Title : Chapter 1:The Fasting Cure PERFECT HEALTH by Upton Sinclair from archive.org
link : Chapter 1:The Fasting Cure PERFECT HEALTH by Upton Sinclair from archive.org
Chapter 1:The Fasting Cure PERFECT HEALTH by Upton Sinclair from archive.org
The Fasting Cure
PERFECT HEALTH
PERFECT HEALTH!
Have you any conception of what
the phrase means ? Can you form any
image of what would be your feeling
if every organ in your body were func-
tioning perfectly? Perhaps you can
go back to some day in your youth,
when you got up early in the morning
and went for a walk, and the spirit of
the sunrise got into your blood, and
you walked faster, and took deep
breaths, and laughed aloud for the
sheer happiness of being alive in such
a world of beauty. And now you are
grown older — and what would you give
for the secret of that glorious feeling ?
17
THE FASTING CURE
What would you say if you were told
that you could bring it back and keep
it, not only for mornings, but for
afternoons and evenings, and not as
something accidental and mysterious,
but as something which you yourself
have created, and of which you are
completely master ?
This is not an introduction to a new
device in patent medicine advertising.
I have nothing to sell, and no process
patented. It is simply that for ten
years I have been studying the ill
health of myself and of the men and
women around me. And I have found
the cause and the remedy. I have not
only found good health, but perfect
health; I have found a new state of
being, a new potentiality of life; a
sense of lightness and cleanness and
joyfulness, such as I did not know
could exist in the human body. *' I
18
PERFECT HEALTH
like to meet you on the street," said a
friend the other day. " You walk as
if it were such fun !"
I look about me in the world, and
nearly everybody I know is sick. I
could name one after another a hun-
dred men and women, who are doing
vital work for progress and carrying
a cruel handicap of physical suffering.
For instance, I am working for social
justice, and I have comrades whose
help is needed every hour, and they are
ill ! In one single week's newspapers
last spring I read that one was dying
of kidney trouble, that another was in
hospital from nervous breakdown, and
that a third was ill with ptomaine
poisoning. And in my correspondence
I am told that another of my dearest
friends has only a year to live; that
another heroic man is a nervous wreck,
craving for death; and that a third is
19
THE FASTING CURK
tortured by bilious headaches * And
there is not one of these people whom
I could not cure if I had him alone for
a couple of weeks ; no one of them who
would not in the end be walking down
the street " as if it were such fun !"
I propose herein to tell the story of
my discovery of health, and I shall not
waste much time in apologizing for the
intimate nature of the narrative. It
is no pleasure for me to tell over the
tale of my headaches or to discuss my
unruly stomach. I cannot take any
case but my own, because there is no
case about which I can speak with such
authority. To be sure, I might write
about it in the abstract, and in veiled
terms. But in that case the story
would lose most of its convincingness,
and so of its usefulness. I might tell
it without signing my name to it. But
* The first two of these, Edmond Kelly and Ben Hanford,
have since died.
20
PERFECT HEALTH
there are a great many people who
have read my books and will believe
what I tell them, who would not take
the trouble to read an article without a
name. Mr. Horace Fletcher has set
us all an example in this matter. He
has written several volumes about his
individual digestion, with the result
that literally millions of people have
been helped. In the same way I pro-
pose to put my case on record. The
reader will find that it is a typical
case, for I made about every mistake
that a man could make, and tried every
remedy, old and new, that anybody had
to offer me.
I spent my boyhood in a well-to-do
family, in which good eating was re-
garded as a social grace and the prin-
cipal interest in life. We had a
coloured woman to prepare our food,
and another to serve it. It was not
21
THE FASTING CURB
considered fitting for children to drink
liquor, but they had hot bread three
times a day, and they were permitted
to revel in fried chicken and rich
gravies and pastries, fruit cake and
candy and ice-cream. Every Sunday
I would see my grandfather's table
with a roast of beef at one end, and a
couple of chickens at the other, and a
cold ham at one side ; at Christmas and
Thanksgiving the energies of the
whole establishment would be given up
to the preparation of delicious foods.
And later on, when I came to New
York, I considered it necessary to have
such food; even when I was a poor
student, living on four dollars a week,
I spent more than three of it on eat-
ables.
