In the following complaints the benefit derived from temporary abstinence from food are most marked; the acute symptoms, as catarrhal discharges, feverishness, or pain, shortly disappear (when the fast may be broken), and the disorders themselves may be eradicated by a wholesome regimen such as would, in the first instance, have prevented them: acute catarrh, “rose,” or “hay” fever, influenza, feverishness, fever (one to six days, or until convalescence), neuralgia (including headache and toothache). The list might be extended somewhat, but enough has been said to illustrate the principle that “fresh air, fasting, and exercise is Nature’s triple panacea” for the pain and discomfort experienced in a wide range of disorders where the necessity exists for excreting poisonous elements, and resting the viscera concerned in alimentation. “This exasperation of irritation _in the viscera_, and for the most part in the ganglionic network about the stomach and liver,” says an eminent medical author, “is an invariable concomitant and cause” [of neuralgia, and all chronic nerve aches]. HINTS AND APHORISMS. A well-knit frame never “drops a stitch.”——A chilly person is a sick person: good health, not good clothes, nor artificial heat, keeps a man feeling warm.——A rear guard: “I shall bring him out of this all right,” says the doctor,——“if no new complication arises”; and then he prescribes a drug or a compound of drugs, which tends to provoke the complication. For hundreds of years it has been, and, in general practice, still is the aim in sickness, to excite the organism to greater exertion in this, that or the other direction, _by giving it more to do_; the new gospel teaches that the true theory is, to enable Nature to put forth her energies in the most life-saving manner, albeit in her own fashion, by giving her more to do _with_: fresh air, sunshine, cleanliness, water,——the latter _pure_, _i.e._, without the everlasting drug which constitutes the “more to do.” It is a hackneyed expression, that “a man is either a fool or his own physician at forty”; but if he then find himself neither whole nor mending, he is a fool if he does not seek advice. Stomach digestion demands a period of leisure; hence the rule, “Never eat till you have leisure to digest.”——Assimilation and nutrition demand peace of mind, to ensure the best results; in sickness, especially, “the balance of power” often lies in this direction. NOTE.——It should be understood that aside from the above hint, the foregoing disorders are to be considered by the reader in connection with the teachings of this volume as a whole. (See concluding paragraph in the chapter on Bright’s Disease.)