There remains1 the question of how to break the fast, and this is the most important part of the problem. You may undo2 all the good of your fast by breaking it wrong, and you are a thousand times as apt to kill yourself then, as while you are fasting. When your hunger comes back, it comes back with a rush, and some people have not the will power to control it.
I do not advocate a complete fast in any case except of serious chronic3 disease, and then only under the advice of someone with experience; but I advocate a short fast of a week or ten days for almost every common ailment4, and I know that such a fast will help, even where it may not completely cure. You may go on fasting so long as you are quiet and happy; but when you find you are becoming too weak for comfort, or for the peace of mind of your family physician and your friends, you may break your fast, and show them that it is possible to restore your strength and body weight, and then they won't bother so much when you try it again! Take nothing but liquid foods in the breaking of a fast; I recommend the juices of fruits and tomatoes, also meat broths5. If you have fasted a week or two, take a quarter of a glass; if you have fasted a month, take a tablespoonful, and wait and see what the results are. Remember that your whole alimentary6 tract7 is out of action, and give it a chance to start up slowly. Take small quantities of liquid food every two hours for the first day. Then you can begin taking larger quantities, and on the next day you can try some milk, or a soft poached egg, or the pulp8 of cooked apples or prunes9. Do not take any solid food until you are quite sure you can digest it, and then take only a very little. Do not take any starchy food until the third day.
I have known people to break these rules. I knew a man who broke his fast on hamburg steak, and had to be helped out with a stomach pump. Once I broke a week's fast with a plate of rich soup, because I was at a friend's house and there was nothing else, and I yielded to the claims of hospitality, and made myself ill and had to fast for several days longer.
The easiest way to break a fast is upon a milk diet. I have seen hundreds of people take this diet, and very few who did not get benefit. The first time I fasted, which was twelve days, I lost 17 pounds, and I took the milk diet for 24 days thereafter, and gained 32 pounds. I took it at MacFadden's Sanitarium, where I had every attention. Since then, I have many times tried to take a milk diet by myself, but have never been able to get it to agree with me. I do not know how to explain this fact; I state it, to show how hard it is to lay down general rules. On the milk diet you take into your system two or three times as much food as you can assimilate, and this is a violation10 of all my diet rules; but it appears that the bacteria which thrive in milk produce lactic11 acid, which is not harmful to the system, and if you do not take other foods you may safely keep the system flooded with milk.
After a fast you should begin with small quantities of milk, and by the third day you may be taking a full glass of warm milk every half hour or every twenty minutes, until you have taken seven or eight quarts per day. It is better to take it warm, but sometimes people take it just as well without warming. Dr. Porter, who has a book on the milk diet, insists upon complete rest, and makes his patients stay in bed. MacFadden, on the other hand, recommends gymnastics in the morning before the milk, and during the afternoon he recommends a rest from the milk for a couple of hours, followed by abdominal12 exercises to keep the bowels13 open. This is very important during a fast, because you are taking great quantities of material into your system and it must not be permitted to clog14. Therefore take an enema daily, if necessary to a free movement. Also take a warm bath daily. Take the juice of oranges and lemons if you crave15 them.
Upon one thing everyone who has had experience with the milk diet agrees, and that is the necessity of absolute mental rest. If you become excited, or nervous, or angry on a milk diet, you may turn all the contents of your stomach into hard curds16, and may put yourself into convulsions. The wonderful thing about the milk diet is the state of physical and mental bliss17 it makes possible. It is the ideal way of breaking a fast, because it leaves you no chance to get hungry; you have all the food you want, and your system is bathed in happiness, a sense of peace and well-being18 which is truly marvelous and not to be described. You gain anywhere from half a pound to two pounds a day, and you feel that you have never before in your life known what perfect health could be. The fast sets you a new standard, you discover how nature meant you to enjoy life, and never again are you content with that kind of half existence with which you managed to worry along before you discovered this remedy.
But let me hasten to add that I do not recommend the fast as a regular habit of life. The fast is an emergency measure, to enable the body to cleanse20 itself and to cure disease. When you have got your body clean and free from disease, it is your business to keep it that way, and you should apply your reason to the problem of how to live so that you will not have to fast. If you find that you continue to have ailments21, then you must be eating wrongly, or overworking, or committing some other offense22 against nature; either that, or else you must have some organic trouble—a bone in your spine23 out of place, as the osteopaths tell you, or your eyes out of focus, or your appendix twisted and infected. I do not claim that the fasting cure will supplant24 the surgeons and the oculists and the dentists. It will not mend your bones if you break them, and it will not repair your teeth that are already decayed; but it will help to keep your teeth from decaying in the future, and it will help you to prepare for a surgical25 operation, and to recover from it more quickly. I had to undergo an operation for rupture26 a couple of years ago, and I fasted for two days before the operation, and for three days after it, and I had no particle of nausea27 from the ether, and was able to tend to my mail the day after the operation.