I was an active and fairly healthy
boy ; at twenty I remember saying that
I had not had a day's serious sickness
22
PERFECT HEALTH
in fourteen years. Then I wrote my
first novel, working sixteen or eighteen
hours a day for several months, camp-
ing out, and living mostly out of a fry-
ing-pan. At the end I found that I
was seriously troubled with dyspepsia ;
and it was worse the next year, after
the second book. I went to see a phy-
sician, who gave me some red liquid,
which magically relieved the conse-
quences of doing hard brain-work
after eating. So I went on for a year
or two more, and then I found that the
artificially-digested food was not being
eliminated from my system with suf-
ficient regularity. So I went to an-
other physician, who gave my malady
another name, and gave me another
medicine, and put off the time of
reckoning a little while longer.
I have never in my life used tea or
coffee, alcohol or tobacco ; but for seven
23
THE FASTING CURE
or eight years I worked under heavy
pressure all the time, and ate very irre-
gularly, and ate unwholesome food.
So I began to have headaches once in a
while, and to notice that I was abnor-
mally sensitive to colds. I considered
these maladies natural to mortals, and
I would always attribute them to some
specific accident. I would say, " I've
been knocking about down town all
day " ; or, * ' I was out in the hot
sun"; or, "I lay on the damp
ground." I found that if I sat in a
draught for even a minute I was cer-
tain to '* catch a cold." I found also
that I had sore throat and tonsilitis
once or twice every winter; also, now
and then, the grippe. There were
times when I did not sleep well; and
as all this got worse, I would have to
drop all my work and try to rest. The
first time I did this a week or two was
2i
PERFECT HEALTH
sufficient ; but later on a month or two
was necessary, and then several
months.
The year I wrote " The Jungle " I
bad my first summer cold. It was
haying time on a farm, and I thought
it was a kind of hay-fever. I would
sneeze for hours in perfect torment,
and this lasted for a month until I
went away to the sea-shore. This
happened again the next summer, and
also another very painful experience; a
nerve in a tooth died, and I had to
wait three days for the pain to
" localize," and then had the tooth
drilled out, and staggered home, and
was ill in bed for a week with chills
and fever, and nausea and terrible
headaches. I mention all these un-
pleasant details so that the reader may
understand the state of wretchedness
to which I had come. At the same
25 c
THE FASTING CURE
time, also, I had a great deal of dis-
tressing illness in my family; my wife
seldom had a week without suffering,
and my little boy had pneumonia one
winter, and croup the next, and
whooping-cough in the summer, with
the inevitable " colds " scattered in
between.
After the Helicon Hall fire I realized
that I was in a bad way, and for the
two years following I gave a good part
of my time to trying to find out how to
preserve my health. I went to Battle
Creek, and to Bermuda, and to the
Adirondacks; I read the books of all
the new investigators of the subject of
hygiene, and tried out their theories
religiously. I had discovered Horace
Fletcher a couple of years before. Mr.
Fletcher's idea is, in brief, to chew
your food, and chew it thoroughly; to
extract from each particle of food the
26
PERFECT HEALTH
maximum of nutriment, and to eat
only as much as your system actually
needs. This was a very wonderful
idea to me, and I fell upon it with the
greatest enthusiasm. All the physi-
cians I had known were men who tried
to cure me when I fell sick, but here
was a man who was studying how to
stay well. I have to find fault with
Mr. Fletcher's system, and so I must
make clear at the outset how much I
owe to it. It set me upon the right
track — it showed me the goal, even if
it did not lead me to it. It made clear
to me that all my various ailments
were symptoms of one great trouble,
the presence in my body of the poisons
produced by superfluous and unassi-
milated food, and that in adjusting
the quantity of food to the body's
exact needs lay the secret of perfect
health.
27
THE FASTING CURB
It was only in the working out of
the theory that I fell down. Mr.
Fletcher told me that ** Nature "
would be my guide, and that if only
I masticated thoroughly, instinct
would select the foods. I found that,
so far as my case was concerned, my
** nature " was hopelessly perverted.
I invariably preferred unwholesome
foods — apple pie, and toast soaked in
butter, and stewed fruit with quanti-
ties of cream and sugar. Nor did
'* Nature " kindly tell me when to
stop, as she apparently does some other
* ' Fletcherites " ; no matter how much
I chewed, if I ate all I wanted I ate
too much. And when I realized this,
and tried to stop it, I went, in my
ignorance, to the other extreme, and
lost fourteen pounds in as many days.
Again, Mr. Fletcher taught me to re-
move all the ** unchewable " parts of
28
PERFKCT HEALTH
the food — the skins of fruit, etc. The
result of this is there is nothing to
stimulate the intestines, and the waste
remains in the body for many days.
Mr. Fletcher says this does not matter,
and he appears to prove that it has not
mattered in his case. But I found
that it mattered very seriously in my
case; it was not until I became a
" Fletcherite " that my headaches
became hopeless and that sluggish in-
testines became one of my chronic
complaints.
