PREFACE.✦

This volume is a history, or a story, of an evolution in the professional care of the sick. It begins in inexperience and in a haze of medical superstition, and ends with a faith that Nature is the all in all in the cure of disease. The hygiene unfolded is both original and revolutionary: its practicality is of the largest, and its physiology beyond any possible question. The reader is assured in advance that every line of this volume has been written with conviction at white heat, that enforced food in sickness and the drug that corrodes are professional barbarisms unworthy of the times in which we live.

E. H. DEWEY.

MEADVILLE, PA., U. S. A., November, 1900.

CONTENTS.

THE NO-BREAKFAST PLAN.

I.

PAGE

Introduction--Army experiences in the Civil War--Early years in general practice--Difficulties encountered--Medicinal treatment found wanting as a means to superior professional success 13

II.

A case of typhoid fever that revolutionized the Author's faith and practice--A cure without drugs, without food--Resulting studies of Nature in disease--Illustrative cases--A crucial experience in a case of diphtheria in the Author's family 26

III.

A study of the brain from a new point of view--Some new physiology evolved illustrated by severe cases of acute disease 34

IV.

The error of enforced food in cases of severe injuries and diseases illustrated by several striking examples 42

V.

An apostrophe to physicians 56

VI.

The origin of the No-breakfast Plan--Personal experience of the Author as a dyspeptic--His first experience without a breakfast--Physiological questions considered--A new theory of the origin and development of disease and its cure--The spread of the No-breakfast Plan--Interesting cases 60

VII.

Digestive conditions--Taste relish--Hunger relish--The moral science involved in digestion as a new study--Cheer as a digestive power--Its contagiousness--The need of higher life in the home as a matter of better health--Cheer as a duty 81

VIII.

The No-breakfast Plan among farmers and other laborers--A series of voluntary letters to an eminent divine, and the writer put down as a crank--The origin of the Author's first book--How the eminent Rev. Dr. George N. Pentecost was secured to write the introduction--His no-breakfast experience--The publisher converts a prominent editor--The case of Rev. W. E. Rambo, a returned missionary--The publishers' missionary work among missionaries-- The utility of the morning fast--Its unquestionable physiology-- Why the hardest labor is more easily performed and for more hours without a breakfast 85

IX.

The utility of slow eating and thorough mastication unusually illustrated by Mr. Horace Fletcher, the author--What should we eat?--The use of fruit from a physiological standpoint 105

X.

Landscape-gardening upon the human face--A pen-picture-- Unrecognized suicide--Absurdity of the use of drugs to cure diseases--A case of blood-letting--Mission of homoeopathy-- Predigested foods 110

THE FASTING-CURE.

XI.

The forty-two day fast of Mr. W. W. C. Cowen, of Warrensburg, Ill., and its successful end--Press account--The twenty-eight day fast of Mr. Milton Rathbun, of New York, and its successful end--Press account--A second fast of Mr. Milton Rathbun, of thirty-five days, in the interest of science, and its successful end--Press account--Adverse comments of Dr. George N. Shrady, an eminent New York physician 117

XII.

The remarkable fast of forty-five days of Miss Estella Kuenzel, of Philadelphia, resulting in a complete cure of a case of melancholia--Press accounts--A still more remarkable fast, of fifty days, of Mr. Leonard Thress, of Philadelphia, resulting in a complete cure of a bad case of general dropsy--Press accounts--General dropsy in a woman of seventy-six relieved by a fifteen-day fast, with the cure permanent--Rev. Dalrymple's fast of thirty-nine and one-half days without interruption of pastoral duties 136

XIII.

Insanity--A study from a new point of view--Its radical cure deemed probable in most cases by protracted fasts--Feeding the insane as practised in the hospitals sharply criticised--Some direct words to physicians in charge 157

XIV.

The evolution of obesity, and its easy relief by fasting-- Overweight prevented by a limitation of the daily food and without lessening any of the powers or energies--The evolution and prevention of apoplexy 177

XV.

Chronic alcoholism--The evolution of the drunkard--His complete, easy, rational cure by fasting--No case so grave as to be beyond cure by this means--Asthma; Its cure through dietary means--A railroad tragedy--The need of railroad men to save their brains from needless waste of energy in their stomachs--An illustrative case--Some of the Author's troubles from the ignorance of the people--The death of Mrs. Myers, of Philadelphia, on the thirty-fifth day of her fast--Adverse press accounts and comments--Adverse comments of Prof. H. C. Wood, M. D., L. L. D., on fasting and fasters 183

XVI.

A successful sixty-day fast under the Author's care--More about predigested foods--Bathing from a physiological standpoint--The error of drinking water without thirst--Some earnest words to the mothers of this land--What the No-breakfast Plan means for them and their children--Concluding words 199

ILLUSTRATIONS.

PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR Frontispiece.

MRS. A. M. LICHTENHAHN, THIRTY-SIXTH DAY WITHOUT FOOD Opposite p. 54

REV. GEORGE SHERMAN RICHARDS " 94

MRS. E. A. QUIGGLE " 104

MR. MILTON RATHBUN SHORTLY AFTER HIS FAST " 132

MISS E. F. KUENZEL, FORTY-FIRST DAY OF FAST " 146

MR. LEONARD THRESS, FIFTIETH DAY OF FAST " 152

MISS E. W. A. WESTING, FORTIETH DAY OF FAST " 154

THE NO-BREAKFAST PLAN.

I.

A hygiene that claims to be new and of the greatest practicality, and certainly revolutionary in its application, would seem to require something of its origin and development to excite the interest of the intelligent reader. Methods in health culture are about as numerous as the individuals who find some method necessary for the health: taking something, doing something for the health is the burden of lives almost innumerable. Very few people are so well that some improvement is not desirable.

The literature on what to eat and not to eat, what to do and not to do, on medicines that convert human stomachs into drug-stores, is simply boundless. If we believe all we read, we must consider the location we are in before we can safely draw the breath of life; we must not cool our parched throats without the certificate of the microscope. We must not eat without an ultimate analysis of each item of the bill of fare, as we would take an account of stock before ordering fresh goods; and this without ever knowing how much lime we need for the bones, iron for the blood, phosphorus for the brain, or nitrogen for the muscles. In short, there is death in the air we breathe, death in the food we eat, death in the water we drink, until, verily, we seem to walk our ways of life in the very valley and shadow of death, ever subject to the attack of hobgoblins of disease.

How many lives would go down in despair but for the miracles of cure promised in the public prints, even in our best journals and monthlies, we cannot know. It is the hope for better things that sustains our lives; suicide never occurs until all hope has departed. Even our medical journals are heavily padded with pages of new remedies whose use involves the most amazing credulity. Perhaps it is well, in the absence of a sound physiological hygiene, that the people who are sick and afflicted shall be buoyed up by fresh, printed promises. Perhaps it is also well for the physician to be able to go into the rooms of the sick inspired from the advertising pages of his favorite medical journals.

Are they not new stars of hope to both physician and the people? Why should we not hope when new remedies are multiplying in such infinite excess over newly discovered diseases? New diseases? What is there essentially new that can be treated with remedies, in the coated tongues, foul mouths, high temperature and pulse, pain, discomfort, and acute aversion to food, that is to be found in the rooms of the sick? Are there really specifics for these conditions?

The hygiene to be unfolded in these pages is so new, so revolutionary, that its first impress has never failed to excite every form of opposition known to language, and yet its practicality is so great that it is rarely questioned by those who fairly test it. It has not been found wanting in its physiology, nor has it failed to grow wherever it has found lodgement.