Just what is the process of the fast cure? I do not pretend to know positively. I can only make guesses, and wait for science to investigate. I believe that the main source of the diseases of civilized man is improper nutrition, and the clogging of the system with food poisons in various stages. And when you fast you do two things: first, you stop entirely the fresh supply of those food poisons, and second, you allow the whole of the body's digestive and assimilative tract to rest--to go to sleep, as it were--so that all the body's energy may go to other organs. The body carries with it at all times a surplus store of nutriment, which can be taken up and used by the blood stream, apparently with much less trouble than is required to convert fresh food to the body's uses. In other words, the body can feed on its own tissues more easily than it can feed from the stomach. In the fast you may lose anywhere from half a pound to two pounds in weight per day, and this will be taken, first from your store of fat, and then from your muscular tissues. Every part of your muscular tissue will be taken, before anything is taken from your vital organs, your nerves or your blood-stream. So long as there is a particle of muscular material left, so long as you can make even the slightest movement of one finger, you are still fasting, and it is only when your muscular tissue is all gone that you begin at last to starve. So far as I know, the cases of MacSwiney and the other Irishman are the only cases on record where fasters have died of starvation. What the body does during the fast is quite plain, and can be told by many symptoms. It begins a thorough house-cleaning, throwing out poisonous material by every channel. The perspiration and the breath become offensive, the tongue becomes heavily coated, so that you can scrape the material off with a knife. I have heard vegetarians explain this by saying that when the body is living off its own tissues, it is following a cannibal diet; but that is all nonsense, because you can live on meat exclusively, and quickly satisfy yourself that none of these symptoms occurs. It is evident that the body is taking advantage of the opportunity to get rid of waste products; and this will go on for ten days, for twenty days, in some cases for as long as forty or fifty days; and then suddenly occurs a strange thing: in spite of the "cannibal diet" the symptoms all come to a sudden end. The tongue clears, the breath becomes sweet, the appetite suddenly awakens.