I next read the books of Metchnikoff
and Chittenden, who showed me just
how my ailments came to be. The un-
assimilated food lies in the colon, and
bacteria swarm in it, and the poisons
they produce are absorbed into the sys-
tem. I had bacteriological examina-
tions made in my own case, and I
found that when I was feeling well the
29
THE FASTING CURE
number of these toxin-producing germs
was about six billions to the ounce of
intestinal contents; and when, a few
days later, I had a headache, the
number was a hundred and twenty bil-
lions. Here was my trouble under the
microscope, so to speak.
These tests were made at the Battle
Creek Sanitarium, where I went for a
long stay. I tried their system of
water cure, which I found a wonderful
stimulant to the eliminative organs;
but I discovered that, like all other
stimulants, it leaves you in the end just
where you were. My health was im-
proved at the sanitarium, but a week
after I left I was down with the
grippe again.
I gave the next year of my life to
trying to restore my health. I spent
the winter in Bermuda and the summer
in the Adirondacks, both of them
80
PERFECT HEALTH
famous health resorts, and during the
entire time I lived an absolutely
hygienic life. I did not work hard,
and I did not worry, and I did not
think about my health except when I
had to. I lived in the open air all the
time, and I gave most of the day to
vigorous exercise — tennis, walking,
boating and swimming. I mention
this specifically, so that the reader may
perceive that I had eliminated all other
factors of ill-health, and appreciate to
the full my statement that at the end
of the year's time my general health
was worse than ever before.
I was all right so long as I played
tennis all day or climbed mountains.
The trouble came when I settled down
to do brain-work. And from this I
saw perfectly clearly that I was over-
eating; there was surplus food to be
burned up, and when it was not burned
31
THE FASTING CURE
up it poisoned me. But how was I to
stop when I was hungry? I tried
giving up all the things I liked and of
which I ate most ; but that did no good,
because I had such a complacent appe-
tite — I would immediately take to
liking the other things ! I thought
that I had an abnormal appetite, the
result of my early training; but how
was I ever to get rid of it ?
I must not give the impression that
I was a conspicuously hearty eater.
On the contrary, I ate far less than
most people eat. But that was no con-
solation to me. I had wrecked myself
by years of overwork, and so I was
more sensitive. The other people were
going to pieces by slow stages, I could
see ; but I was already in pieces.
So matters stood when I chanced to
meet a lady, whose radiant com-
plexion and extraordinary health were
32
PERFECT HEALTH
a matter of remark to everyone. I was
surprised to hear that for ten or
fifteen years, and until quite recently
she had been a bed-ridden invalid. She
had lived the lonely existence of a
pioneer's wife, and had raised a family
under conditions of shocking ill-health.
She had suffered from sciatica and
acute rheumatism; from a chronic in-
testinal trouble which the doctors
called ** intermittent peritonitis";
from intense nervous weakness, melan-
choly, and chronic catarrh, causing
deafness. And this was the woman
who rode on horseback with me up
Mount Hamilton, in California, a dis-
tance of twenty-eight miles, in one of
the most terrific rain-storms I have
ever witnessed ! We had two untamed
young horses, and only leather bits to
control them with, and we were
pounded and flung about for six mor-
as
THE FASTING CURK
tal hours, which I shall never forget if
I live to be a hundred. And this
woman, when she took the ride, had
not eaten a particle of food for four
days previously!
That was the clue to her escape : she
had cured herself by a fast. She had
abstained from food for eight days,
and all her troubles had fallen from
her. Afterwards she had taken her
eldest son, a senior at Stanford, and
another friend of his, and fasted twelve
days with them, and cured them of
nervous dyspepsia. And then she had
taken a woman friend, the wife of a
Stanford professor, and cured her of
rheumatism by a week's fast. I had
heard of the fasting cure, but this was
the first time I had met with it. I was
too much burdened with work to try it
just then, but I began to read up on the
subject — the books of Dr. Dewey, Dr.
34
PERFECT HEALTH
Hazzard and Mr. Carrington. Coming
home from California I got a sun-
stroke on the Gulf of Mexico, and
spent a week in hospital at Key West,
and that seemed to give the coup de
grace to my long-suffering stomach.
After another spell of hard work I
found myself unable to digest corn-
meal mush and milk; and so I was
ready for a fast.
I began. The fast has become a
commonplace to me now; but I will
assume that it is as new and as start-
ling to the reader as it was to myself at
first, and will describe my sensations
at length.
