Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Science
Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)
Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Diet; Hygiene
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 class 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, entitled 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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