Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/294

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

FASTING

improvement was constant and permanent.

In another instance the fast was undertaken for the purpose of correcting functional heart disease, coupled with extreme obesity, by a woman 41 years of age, whose weight was 200 pounds. The patient showed no medical history, excepting that she had submitted to an operation some years previous for the disease symptom known as salpingitis. Throughout the fast the patient was able to attend to her home duties and to take a daily walk to and from the office of an osteopathic practitioner, and these acts were easily accomplished during the long fast of sixty-three days. There was but little faster's chilliness, and there were no unusual symptoms, excepting that, at about the period included between the thirtieth and fortieth days, a gain in weight of from two to three pounds daily occurred, after which a gradual decrease continued, as before, until the end of the fast, when weight was reduced to 140 pounds, and heart disturbance had entirely disappeared.

Medical diagnosis of the next case was based upon dark, ill-smelling fecal discharge, and the symptom was deemed an indication of the existence of cancer of the stomach.

276