I was very hungry for the first day
— the unwholesome, ravening sort of
hunger that all dyspeptics know. I
had a little hunger the second morning,
and thereafter, to my very great aston-
ishment, no hunger whatever — no
35
THE FASTING CURE
more interest in food than if I had
never known the taste of it. Previous
to the fast I had had a headache every
day for two or three weeks. It lasted
through the first day and then disap-
peared — never to return. I felt very
weak the second day, and a little dizzy
on arising. I went out of doors and
lay in the sun all day, reading ; and the
same for the third and fourth days —
intense physical lassitude, but with
great clearness of mind. After the
fifth day I felt stronger, and walked a
good deal, and I also began some writ-
ing. No phase of the experience sur-
prised me more than the activity of
my mind : I read and wrote more than
I had dared to do for years before.
During the first four days I lost
fifteen pounds in weight — something
which, I have since learned, was a sign
of the extremely poor state of my
36
PERFECT HEALTH
tissues. Thereafter I lost only two
pounds in eight days — an equally
unusual phenomenon. I slept well
throughout the fast. About the middle
of each day I would feel weak, but a
massage and a cold shower would
refresh me. Towards the end I began
to find that in walking about I would
grow tired in the legs, and as I did not
wish to lie in bed I broke the fast after
the twelfth day with some orange-
juice.
I took the juice of a dozen oranges
during two days, and then went on the
milk diet, as recommended by Bernarr
Macf adden. I took a glassful of warm
milk every hour the first day, every
three-quarters of an hour the next day,
and finally every half -hour — or eight
quarts a day. This is, of course, much
more than can be assimilated, but the
balance serves to flush the system out.
37
THE FASTING CURE
The tissues are bathed in nutriment,
and an extraordinary recuperation is
experienced. In my own case I gained
four and a half pounds in one day —
the third — and gained a total of
thirty-two pounds in twenty-four days.
My sensations on this milk diet were
almost as interesting as on the fast.
In the first place, there was an extra-
ordinary sense of peace and calm, as
if every weary nerve in the body were
purring like a cat under a stove. Next
there was the keenest activity of mind
— I read and wrote incessantly. And,
finally, there was a perfectly ravenous
desire for physical work. In the old
days I had walked long distances and
climbed mountains, but always with
reluctance and from a sense of com-
pulsion. Now, after the cleaning-out
of the fast, I would go into a gymna-
sium and do work which would liter-
38
PERFECT HEALTH
ally have broken my back before, and
I did it with intense enjoyment, and
with amazing results. The muscles
fairly leaped out upon my body ; I sud-
denly discovered the possibility of be-
coming an athlete. I had always been
lean and dyspeptic-looking, with what
my friends called a " spiritual " ex-
pression; I now became as round as a
butter-ball, and so brown and rosy in
the face that I was a joke to all who
saw me.
I had not taken what is called a
** complete " fast — that is, I had not
waited until hunger returned. There-
fore I began again. I intended only
a short fast, but I found that hunger
ceased again, and, much to my sur-
prise, I had none of the former weak-
ness. I took a cold bath and a vigorous
rub twice a day; I walked four miles
every morning, and did light gymna-
39
THE FASTING CURE
fiiuin work, and with nothing save a
slight tendency to chilliness to let me
know that I was fasting. I lost nine
pounds in eight days, and then went
for a week longer on oranges and figs,
and made up most of the weight on
these.
I shall always remember with amuse-
ment the anxious caution with which
I now began to taste the various foods
which before had caused me trouble.
Bananas, acid fruits, peanut butter — I
tried them one by one, and then in com-
bination, and so realized with a thrill
of exultation that every trace of my
old trouble was gone. Formerly I had
had to lie down for an hour or two
after meals; now I could do whatever
I chose. Formerly I had been depend-
ent upon all kinds of laxative pre-
parations; now I forgot about them.
I no longer had headaches. I went
40
PERFEC5T HEALTH
bareheaded in the rain, I sat in cold
draughts of air, and was apparently
immune to colds. And, above all, I
had that marvellous, abounding
energy, so that whenever I had a spare
minute or two I would begin to stand
on my head, or to " chin " myself, or
do some other " stunt," from sheer
exuberance of animal spirits.
For several months after this experi-
ence I lived upon a diet of raw foods
exclusively — mainly nuts and fruits. T
had been led to regard this as the
natural diet for human beings; and I
found that so long as I was leading an
active life the results were most satis-
factory. They were satisfactory also
in the case of my wife, and still more
so in the case of my little boy; the
amount of work and bother thus saved
in the household may be imagined.