There is one disease for which I hesitate to recommend the fast, and that is tuberculosis28, because I have been told of cases in which the patient lost weight and did not recover it. However, in my tabulation29 of 277 cases, you will note four cases of tuberculosis, and in my book is given a letter from a patient who claimed great benefit. If I had the misfortune to contract tuberculosis, I would take a three or four day fast, followed by a milk diet for a long period. The milk diet is pleasant to take, and it cannot possibly do any harm. If it did not effect a cure, I would try the Salisbury treatment—that is, lean meat ground up and medium cooked, and nothing else, except an abundance of hot water between meals. Prof. Irving Fisher wrote me that there is urgent need of experiment to determine proper diet in tuberculosis; and until these experiments have been made, we can only grope. I am quite sure that the "stuffing system," ordinarily used by doctors, is a tragic30 mistake.
In the case of any other disease whatever, even though I might take medical or surgical treatment, I would supplement this by a fast, because there is no kind of treatment which does not succeed better with the blood in good condition. In the case of emergencies, accidents, wounds, etc., I would rest assured that recovery would be more prompt if I were fasting. When David Graham Phillips was shot, I wrote a letter to the New York Call, saying that his doctors had killed him, because they had fed him while he was lying in a critical condition in the hospital. To take nutriment into the body under such circumstances is the greatest of blunders.
The fast will help children, just as it helps adults, only they do not need to fast so long. It will help the aged19 and make them feel young. (You need not be afraid to fast, no matter how old you are.) It is, of course, an immediate31 cure for fatness, and strange as it may seem, it is also a cure for unnatural32 thinness. People with ravenous33 appetites are just as apt to be thin as to be fat, because it is not what you eat that builds up your body, but only what you assimilate, and if you eat too much, you can make it impossible to assimilate anything properly. If you take a fast and break it carefully, your body will come to its normal weight, and all your functions to their normal activity.
A physician wrote me, taking me to task for listing among the cures reported in my tabulation a case of locomotor ataxia. This disease, he explained, is caused because a portion of a nerve has been entirely34 destroyed, and it is a disease that is absolutely and positively35 and forever incurable36. I answered that I knew this to be the teaching of present day medical science, but I invited him to consider for a moment what happens in nature. When a crab37 loses a claw, we do not take it as a matter of course that the crab must go about with one claw for the balance of its life; nature will make that crab another claw. Man has lost the power of replacing a lost leg, but he stills retains the power of replacing tissue which has been cut away by a surgeon's knife, and medical science takes this as a matter of course. How shall anybody say that nature has forever lost the power of rebuilding a bit of nervous tissue? How shall anyone say that if the blood-stream is cleansed38 of poisons, and the energy of the whole body restored, one of the results may not be the repairing of a broken nerve connection? I invite my readers who have ailments, and especially I invite all medical men among my readers, to make a fair test of the fasting cure. The results will surprise them, and they will quickly be forced to revise their methods of treating illness.
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1
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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undo
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| vt.解开，松开；取消，撤销 | |
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chronic
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| adj.(疾病)长期未愈的，慢性的；极坏的 | |
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ailment
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| n.疾病，小病 | |
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5
broths
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| n.肉汤( broth的名词复数 )；厨师多了烧坏汤；人多手杂反坏事；人多添乱 | |
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alimentary
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| adj.饮食的，营养的 | |
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7
tract
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| n.传单，小册子，大片(土地或森林) | |
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pulp
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| n.果肉，纸浆；v.化成纸浆，除去...果肉，制成纸浆 | |
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9
prunes
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| n.西梅脯，西梅干( prune的名词复数 )v.修剪（树木等）( prune的第三人称单数 )；精简某事物，除去某事物多余的部分 | |
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10
violation
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| n.违反(行为)，违背(行为)，侵犯 | |
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lactic
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| adj.乳汁的 | |
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12
abdominal
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| adj.腹（部）的，下腹的；n.腹肌 | |
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13
bowels
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| n.肠，内脏，内部；肠( bowel的名词复数 )；内部，最深处 | |
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14
clog
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| vt.塞满，阻塞；n.[常pl.]木屐 | |
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15
crave
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| vt.渴望得到，迫切需要，恳求，请求 | |
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16
curds
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| n.凝乳( curd的名词复数 ) | |
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17
bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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18
well-being
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| n.安康，安乐，幸福 | |
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19
aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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cleanse
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| vt.使清洁，使纯洁，清洗 | |
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ailments
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| 疾病（尤指慢性病），不适( ailment的名词复数 ) | |
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22
offense
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| n.犯规，违法行为；冒犯，得罪 | |
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spine
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| n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊 | |
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24
supplant
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| vt.排挤；取代 | |
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25
surgical
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| adj.外科的，外科医生的，手术上的 | |
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26
rupture
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| n.破裂；(关系的)决裂；v.(使)破裂 | |
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27
nausea
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| n.作呕，恶心；极端的憎恶(或厌恶) | |
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tuberculosis
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| n.结核病，肺结核 | |
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29
tabulation
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| 作表，表格； 表列结果； 列表； 造表 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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31
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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32
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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33
ravenous
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| adj.极饿的，贪婪的 | |
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34
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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incurable
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| adj.不能医治的，不能矫正的，无救的；n.不治的病人，无救的人 | |
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37
crab
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| n.螃蟹，偏航，脾气乖戾的人，酸苹果；vi.捕蟹，偏航，发牢骚；vt.使偏航，发脾气 | |
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38
cleansed
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| 弄干净，清洗( cleanse的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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