gentlemen, you see now a man who has swallowed no food, except water, for forty-five days, and yet I can assure you that I am neither faint nor hungry; but I shall soon convince you that I have an excellent appetite,” and, so saying, he proceeded to partake of a very moderate dinner, and in moderate fashion. It is commonly supposed that these are uncommon men: they are uncommon only in possessing a knowledge as to the power of the living organism to withstand abstinence from food, and in having the courage of their opinions. And yet, when discussing the advantages of the two-meal system, uninformed people talk about “getting faint if they go so long” without nourishment! They speak from the three-meal-fish-flesh-fowl and pickle stand-point; accustomed to applying a hot poultice to a gnawing, sick stomach every few hours, they do get faint if the time runs over a single hour.
These various fasts, with the lessons to be drawn from them, must prove, finally, of inestimable value to science in the treatment of disease, where it may be desirable to rest all the viscera, or any portion thereof, concerned in digestion,[27] or to “close the bowels”
for certain surgical operations, without resorting to injurious medication, and also—a very important consideration—in cases of enforced abstinence, as in time of famine or shipwreck, to prevent death from fright and discouragement, which have heretofore killed scores where actual starvation has one.
[27] An eminent Maine statesman has recently died, who might have recovered and lived for years, but for the mistaken theory that food is a daily need under all circumstances: To constantly feed an irritated stomach is like kicking a man when he is down. And yet this is being done with fatal effect constantly all over the world. In certain cases, and especially with aged patients, this system is as surely fatal as strychnine, if less speedy. There are many besides myself who believe that President Garfield died from fatty degeneration, chronic dyspepsia, and constant feeding during his illness, rather than from the effects of the bullet. True enough, he might have lived on for years in his disordered physical condition but for the wound; still, on the other hand, it is equally probable that he might have lived, and that his sickness would have restored him to health even, but for the constant tampering with his stomach, which needed rest as much as the great and good man himself. No rest for the stomach, no rest for the man, is an axiom which I would submit to my brother practitioners, as one worthy of all acceptation. It is being constantly proved right before their own eyes, and yet very few have learned the lesson it teaches.
As illustrating the influence of an out-door life, with partial or transient fasting, I will cite
THE CASE OF MR. VICKERS.
Joseph Vickers, born and raised in England, but now of Biddeford, Me., whose home is near my own, and the man himself well known to me, was very “low with consumption” at one time, when in his twenty-second year. His disease was attributed, and without doubt justly, to a severe chill resulting from wading the river on one of his hunting bouts, and being compelled to dry his clothes on his back—a feat he had previously performed repeatedly, except that on this occasion, being very much fatigued, and night coming on, instead of continuing vigorous exercise while his clothes were drying, he “went into camp” and “shivered throughout the night in his soaked garments.” Declining very rapidly, with every symptom of pulmonary consumption, his case
was considered hopeless by his friends. Medicine seeming to him useless, he gave up taking it, and his physician consequently gave him no encouragement or hope of recovery. His digestion was very imperfect—as he put it, “Nothing I ate seemed to do me any good”—and to the disgust of his parents and friends he often refused to eat anything for an entire day. Able to be up and dressed a good portion of the time, he would spend as much of the day outdoors as possible, and at night “never slept without a window open in the bed-room.” Gaining a little strength, and being “badgered,” as he says, “all the time, when at home, about eating,” and being very fond of hunting, and not sleeping well, he would rise very early, take his gun and, as he expressed it, would “crawl off to the woods,” and sit or lie down until rested, and then “travel a bit and rest again,” and so spend the entire day, taking no lunch, and eating nothing, drinking from a brook or a spring when thirsty, returning at night, often as late as seven or eight o’clock, when he would eat a little coarse food after resting, and then go to bed. “A couple of weeks” of this sort of life sufficed to bring him home at night with an “appetite for a side of sole-leather,” and he would eat a hearty supper—always of the plainest food—and soon go to bed. From this point his recovery was as rapid as his decline had been. His diet has always been of the plainest sort, mostly vegetable (a large proportion of coarse bread and fruit),—“My drink is always cold water, and I let the rest of the family eat all the fancy stuff,” he remarked. Mr.
Vickers,—who is a devout Christian man, and his story corroborated in every feature by others as reliable,—is now sixty-six years old, though he appears like a robust, well-preserved man of fifty.
Excepting under very aggravated conditions, as for example, the case of Mr. Vickers, given above, rarely does any creature ever begin to have consumption with a sound stomach, liver, and intestines. Nor can the digestive organs become diseased, ordinarily, so long as the diet and general regimen are even approximately correct. If we thought more of what would “tickle” the stomach and intestines than the palate, simply, we would banish most of our disorders; pure air, active exercise, a clear conscience, and the cultivation of a spirit of cheerfulness, kindliness, and contentment, would send the balance a-flying. Upon the importance of cheerfulness, a recent writer, a physician with a large practice, and a man of keen perceptions, says: “One of the most important directions of all is personal and subjective. Cultivate with the utmost force possible the habit of cheerfulness. No words can put this out with the strength and weight which I should be glad to give to it. Its value is utterly beyond estimation. The difference between meeting the common, or uncommon, trials of life with cheerfulness or with despondency, and perhaps complaint and grumbling, is often just the difference between life and death.”