But when I came to settle down to a
41 D
THE FASTING CURB
long period of hard and continuous
writing, I found that I had not suflB
cient bodily energy to digest these raw
foods. I resorted to fasting and milk
alternately — and that is well enough
for a time, but it proves a nervous
strain in the end. Recently a friend
called my attention to the late Dr.
Salisbury's book, " The Relation of
Alimentation to Disease." Dr. Salis-
bury recommends a diet of broiled beef
and hot water as the solution of most
of the problems of the human body;
and it may be believed that, I who had
been a rigid and enthusiastic vege-
tarian for three or four years, found
this a startling idea. However, X
make a specialty of keeping an open
mind, and I set out to try the Salis-
bury system. I am sorry to have to
say that it seems to be a good one;
sorry because the vegetarian way of
42
PERFECT HEALTH
life is SO obviously the cleaner and more
humane and more convenient. But it
seems to me that I am able to do more
work and harder work with my mind
while eating beefsteaks than under
any other regime; and while this con-
tinues to be the case there will be one
less vegetarian in the world.
The fast is to me the key to eternal
youth, the secret of perfect and per-
manent health. I would not take any-
thing in all the world for my know-
ledge of it. It is Nature's safety-
valve, an automatic protection against
disease. I do not venture to assert
that I am proof against virulent
diseases, such as smallpox or typhoid
I know one ardent physical culturist, a
physician, who takes typhoid germs at
intervals in order to prove his im-
munity, but I should not care to go
that far; it is enough for me to know
43
THE FASTING CURE
that I am proof against all the common
infections which plague us, and
against all the ** chronic " troubles.
And I shall continue so just as long
as I stand by my present resolve, which
is to fast at the slightest hint of any
symptom of ill-being — a cold or a
headache, a feeling of depression, or a
coated tongue, or a scratch on the
finger which does not heal quickly.
Those who have made a study of the
fast explain its miracles in the follow-
ing way : Superfluous nutriment is
taken into the system and ferments,
and the body is filled with a greater
quantity of poisonous matter than the
organs of elimination can handle. The
result is the clogging of these organs
and of the blood-vessels — such is the
meaning of headaches and rheuma-
tism, arteriosclerosis, paralysis, apo-
plexy, Blight's disease, cirrhosis, etc.
44
PERFECT HEALTH
And by impairing the blood and lower-
ing the vitality, this same condition
prepares the system for infection — for
*' colds," or pneumonia, or tubercu-
losis, or any of the fevers. As soon as
the fast begins, and the first hunger
has been withstood, the secretions
cease, and the whole assimilative sys-
tem, which takes so much of the ener-
gies of the body, goes out of business.
The body then begins a sort of house-
cleaning, which must be helped by an
enema and a bath daily, and, above all,
by copious water-drinking. The
tongue becomes coated, the breath and
the perspiration offensive; and this
continues until the diseased matter has
been entirely cast out, when the tongue
clears and hunger reasserts itself in
unmistakable form.
The loss of weight during the fast is
generally about a pound a day. The
45
THE FASTINQ CUBE
fat is used first, and after that the
muscular tissue ; true starvation begins
only when the body has been reduced
to the skeleton and the viscera. Fasts
of forty and fifty days are now quite
common — I have met several who have
taken them.
Strange as it may seem, the fast is a
cure for both emaciation and obesity.
After a complete fast the body will
come to its ideal weight. People who
are very stout will not regain their
weight; while people who are under
weight may gain a pound or more a
day for a month. There are two dan-
gers to be feared in fasting. The first
is that of fear. I do not say this as a
jest. No one should begin to fast until
he has read up on the subject and con-
vinced himself that it is the thing to
do; if possible he should have with him
someone who has already had the ex-
46
PERFECT HEALTH
perience. He should not have about
him terrified aunts and cousins who
will tell him that he looks like a corpse,
that his pulse is below forty, and that
his heart may stop beating in the
night. I took a fast of three days out
in California; on the third day I
walked about fifteen miles, off and on,
and, except that I was restless, I never
felt better. And then in the evening I
came home and read about the Messina
earthquake, and how the relief ships
arrived, and the wretched survivors
crowded down to the water's edge and
tore each other like wild beasts in
their rage of hunger. The paper set
forth, in horrified language, that some
of them had been seventy-two hours
without food. I, as I read, had also
been seventy-two hours without food;
and the difference was simply that they
thought they were starving. And if
47
THE FASTING CURB
at some crisis during a long fast, when
you feel nervous and weak and
doubting, some people with stronger
wills than your own are able to arouse
in you the terrors of the earthquake
survivors, they can cause their most
direful anticipations to be realised.
