Fasting for the cure of disease/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
STARVATION
"Repletion and Starvation may both do harm in two contrary extremes."
Burton: Anatomy of Melancholy.
CHAPTER II
STARVATION
Death from starvation frequently occurs when the body is overfed. The purpose of food is that of nourishing body tissue, a purely mechanical process for use in growth and rebuilding. In the event that, through errors in digestion, organic defect, or fault in the functions of absorption and assimilation, tissue waste is not replaced as broken down, starvation and death result. If any one of these conditions exists, the more food supplied, the less resistance to disease succeeds, since energy is then directed towards the elimination of food products that cannot be utilized because of physical inability in the ultimate processes of growth. Exhaustion and, after a time, death occur.
Death from starvation cannot take place in a fast when organic disease is absent. In every animate body a reserve supply of nourishment is held in the interstices of tissue
cells. The brain and the nerves are directly 
Mrs. J. Obesity. Photograph of subject taken
before treatment; weight, 250 pounds. 
Mrs. J. at end of fast of thirty-four days, weight 145 pounds. A remarkable reduction of 105 pounds accomplished by treatment. mine disasters, and the like, digestive function is paralyzed primarily by mental apprehension due to the situation. If death occur in these circumstances, within several days or weeks, it must be attributed, not to want of nourishment, but to the effect of general emotional exhaustion upon physical force.
For the purposes of the text, Starvation may be defined as the denial of food by accident or design to a system, non-diseased, but clamoring for sustenance. Hunger indicates the need, and, whenever its call is sounded, fatal consequences ensue in case of neglect or omission to feed.
Thus emphasizing the distinction between the state of the human body in a fast, and its condition in the process of starvation, detailed examination of these subjects is left for other chapters.