FIGHTING FOR LIFE

But Mr. Fletcher declined to accept any such decision as that. He decided that he would regain his health—not that he would try to regain his health, but that he would regain his health.

He first turned to the physicians. Possessed of wealth, he was able to secure the services of many of the most able specialists of the world. He visited the most celebrated “cures” and “springs” and sanitariums of Europe and America. Nothing availed. He found passing relief now and then, but no permanent good. He gained no health, in other words, but obtained merely temporary abatement of this or of that disease.

Then he turned to himself. He began the study of his own case. As he attributed most of his bodily woes to faulty habits of eating, the subject of nutrition became uppermost in his studies. He was, coincidentally, deeply immersed and interested in the study of practical philosophy; and in a very remarkable fashion these two subjects, these two interests, nutrition and practical philosophy, became fused into one subject, supplementing and completing each other and jointly forming the burden of the message of Hope, of the tidings of great joy, which it became the mission of Horace Fletcher to deliver to mankind.