The other danger is in breaking the
fast. A person breaking a long fast
should regard himself as if he were
liable to seizures of violent insanity.
I know a man who fasted fifty days,
and then ate half a dozen figs, and
caused intestinal abrasions from which
he lost a great deal of blood. I would
dwell more upon this topic were it not
for my discovery of the ** milk diet.*'
When you drink a glass of milk every
half-hour you have no chance to get
really hungry, and so you glide, as if
by magic, from a condition of extreme
emaciation to one of blooming
48
PERFECT HEALTH
rotundity. But very frequently the
milk diet disagrees with people; and
these have to break the fast with very
small quantities of the simplest foods
— fruit juices and meat broths for the
first two or three days at least.
I will conclude this chapter by nar-
rating the experiences of some other
persons with the fasting cure. With
the exception of one, the second case,
they are all people whom I know per-
sonally, and who have told me their
stories with their own lips.
First, I give the case of my wife.
She has always been frail, and sub-
ject to sore throats since girlhood. In
the past five years she has undergone
three major surgical operations and
had several serious illnesses besides.
Two years ago she had a severe attack
of appendicitis. The physician made
a wrong diagnosis, and kept her alive
49
THE FASTING CURE
for about ten days with morphine.
She was then too low to risk an opera-
tion, and was not expected to live. It
was several months before she was able
to walk again, and she had never fully
recovered from the experience. When
she began the fast she was suffering
from serious stomach trouble, loss of
weight, and neurasthenia.
I did not think that she would be
able to stand a fast. She had more
trouble than I — some nervousness,
headache and nausea. But she stood
it for ten days, when her tongue
cleared suddenly. She had lost twelve
pounds, and she then gained twenty-
two pounds in seventeen days. She
then took another fast of six days with
me, and with no more trouble than I
experienced the second time — walking
four miles every morning with me.
She is now a picture of health, and is
50
PERFECT HEALTH
engaged in accumulating muscle with
enthusiasm.
Second, a man well on in life, who
had always abused his health. He
suffered from asthma and dropsy, and
Tvas saturated with drugs. He had
not been able to lie down for several
years. He weighed over 220 pounds
and his legs were '* like sacks of
water, leaking continually." His kid-
neys had refused to act, and after his
doctors had tried all the drugs they
knew, he was told that he was dying.
His brother, who narrated the circum-
stances to me, persuaded him not to eat
the supper that was brought in to him,
and so he lived through the night. He
fasted seven days, and went for four
weeks longer on a very light diet, and
is now chopping wood and pitching
hay upon his farm in Kentucky.
Third, a young physician, as a col-
51
THE FASTING CURE
lege boy a physical wreck from dissi-
pation, now twenty- four. " A born
neurastheniac." He was attacked by
appendicitis twice in succession. He
fasted five days after the last attack,
and six days later on. Gained thirty-
five pounds, and is a splendidly
developed athlete ; he runs five miles in
26 minutes and 15 seconds, and rode a
wheel 500 miles in seven days.
Fourth, a young lady, who had suf-
fered a nervous collapse caused by
overwork and worry. The bones of
her spine had softened; her hip-bones
tilted upwards three-quarters of an
inch; she was " barely able to crawl
on two sticks." She fasted ten days,
and again eight days, and took the
milk diet for six weeks. I have seen
her every day for the last eight or ten
weeks, and I do not think that I ever
met a woman who impressed me as
52
PERFECT HEALTH
possessing more superabundant and
radiant health.
Fifth, a young man, injured in a
railroad wreck; a rib broken and the
outer lining of the lungs punctured.
Still has an opening for drainage,
caused by chafing of the membranes.
Suffered in succession attacks of bron-
chitis, typhoid, pneumonia and pleu-
risy. Was reduced from 186 to 119
pounds, and had planned to take his
life. Fasted six days, gained twenty-
seven pounds, and plays tennis
vigorously, in spite of having an open-
ing in his chest. Recently walked 442
miles in eleven days.
Sixth, a lady, married, and in mid-
dle life, a life-long sufferer from
stomach trouble; had experienced six
attacks of inflammatory rheumatism,
resulting in valvular heart disease and
the loss of the use of her limbs. Fasted
fiS
THB FASTING CURE
four times — four, eight, twenty-eight,
and fourteen days. I can best describe
her present condition by saying that
all this summer she arose every morn-
ing at daybreak, walked four and a
half miles, went for a swim, and then
walked home for breakfast.
