The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-CureDewey, Edward Hooker
Science
The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure
Dewey, Edward Hooker
Fasting; Nutrition
After a week of fasting there came a natural desire for food, and thence
on he enjoyed without distress of stomach all he wished to take. Thence
on he lived with only the least discomfort, and with whispering lips he
dictated to me his will, conveying large property. He could look with
meaning when the power to whisper was gone, and life ended as the going
out of a candle.
For months his sufferings had nearly all been due to food masses in a
state of decomposition. He saw clearly and mentioned often that his had
been a case of starvation from overfeeding. Nature finally had to
succumb because she was not also able to deal with a clearly avoidable
disease, indigestion; but she kept up a brave fight until the body was
nearly absorbed.
As soon as the stomach and bowels became empty the friends noticed that
nervousness largely disappeared. His sleeps were much longer, because
not broken by coughing as before; and as the brain was not taxed with
food masses there was an accumulation of power that was clearly revealed
in the cheer of expression and a calmness as if heavenly rest had come
at last.
A few years ago an attorney in this city had to endure a course of fever
to which was added all the known barbarism of the times. Under enforced
food and stimulants his mind at last became so weak that the dosings
were forced down his throat. There were many weeks of life at lowest ebb
before the man of torture (the doctor) was compelled to discontinue his
evil work, and there were then months, extending to years, during which
there appeared a colorless ghost of his former self on the streets--and
this in spite of a wood-chopper's daily eatings, which were far in
excess of power to digest.
At last he was brought to his couch with a mild fever complicated with a
variety of other ailings. Not one of his friends who knew him
intimately expected his recovery, as it was believed by them that there
were chronic conditions that were beyond cure, and this because there
had been death in manner, movements, and looks for months. And yet he
had been able to take a stomach to his office every morning for many
weeks filled with pancakes, sausage, fried potatoes, etc., only to
shiver before the stove between his stomach-fillings.
To this possibly hopeless case I was called, and from that time he was
to suffer only from the disease. For nearly three weeks no food was
called for; and yet power so increased that he became able to dress
himself; and on the morning before hunger finally called for food he
came down from his bedroom with a son on his back who weighed not less
than seventy-five pounds. Thence on, life, color, mind, muscle, rapidly
came until there was such regeneration as to reveal a new body and a new
soul.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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