A certain class of wakeful patients are benefited by the practice of eating shortly before bedtime, when this right has been earned by sufficient restriction during the day. To make this the fourth, or even the third meal, however, is almost certain to increase the difficulty at last. The victim of sleepless nights often finds himself quite overcome with drowsiness after his midday meal. If then he could throw himself upon the bed he would have no time to “count,” or even think of such a device for putting himself to sleep. He was wide awake before lunch, and but for the habit of taking it, could have finished the day better without than with this out-of-season sleeping potion. Let him take the hint, eat his second and last meal, a sufficient one of plain food, in the evening after fully rested, and, thus equipped, go to bed directly, or after an hour or two of agreeable, but non-taxing, social converse. He must avoid every form of artificial stimulation—tea, coffee, wine, beer, tobacco. To breathe the atmosphere of an office, hotel, or smoking-car, for any considerable period, is no better, may be worse, than a moderate indulgence at first-hand in the open air.
CHAPTER VII.
RHEUMATISM, FATTY DEGENERATION, ETC.
Casey A. Wood. M.D., Professor of Chemistry in the Medical Department of Bishop’s College, Montreal, in an article entitled “Starvation in the Treatment of Acute Articular Rheumatism” (Canada Medical Record), gives the history of seven cases where the patients were speedily restored to health by simply abstaining from food from four to eight days, and he says he could have given the history of forty more from his own practice, but thought these would suffice. In no instance did he find it necessary to extend the fast beyond ten days. His patients were allowed to drink freely of cold water, or lemonade in moderate quantities, if they preferred, and simple sponging with tepid water was resorted to when indicated by feverishness of the surface. In no case did this treatment fail. No medicine was administered. The cases reported “included men and women of different ages, temperaments, occupations, and social positions.” He further says: “From the quick and almost invariably good results to be obtained by simple abstinence from food, I am inclined to the idea that rheumatism is, after all, only a phase of
indigestion, and that, by giving complete and continued rest to all the viscera that take any part in the process of digestion, the disease, is attacked in ipsa radice.” In chronic rheumatism he obtained less positive results, but did not venture to try fasts of longer duration. Dr. Wood concludes by saying that “this treatment, obviating as it does, almost entirely, the danger of cardiac complications, will be found to realize all that has been claimed for it—a simple, reliable remedy for a disease that has long baffled the physician’s skill; and the frequency with which rheumatism occurs will give every one a chance of trying its efficacy.” As elsewhere remarked, nearly all patients continue eating regularly, until food becomes actually disagreeable, even loathsome, often; and, after this, every effort is exhausted to produce some toothsome compound to “tempt the appetite.” Furthermore, and often worst of all, after the entire failure of this programme, the patient can, and usually does, take to gruel or some sort of “extract,” which he can drink by holding his breath. All this tends to aggravate the acute symptoms, and to fasten the disease in a chronic form upon the rheumatic patient, or to insure rheumatic fever; and the same principle holds in nearly all acute disorders, it is well to remember. So inveterate is this mania for eating, even when to continue is like turning coals upon the dead ashes and clinkers of an expired fire, that, in ordinary practice, it is well-nigh impossible to induce any class of patients to abstain from food at the beginning of an attack, or to give the fasting cure a fair trial at
any stage of the disease. The term frequently applied—“starvation cure”—is both misleading and disheartening to the patient: in fact, he is both starved and poisoned by eating when the hope of digestion and assimilation is prohibited, as is, in great measure, the case in all acute attacks, and more especially when there is nausea or lack of appetite; and he can only escape from the danger by abstaining temporarily. Dr. Wood’s prestige in the natural treatment of acute rheumatism was obtained in hospital practice, where it is comparatively easy to “control the symptoms” by withholding the cause, or, in other words, where the physician—providing the nurse is honest—can regulate the diet of his patients, absolutely. After such experience, it was less difficult for Dr. Wood to introduce this remedy among the most intelligent of his patients in private practice; for he could recommend it as in no sense an experiment, but as a remedy of positive advantage and, in fact, indispensable, if the best results were to be effected. My own experience, so far as it goes, has been similar to that of Dr. Wood. Moreover, in chronic cases—cases of long standing—the best results may be hoped for—in fact the best possible results have invariably followed—from an abstemious (frugivorous) diet, together with simple bathing, as special symptoms may indicate,—and an improved general regimen, as to fresh air, exercise (inaugurated gradually), beginning, perhaps, with passive exercise, as rubbing, etc., by the attendant. A chronic disease usually implies chronic provocation: Nature has simply commuted
the extreme penalty of the law; or, it may be likened to the reprieve of a convict under sentence of death, with an assurance of full liberty upon complete reform.
Among the disorders radically and safely removed by fasting, is