Seventh, an Episcopal clergyman,
who had suffered almost all his life
from indigestion; had an acute attack
of gastritis, followed by nervous pros-
tration and complete breakdown.
Specialists had diagnosed his case as
* ' prolapsed stomach and bowels, auto-
intoxication and neurasthenia," and
told him that he could not expect to
get well in less than five years. He
was so emaciated that he could hardly
creep around, and, despite the fact
that he had a wife and six children,
was contemplating suicide. He fasted
eleven days, and then gained thirty
5i
PERFECT HlflALTH
pounds. I am prepared to testify that
he is the most hard-working, cheerful
and athletic clergyman it has ever been
my fortune to meet.
I have taken some trouble to investi-
gate the subject of the fast, and to
meet people who have been through
the experience. I could give a dozen
more cases such as the above if space
permitted. I know one man who
reduced his weight from 365 pounds
to 235. I know one little girl whose
spine was bent in the shape of a letter
U lying sideways, and who, by means
of fasting and a diet of fruits exclu-
sively, has come four inches nearer to
straightness in a few months. She
has the complexion of perfect health,
and is rapidly recovering the use of
arms and legs, which were paralyzed
years ago.
The reader may think that my en-
56
THE PASTING CURE
thusiasm over the fasting cure is due
to my imaginative temperament ; I can
only say that I have never yet met a
person who has given the fast a fair
trial who does not describe his experi-
ence in the same way. I have never
heard of any harm resulting from it,
save only in cases of tuberculosis, in
which I have been told by one physi-
cian that people have lost weight and
not regained it.
I regard the fast as Nature's own
remedy for all other diseases. It is
the only remedy which is based upon
an understanding of the fundamental
nature of disease. And I believe that
when the glad tidings of its miracles
have reached the people it will lead to
the throwing of 90 per cent, of our pre-
sent materia medica into the waste-
basket. This may be unwelcome to
those physicians who are more con-
M
PERFECT HEALTH
cerned with their own income than
they are with the health of their
patients; but I personally have never
met any such physicians, and so I most
earnestly urge it upon medical men to
investigate the extraordinary and
almost incredible facts about the fast-
ing cure.
Shortly after the above was com-
pleted the writer had another interest-
ing experience with the fast. He had
occasion to do some work which kept
him indoors for a couple of weeks,
under considerable strain; and after
that to spend the greater part of a
week in the dentist's chair suffering a
good deal of pain ; and finally to spend
two days and nights in a railroad
train. He arrived at his destination
57 B
THE FASTING CURE
with every symptom of what long and
painful experience has taught him to
recognize as a severe attack of the
** grippe." (The last attack laid him
up in hospital for a week, and left him
so reduced that he could hardly stand.)
On this occasion he fasted, and al-
though circumstances compelled him
to be up and about during the entire
time, every trace of ill-feeling had left
him in two days. Having started,
however, he continued the fast for
twelve days. During this time he
planned a play, and wrote two-thirds
of it, and he has reason to think that it
is as good work as he has ever done.
It is worth noting that on the eighth
day he was strong enough to ** chin "
himself six times in succession, though
previous to the fasting treatment he
had never in his life been able to do
this more than once or twice.
68
PERFECT HEALTH
A Letter to the New York Times.
(unfit to 'print)
Arden, Del., May 31, 1910.
Editor of the Times, New York City,
Dear Sir, — Some time ago your
news columns contained a despatch to
the effect that three young ladies in
Garden City, Long Island, were under-
taking a three days' fast as a result
of reading a magazine article recom-
mending this measure. In your
editorial referring to this despatch,
you say that the ladies are ** the vic-
tims of a shallow and unscrupulous
sensationalist." As I am the writer
of the magazine article in question, I
presume that this means me. I did
not intend to make any reply to the
remark, as I figure that I must have
long ago lost whatever reputation
could be taken from me by newspaper
comments. Thinking the matter over,
however, I concluded that I would ven-
ture a mild protest, not on my own
account, but for the sake of the im-
&9
THE FASTING CURfc
portant discovery of which I told in
the article in question.
It is one of the privileges incidental
to owning a newspaper that one can
call other people names with impunity,
and can always have the last word in
any argument. Will, however, your
sense of fair play give me the privilege
of asking you to state just what you
meant by the slur in question ? In the
magazine article I stated that I had
taken several fasts of ten or twelve
days' duration, with the result of a
complete making over of my health. I
presume that the writer of the editorial
had read the article before he con-
demned it. Am I to understand that
he got from the article the impression
that I was telling lies, and that I had
never really taken the fasts as I said I
had taken them? Or was it his idea
that I exaggerated the benefits derived
therefrom, in order to make ** vic-
tims " of the three young ladies in
Garden City?
