condition of all the tissues, including the blood-stream, a condition in which much of the body"s waste is stored up, instead of being excreted.
If such a condition can not be remedied through moderation and simplicity in eating, the only thing that will prove of value is temporary abstinence.
It would be an easy matter to enumerate many long fasts, such as that of Dr. Tanner, who proved to an astonished country that fasting for a month or more is not fatal, but on the contrary may be beneficial. Or we could cite cases like the fasts carried on by cla.s.ses under the direction of Bernarr Macfadden. Or we could refer to the experiments of Professors Fisher and Chittenden of Yale.
However, we will only look into one more case, that of Dr. I. J. Eales, whose fast created considerable interest several years ago. The doctor was too heavy, so he decided to take a fast to reduce his weight, also for scientific purposes. For thirty days he lived on nothing but water with an occasional gla.s.s of lemonade and one cup of coffee. At the end of thirty days he broke his fast on a gla.s.s of malted milk.
The doctor worked hard during all this period, losing weight all the time, being thirty pounds lighter at the end of his fast than at the beginning. However, he did not lose strength, being able to do as much work and lift as heavy weights at the end of the fast as at the beginning. Anyone who is much over weight can with benefit do as the doctor did, for the body will use the stored up fat to produce heat and energy. This fast is fully detailed in Dr. Eales" book called Healthology.
Fasting is the quickest way to produce internal cleanliness, which is health. When the system is clean the cravings, longings and appet.i.tes are not so strong as when the body is full of poisons. For this reason a fast is the best way to destroy the cravings for tobacco, coffee, tea, alcohol and other habit-forming drugs. If, after the fast is over, the individual lives moderately and simply, and is fully determined not to return to the use of these drugs, a permanent cure will be the reward.
However, it is very easy to drift back into the old habits. A permanent cure requires that there be no compromise, no saying, "I shall do it this time, but never again." Once the old habit is resumed, it is almost certain to be continued.
CHAPTER XXVI.
ATt.i.tUDE OF PARENT TOWARD CHILD.
Healthy, happy children are the greatest of all rewards. All parents can have such children, and it is a duty they owe themselves, the children and the race. It is a most pleasant duty, for the returns are far greater than the cost.
In order to have first-cla.s.s children parents must be in good physical condition and be controlled mentally. Chaotic parents can not have orderly children. The young people learn quickly from their elders and they usually take after one of the parents. They intuitively learn what they can do and what they can not do and how to get their way while we consider them too young to have any understanding.
Therefore it is important that their first impressions are correct.
Begin to train the child in the way it should go from the day of birth.
The first training will have to do with feeding and sleeping. These points are covered more fully in the next chapter. They are touched upon here to give them emphasis.
Feed the child three times a day, but never wake it to be fed. If you give the three feeds, the child will soon become accustomed to them and wake when it is time. If the child squirms and frets, it may be uncomfortable from being overfed or it may be thirsty. Offer it water but not food.
Let the child alone. Do not bounce it or carry it about. During the first few months the baby needs heat, nourishment and rest, and should have no excitement. It should not be treated as a plaything. After a few months it begins to take notice of things and then you can have much fun with it.
The right kind of love consists in doing what is necessary for the infant and no more.