Those who are fasting should mix their drinking water with the juice of acid fruits, preferably lemon, orange or grapefruit. These juices act as eliminators and are fine natural antiseptics.

Never use distilled water, whether during a fast or at any other time. Deprived of its own mineral const.i.tuents, distilled water leeches the mineral elements and organic salts out of the tissues of the body and thereby intensifies dysemic [blood deterioration]

conditions.

While fasting, the right mental att.i.tude is all-important. Unless you can do it with perfect equanimity, without fear or misgiving, do not fast at all. Destructive mental conditions may more than offset the beneficial effects of the fast.

To recapitulate: Never undertake a prolonged fast unless you have been properly prepared by natural diet and treatment, and never without the guidance of a competent Nature Cure doctor.

Fasting in Chronic Diseases

At all times some of our patients can be found fasting; but they do not begin until the right physiological and psychological moment has arrived, until the fast is indicated. When the organism, or rather the individual cell, is ready to begin the work of elimination, then a.s.similation should cease for the time being, because it interferes with the excretory processes going on in the system.

To fast before the system is ready for it, means mineral salts starvation and defective elimination.

Given a vigorous, positive const.i.tution, enc.u.mbered with too much flesh and with a tendency to chronic constipation, rheumatism, gout, apoplexy and other diseases due to food poisoning, a fast may be indicated from the beginning. But it is different with persons of the weak, negative type.

Ordinarily, the organism resembles a huge sponge, which absorbs the elements of nutrition from the digestive tract. During a fast the process is reversed, the sponge is being squeezed and gives off the impurities contained in it.

However, this is a purely mechanical process and deals only with the mechanical aspect of disease: with the presence of waste matter in the system. It does not take into consideration the chemical aspect of disease. We have learned that most of the morbid matter in the system has its origin in the acid waste products of starchy and protein digestion.

In rheumatism and gout, the colloid (glue-like) and earthy deposits collect in the joints and muscular tissues; in arteriosclerosis, in the arteries and veins; in paralysis, epilepsy and kindred diseases, in brain and nerve tissues.

The acc.u.mulation of these waste products is due, in turn, to a deficiency in the system of the alkaline, acid-binding and acid-eliminating mineral elements. In point of fact, almost every form of disease is characterized by a lack of these organic mineral salts in blood and tissues.

Stones, gravel (calculi), etc., grow in acid blood only, and must be dissolved and eliminated by rendering the blood alkaline. This is accomplished by the absorption of the alkaline salts, contained most abundantly in the juicy fruits, the leafy and juicy vegetables, the hulls of cereals and in milk.

How, then, are these all-important solvents and eliminators to be supplied to the organism by total abstinence from food?

Prolonged fasting undoubtedly lowers the patient's vitality and powers of resistance. But natural elimination of waste products and systemic poisons (healing crises) depends upon increased vitality and activity of the organism and the individual cells that compose it.

For these reasons we find, in most cases, that proper adjustment of the diet, both as to quality and quant.i.ty, together with the different forms of natural corrective and stimulative treatment, must precede the fasting.

The great majority of chronic patients have become chronics because their skin, kidneys, intestines and other organs of elimination are in a sluggish, atrophied condition. As a result, their system is overloaded with morbid matter.

Moreover, during the fast the system has to live on its own tissues, which are being broken down rapidly. This results in the production and liberation of additional large quant.i.ties of morbid matter and poisons, which must be eliminated promptly to prevent their reabsorption.

However, the atrophic condition of the organs of elimination makes this impossible and there are not enough alkaline mineral elements to neutralize the destructive acids. Therefore the impurities remain and acc.u.mulate in the system and may cause serious aggravations and complications.

Is it not wiser first of all to build up the blood on a normal basis by natural diet and to put the organs of elimination in good working order by the natural methods of treatment before fasting is enforced? This is, indeed, the only rational procedure and will always be followed by the best possible results.

When, under the influence of a rational diet, the blood has regained its normal composition, when mechanical obstructions to the free flow of blood and nerve currents have been removed by manipulative treatment, when skin, kidneys, bowels, nerves and nerve centers, in fact, every cell in the body has been stimulated into vigorous activity by the various methods of natural treatment, then the cells themselves begin to eliminate their morbid enc.u.mbrances. The waste materials are carried in the blood stream to the organs of elimination and incite them to acute reactions or healing crises in the form of diarrheas, catarrhal discharges, fevers, inflammations, skin eruptions, boils, abscesses, etc.

Now the sponge is being squeezed and cleansed of its impurities in a natural manner. The mucous membranes of stomach and bowels are called upon to a.s.sist in the work of housecleaning; hence the coated tongue, lack of appet.i.te, digestive disturbances, nausea, biliousness, sour stomach, fermentation, flatulence and occasionally vomiting and purging.

These digestive disturbances are always accompanied by mental depression, the blues, homesickness, irritability, fear, hopelessness, etc.

With the advent of these cleansing and healing crises the physiological and psychological moment for fasting has arrived. All the processes of a.s.similation are at a standstill. The entire organism is eliminating.

We have learned that these healing crises usually arrive during the sixth week of natural treatment.