I might say that I took the fasts in
question in an institution where hun-
PERFECT HEALTH
dreds of people were fasting anywhere
from three to fifty days; that during
the entire time I was under the obser-
vation of many people ; my weight was
taken regularly every day, and all the
S3rmptoms which I described were
observed by physicians and friends.
May I also call attention to the fact
that I published in the article two
photographs, one of which was taken
four years ago, and the other of which
was taken after the fasting treatment ?
The contrast between these two photo-
graphs was sufficiently striking, it
seems to me, to impress anyone. May
I also call attention to the fact that
the article was found of sufficient in-
terest to be published in one of the
most representative of the English
monthlies, the Contemporary Review ?
Also that the Contem.'porary Review
appended to the article the testimony
of half a dozen people whose cases 1
had myself observed, and whose letters
I have in my possession?
I fully recognize the fact that many
of the things for which I stand as a
n
THE FASTING CURE
writer are abhorrent to you, but surely
that is no reason for condemning reck-
lessly and blindly an important dis-
covery concerning human health,
simply because I happen to be the
person who is telling about it. Setting
aside all personalities, and simply in
the interest of the discovery in ques-
tion, I respectfully invite you to make
an investigation of the claims which
I have set forth in that article. Let
me give you the names of some people
who have fasted either under my
direction or in my presence, and who
will tell a representative of your paper
of the results it has brought to them.
I can tell you of a dozen such people.
Also, perhaps by way of preliminary,
you might be willing to publish as an
appendix to this letter of mine the
communication from another of my
" victims," omitting the name of the
writer unless you obtain permission to
use it.
Yours truly,
Upton Sinclair.
PERFECT HEALTH
Appended to the above was the
letter which the reader will find in the
Appendix, page 182, The Times did
not publish this letter, nor did it pay
any attention to several letters of pro-
test which followed. I leave it to the
reader to judge whether the silence of
the paper was one of dignity or of fear.
The following despatch from the New
York World of May 17, 1910, records
the experiences of the Garden City
ladies, and makes clear how much in
need of sympathy my " victims "
were.
All three of the young women are
in rare spirits. They have gone about
their usual occupations and recrea-
tions, and Mrs. Trask found time
yesterday to talk about the single tax
in the course of a conversation that had
to do primarily with her newer
interest.
*' We are getting the most extra-
63
THE PASTING CURB
ordinary number of letters about this
adventure of ours," Mrs. Trask said.
*' They began to come the first day,
and to-day there were lots of them.
They come from some of the most un-
expected places and they contain some
of the most unexpected things.
" What most astonishes me is that
of all those who write to tell us that
they have tried just what we are doing,
not one has told us of a failure. There
isn't any reason why they shouldn't
write to say that we are foolish and
that we can't hope to gain what we
want, but dozens of them have reiter-
ated the promise that we'll never regret
having made our experiment.
*' One New York woman told us
something that we had wondered about
more than once. Her husband had
suffered greatly from rheumatism, and
finally he tried fasting. Not dieting
like ourselves, but fasting. He went
without food of any kind, she said, for
nineteen days. He kept on at his
work, too, which was the thing we had
been wondering about.
64
PBRPRCT HEALTH
** We've heard from another phy-
sician, too. He lives in Boston and
has made a specialty of dietetics. He
warned us not to stick too closely to
milk, because we'd find that after a
day or two it would quit being of the
service it had been at first. People
we never heard of tell us that thus and
so was their experience, and when we
measure our own discoveries beside
theirs we find new and convincing
evidence that we picked the true way
to the end we hoped to reach.
" I know that for myself I'll have
reason to be grateful always that I
took this up. We have been greatly
benefited.*'
65
Thus Article Chapter 1:The Fasting Cure PERFECT HEALTH by Upton Sinclair from archive.org
That's an article Chapter 1:The Fasting Cure PERFECT HEALTH by Upton Sinclair from archive.org This time, hopefully can give benefits to all of you. well, see you in posting other articles.
You are now reading the article Chapter 1:The Fasting Cure PERFECT HEALTH by Upton Sinclair from archive.org with the link address https://polennews.blogspot.com/2018/02/chapter-1the-fasting-cure-perfect.html
0 Response to "Chapter 1:The Fasting Cure PERFECT HEALTH by Upton Sinclair from archive.org"
Post a Comment