Fasting for the cure of disease/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
PREPARATION FOR THE FAST
"Do not think that what is hard for thee to master if impossible for man; but if a thing is possible and proper to man, deem it attainable by thee."
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.
CHAPTER IV.
PREPARATION FOR THE FAST
WHEN disease appears in humankind, it is, as said before, not only a warning but a curative process. The disturbing element needs removal, the tired, abused organs need rest and repair. Instinctively real food desire, true hunger, disappears; in fact, for some time previous to actual disability, hunger has been absent. Appetite or stimulated demand for sustenance may, however, remain in evidence even after illness is manifest; but disease and hunger cannot exist at the same time within the human body.
Bodily functions are swift in their adaptability to circumstances, and bodily organs accomodate themselves and their labors even to abuse. Consequently, in a system accustomed to years of excess food supply, nature carries on existence in spite of handicap until accumulation and subsequent decomposition institute disease. Were the subject to recognize the fact that prevention of later evil lies entirely in his own hands, the greater part of physical suffering would be eradicated; but prevention compels personal denial in personal habit and enjoyment; and denial in these respects is the hardest of all virtues to inculcate and to practice.
The simplicity of the application of the fast constitutes its chief drawback. To the mind convinced on final argument of the efficacy of the method, nothing is more easy than to begin the omission of the daily ration, irrespective of the mental and physiological changes that are involved. Food stimulation, always an important factor in disease, asserts the power of habit over the body; and, even though the will of the patient has been brought to understand the futility of dependence upon artificial aids to health, as embodied in medicine and in methods akin to it, general knowledge is lacking concerning the proper means to pursue in order to overcome habit and to meet the physiological mutations that ensue when food is denied the body for the purpose of prevention or of cure.
The cultivation of a habit is a slow and insidious process, and so, in lesser degree, is its destruction. Abruptly to cease an act or a bodily function that has become constant causes both physical and mental disturbances. Witness, for instance, the attempts of a victim of tobacco, alcohol, or morphine to escape from the toils. Will power, the highest attribute of mind, alone can accomplish the result. In many cases the will required to begin the fast is present, and food might at once be denied were this the sole consideration. But, because natural physiological change is always gradual in fulfilment, similar approach to absolute cessation of function is not only desirable but imperative. The ideal way of effecting the readjustment of organic action, that is the consequence of lowering to zero the intake of food, is to diminish by degrees the amount ingested. To omit all food suddenly when approaching a fast sets the stomach clamoring for supply at the hours which habit has fixed, and the results of deprivation are then comparable to those experienced by the toper or the victim of drugs when drink or narcotic is denied. Nervous reaction is at once apparent and depression follows. Only in acute disease should abrupt entrance to the fast occur, and this solely because nature demands at this time prompt and strenuous measures. Daily baths and enemata, mechanical accessories for the maintenance of cleanliness and aids to elimination, mark the commencement of the treatment ; and these accompaniments, with the omission of the morning meal, mark the first stage of approach to the period of total abstinence from food. Omitting breakfast and lessening quantity at the other meals paves the way; and, in the ordinary case of functional disease, the gradual diminution of food supply should occupy an interim of not more than ten days or two weeks, after which the other meals should in succession be dropped. Thus the system is prepared without any noticeable change, save that of relief, for entire deprivation of food, for the absolute cessation of the function of digestion.
In the event that the omission of the morning meal occasions undue distress, as sometimes happens, ripe fruit in small quantity may be eaten at the usual hour. Caution requires that sweet fruit and acid fruit be not mixed at any one time. Soups made of vegetables gradually becoming lighter in food value should constitute the remaining meals, which are successively dropped until all food is denied. It is well to use the juices of fruit alone for the last few days before entering the fast.
In the ordinary patient the omission of breakfast, as suggested above, causes slight disturbances, such as dizziness, headache, or stomach pains. These are the results of habitchange. Later they disappear usually within three or four days and there are ordinarily no unpleasant symptoms when the other meals are omitted. In the no-breakfast period, elimination of digestive toxins begins to gain over their formation, and, as the patient gradually diminishes ingestion, the fact that the body is undergoing a cleansing process becomes most evident from the daily discharges in the enemata, and from the odor that emanates from the skin and the breath. These results make it apparent that years of overburdened digestive functions and of consequent imperfect nutrition have loaded the tissues with toxins, and that a complete cleansing of the system, with rest for the organs of digestion and a rearrangement in nature and manner of food supply, is necessary for regaining a physical balance. A fresh foundation must be constructed as the old is removed, and a change in internal condition must be effected by destroying the active cause of disease, and by renewing, through rest, the functions of those organs that have been long hampered in operation.
The most important of the organs connected with the digestive process is the liver. It stands at the portal of the circulation of the blood like a faithful sentry. It receives digested food products, as they are absorbed through the walls of the intestines, and it separates that which may be used for the rebuilding of tissue from that which is waste. Its products are thus, on the one hand, blood filled with nutriment, and, on the other, the peculiar secretion known as bile. The latter it stores in the gall bladder, whence it is supplied to the intestines as needed in the digestion of food. Nature is loath to cast out any material as useless, and the function of the liver by which constituents of the blood, otherwise useless, are utilized for further digestive operation in the form of bile, is one of the most striking instances of her economy.
When overworked by overfeeding or other abuse, the liver cannot perform its function of inspection successfully, and more or less of the poison retained, absorbed from fermenting refuse in the intestines, is carried into the circulation. Excess of bile is manifested, and with it the headache, the cold, or the bilious attack appears, all warnings of further disease.
The minute cells of the liver have individual work to perform in separating nutritive matter from waste; and, unless care be taken to furnish a food supply correct in proportion and quality, bile is secreted in amount larger than the system demands or requires, and is itself absorbed and reabsorbed, with additions from other sources, until congestion results, the circulation is vitiated, and the bowels are filled with bilious toxins that poison and re-poison indefinitely. All habits having a tendency to cause digestive disturbance, such as the use of tobacco or alcohol, careless eating and overeating, hinder the functioning of the liver. Any clogging or interference with its duties prevents the blood from receiving the benefit of its inspection, and an impure product is the result. All parts of the body will show distressing symptoms of fatigue and of exhaustion if the cells of the liver become diseased or useless through intemperate living or through ignorance of the specific duty belonging to it as an organ of the human machine. And this, of course, is true with reference to the functions of any other of the vital organs of the body ; but so closely is the liver allied to the immediate work of digestion that the detailed description given of its labors is deemed essential to a full understanding of the method discussed herein.
As will be discovered, there are two distinct plans to be followed when the fast is used as a means for the relief and cure of disease. One of these requires the patient to continue the period of abstinence to its logical and complete conclusion, the return of hunger, and its duration is problematical. The other, of equal value in milder complaints than those for which the finish-fast is employed, makes use of shorter intervals of abstinence from food, alternating with periods of restricted diet. What has been written in this connection may then be qualified to the extent that, when short fasts of one or two days, or of a week, are undertaken for the relief of temporary indisposition or for the prevention of acute disease, no such extended preparation as is described is needful. For the long fast, the fast that cleanses the system to purity, preparation as outlined must be precedent. The short fast and the compulsory fast in acute disease alone may be abruptly begun.
The salutary caution is added that, when impending illness is apparent, several weeks or even months of preparatory diet will render the system amenable to the complete cleansing results of the absolute fast, and, barring organic defects, will preclude many unpleasant consequences in symptoms. The value of the enema or internal bath during both the period of preparation and the fast itself, as well as its employment in health, will later be fully discussed.