To take food now would mean to force a.s.similation and thereby to stop elimination and perchance to interfere with or to check a beneficial healing crisis.

Therefore we regard it as absolutely essential to stop eating as soon as any form of acute elimination makes its appearance and we do not give any food except acid fruit juices diluted with water until all signs of acute eliminative activity have subsided, whether this require a few days or a few weeks or a few months.

Some time ago I treated a severe case of typhoid malaria. No food, except water mixed with a little orange or lemon juice, pa.s.sed the lips of the patient for eight weeks. When all disease symptoms had disappeared, we allowed a few days for the rebuilding of the intestinal mucous membranes. Thereafter food was administered with the usual precautions. The patient gained rapidly and within six weeks weighed more than before the fever. During the entire period I saw the patient only twice, the simple directions being carried out faithfully by his relatives.

Chapter XXVIII

Hydrotherapy Treatment of Chronic Disease

While in our treatment of acute diseases we use wet packs and cold ablutions to promote the radiation of heat and thereby to reduce the fever temperature, our aim in the treatment of chronic diseases is to arouse the system to acute eliminative effort. In other words, while in acute disease our hydropathic treatment is sedative, in chronic diseases it is stimulative.

The Good Effects of Cold-Water Applications

(1) Stimulation of the Circulation. As before stated, cold water applied to the surface of the body arouses and stimulates the circulation all over the system. Blood counts before and after a cold-water application show a very marked increase in the number of red and white blood corpuscles. This does not mean that the cold water has in a moment created new blood cells, but it means that the blood has been stirred up and sent hurrying through the system, that the lazy blood cells which were lying inactively in the sluggish and stagnant blood stream and in the clogged and obstructed tissues are aroused to increased activity.

Undoubtedly, the invigorating and stimulating influence of cold sprays, ablutions, sitz baths, barefoot walking in the dewy gra.s.s or on wet stones and all other cold-water applications depends largely upon their electromagnetic effects upon the system. This has been explained in Chapter Ten, "Natural Treatment of Acute Diseases."

(2) Elimination of Impurities. As the cold water drives the blood with increased force through the system, it flushes the capillaries in the tissues and cleanses them from the acc.u.mulations of morbid matter and poisons which are one of the primary causes of acute and chronic diseases.

As the blood rushes back to the surface it suffuses the skin, opens and relaxes the pores and the minute blood vessels or capillaries and thus unloads its impurities through the skin.

Why We Favor Cold Water

In the treatment of chronic diseases some advocates of natural methods of healing still favor warm or hot applications in the form of hot-water baths, different kinds of steam or sweat baths, electric light baths, hot compresses, fomentations, etc.

However, the great majority of Nature Cure pract.i.tioners in Germany have abandoned hot applications of any kind almost entirely because of their weakening and enervating aftereffects and because in many instances they have not only failed to produce the expected results, but aggravated the disease conditions.

We can explain the different effects of hot and cold water as well as of all other therapeutic agents upon the system by the Law of Action and Reaction. Applied to physics, this law reads: "Action and reaction are equal but opposite." I have adapted the Law of Action and Reaction to therapeutics in a somewhat circ.u.mscribed way as follows: "Every therapeutic agent affecting the human organism has a primary, temporary, and a secondary, permanent effect. The secondary, lasting effect is contrary to the primary, transient effect."

The first, temporary effect of warmth above the body temperature, whether it be applied in the form of hot air or water, steam or light, is to draw the blood into the surface. Immediately after such an application the skin will be red and hot.

The secondary and lasting effect, however (in accordance with the Law of Action and Reaction), is that the blood recedes into the interior of the body and leaves the skin in a bloodless and enervated condition subject to chills and predisposed to "catching cold."

On the other hand, the first, transient effect of cold-water applications upon the body as a whole or any particular part is to chill the surface and send the blood scurrying inward, leaving the skin in a chilled, bloodless condition. This lack of blood and sensation of cold are at once telegraphed over the afferent nerves to headquarters in the brain, and from there the command goes forth to the nerve centers regulating the circulation: "Send blood into the surface!"

As a result, the circulation is stirred up and accelerated throughout the system and the blood rushes with force into the depleted skin, flushing the surface of the body with warm, red blood and restoring to it the rosy color of health. This is the secondary effect. In other words, the well-applied cold-water treatment is followed by a good reaction and this is accompanied by many permanent beneficial results.

The drawing and eliminating primary effect of hot applications, of sweat baths, etc., is at best only temporary, lasting only a few minutes and is always followed by a weakening reaction, while the drawing and eliminating action of the cold-water applications, being the secondary, lasting effect, exerts an enduring, invigorating and tonic influence upon the skin which enables it to throw off morbid matter not merely for ten or fifteen minutes, as in the sweat bath under the infiuence of excessive heat, but continually, by day and night.

The Danger of Prolonged or

Excessively Cold Applications

As we have pointed out in the chapter dealing with water treatment in acute diseases, only water at ordinary temperature, as it comes from well or faucet, should be used in hydropathic applications. It is positively dangerous to apply ice bags to an inflamed organ or to use icy water for packs and ablutions in febrile conditions.