In the course of my experiments, whenever I have fed my cold as far as I wished or dared to go, I have, in every instance, banished the disease by entirely abstaining from food for a time; I have never known this remedy (if applied at the very onset) to fail of "breaking up" a common cold in twenty-four to forty-eight hours, whatever the age, sex, or occupation of the patient. However we may differ as to the origin of the disorder, whenever I can prevail upon a sufferer to try this remedy, we come to be of one opinion as to what will most surely and speedily "cure" it.
Of course the size of the "dose" must bear some relation to the severity of the case:[1] On the first appearance of the disease—the symptoms of a slight cold, so familiar to all—skipping a single meal, in the case of a person who takes but two meals a day habitually, or two meals, in the case of a three-mealer, will sometimes suffice, if the succeeding meals be very moderate ones. I have usually, in my experimentation, been satisfied to "turn" at the "one-meal buoy," not often being obliged to abstain longer than twenty-four hours. When, however, I have chosen to prolong the experiment by continuing to eat heartily, as is the custom with people in general at such times, I have found my experience identical with theirs: the symptoms would increase in severity, and to nasal catarrh, headache, slight feverishness, and languor, would be added sore-throat, perhaps, with pressure at the lungs, hoarseness, increased fever, and entire indisposition for exertion. In this case, two, perhaps three days' fasting would be required, with a little extra sponging of the skin, to completely restore the balance. Out-door air is desirable, and—when not demanding too great effort—exercise. Air-baths, when there is much feverishness of the skin, are comforting and curative. The practice of holding down the bed-clothes, in case of fever and delirium, lest the burning body "catch cold," and of stinting the supply of fresh air for the same reason, is no less irrational than to withhold water or to offer food.
Years of study and observation have forced me to the conclusion that the disease which manifests the symptoms popularly supposed to indicate that a cold has been caught is to all intents and purposes a
- ↑ In the "Boston Journal of Chemistry," February, 1882, I reported a case of consumption (the patient, seventy years old, had been declining for three years, and was helpless in bed) cured by a forty-three days' fast. He had been a great sufferer; but his cough and pains gradually disappeared during the first two weeks. Within four months thereafter, on a fruit-and-bread diet, he had regained his normal weight and strength. A bad case of malarial fever, the past summer, yielded to a twelve days' fast, and nothing else. Another patient suffering from rheumatism, with night-sweats, fasted thirteen days, obtaining great relief. His night-sweats ceased the fourth day. Dr. Wood, Professor of Chemistry in Bishop's College, Montreal, reports for the Canada "Medical Record" forty-seven cases of acute articular rheumatism cured by fasting time required, from four to eight days and a recent letter assures me that this remedy is still successful with him. He consequently has come to regard rheumatism as "a phase of indigestion."
