The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure

by Edward Hooker Dewey

"It is also possible, by introducing more food than can possibly be digested, to overpower digestion so that nothing is digested and absorbed, and starvation results, a fact that has been brought to the front in the most interesting manner in the writings of Dr. Dewey."

And who is Dr. Keith? You know that he is one of the youngest physicians in all Scotland, even if he does possess eighty years that are no burden to him. I quote him from his Fads of an Old Physician:

"Dr. Dewey's grand means of cure now is abstinence for the time from all food, and this he carries out to a degree which must astonish most physicians of the present day, as well as their patients. During times of sickness, when there is no desire for food, he gives none till the desire comes, and then only if the state of the tongue and general condition show that the power of digestion has returned. This may be in a few days, or in severe cases, as of rheumatic fever, it may not be for forty days or even longer. He points out very forcibly that we have all a store of material laid up in the body which supplies what is required for keeping necessary functions of the system going, while no food can be usefully taken in the stomach. I had mentioned this provision in my Plea, and had stated that so long as it lasts it is sufficient to preserve life. I also suggested that it might be found that the waste of the body was less when this internal supply was alone trusted to, than when it was supplemented by food from without which the organs of nutrition were not in a condition to utilize. This, to my mind, Dr. Dewey has proved to be the fact, and no one can read his case without being convinced that it is so. He gives a most interesting table from Dr. Yeo, showing what textures of the body waste most rapidly in disease. Fat is at one end of the scale, and at the other the brain, which does not waste till all the other textures and organs are depleted to the utmost.

"In cases of slighter disease where the patient is able to be about or to carry on his business, but with discomfort, the same abstinence from all food is recommended. It is usually found that work can be done more easily, and that strength actually increases, although the starving may have to be kept up for several days. But the great coup in Dr. Dewey's practice is, that to improve or to preserve health he advises all to give up breakfast, and to fast till the mid-day meal. In this he has had a very large number of followers, very much to their advantage. It may be that the omission of breakfast is more needed and has greater effect in America than it would have on this side of the Atlantic. In America the meal is generally a very full one, made up in a large measure of a variety of hot cakes, also flesh food and tea or coffee. The other two meals of the day are full, 'square' meals likewise. I have seen much overfeeding in this country, but never to such a degree, and so generally, as I have seen in America and on American steamers. In one of the latter the cooking was the worst I ever met with, but the hard meat was swallowed all the same, and the consequences must have been grievous."

Are you still without any questioning of your authorized, established methods of treating the mentally sick? Then let me quote against you another man across the ocean, whose ability, learning, and professional attainments are of the highest order. I quote from Air, Food, and Exercise, by A. Rabagliati, M. A., M. D., F. R. C. S., Edin., a man with whom patient, exhaustive investigation is only a recreation:

"It has been shown by physiologists that certain tissues are absorbed and used before others. Dr. Dewey, of Pennsylvania, with whose views I am glad to find myself in general accord, and who seems to have made the same attempt as the writer to view the facts of medical practice from an independent—and may I say, original?—standpoint, quotes a table of great significance from Dr. Yeo. Besides quoting it in the text of his book, The True Science of Living, Dr. Dewey places it in capital letters in the frontispiece of his book. He calls it Nature's Bill of Fare for the Sick; and he shows that in illness, when we are using up the materials accumulated in our bodies, we may use as much as 99 per cent. of our fat (practically all of it), that of muscle we may use as much as 30 per cent., that the spleen may waste to the extent of 63 per cent., the liver as much as 56 per cent., and the blood itself be absorbed to the extent of 17 per cent. of its total amount. But even when wasting to this extent has occurred the curious and significant fact is emphasized that the brain and nerve-centres may not have wasted at all. The controlling nervous system thus does not lose its powers till the very last. Generally, however, the wasting process does not require to be carried to the very last, the chronic inflammatory deposit (and in rare cases even a cancerous infiltration) being absorbed and got rid of before this point is reached.

"As most, if not all, of the chronic diseases depend upon the deposition of waste, unassimilated materials in various situations; or, in other words, depend upon a blocking of the local circulation in this way, a little wholesome starvation is generally of vast benefit by inducing the economy to use up some of its waste stuff. Nature herself points the way to us in this matter, because when things have gone as far as she can bear, and when, were things to go on in the same way, death must ensue, she generally throws the patient into bed with a digestive system entirely disorganized, taking away all appetite for food and all power of assimilation for the time being. We may, in such circumstances, do much harm by efforts too persistently made to feed our patients; but generally they refuse all sustenance for some time. After a while (Dr. Dewey does not seem to be afraid if his patients refuse all food even for as long on some occasions as thirty days continuously, or even longer) they right themselves, the tongue cleans, appetite returns, the power of assimilation is reëstablished, and recovery takes place. It strikes me as somewhat curious (and yet, if we both look at the facts of life candidly and impartially, perhaps it is not curious) that observers so wide apart, and in circumstances so very different as the conditions of human life must be in Yorkshire from what they are in Pennsylvania, should come to conclusions so practically similar as Dr. Dewey and the writer have reached."

Gentlemen, masters in the medical profession, to what good end are you pumping food into human stomach, where there is no hunger and no mind left to know the need? Is it to maintain that strength which costs you so much muscle at every feeding. Or is it that it would be a danger to lose a few pounds of body while Nature gets ready to ask for food in the gentlest and most persuasive way? Whatever there is in appeal to the best in any human life to uplift it from the deepest depths, you have at the readiest command. You seem amply equipped to reach everything but those sick, afflicted, oppressed brain-centres. You treat everything but these, but to these you are worse than the Egyptian task-masters in that you force needless labor where rest alone is the need. It is not bricks without straw, but labor with exhausted power; and for all your efforts you simply maintain weight at a tremendous cost to the energy of cure. In no class of patients is rest for the brain more indicated than in yours; in none are the means so at command and the results for good so promising. With your patients the importance of time for business or social use is no more a concern; the abnormal is all due to disease.

Let us consider those rooms of bedlam you call the "excitable wards." They who enter leave all hope (of the friends) behind. Is there special need in these regions of despair and mental chaos that the mere pounds and strength shall be kept up? What will be lost by protracted fasts? Nothing in the kitchen. As for the brain and those sick centres, they will feed themselves until the last heart-beat sends the last available nourishment to the remotest cell. Will the functions of the brain grow more abnormal by a suspension of digestive drafts upon it? Does rest to anything that is tired tend to the abnormal?

Again I ask, What will be lost by protracted fasts in such cases? Nothing but weight, of which the fat will be by far the larger part. Would there be worry about starvation? With most of the cases there is not mind enough to worry over anything from the standpoint of reason. The very fact of the absence of the sense of the importance of daily food would render fasts in the highest degree practical and successful.