Broadly speaking, there is no drug that is not a poison, stimulating or paralyzing in result, and in infancy the latter is doubly apparent and appalling. It needs but the parallelism between the effect of an application of a glass of brandy upon an infant and an adult to emphasize this statement. Consider then the consequences of repeated dosings for fevers, colic, colds, and the varied category of infantile disease, and conceive the results upon tender, growing, human bodies. Not one of us but has these sacred relics of the days of powdered dried toads and desiccated cow manure to blame for organs arrested in development or functionally ruined.
The principle embodied in the intelligent application of fasting for the cure of disease is not to be crushed by vilification. The knowledge of it, thanks to strenuous attacks by the medical profession, has been distributed gratis throughout the English-speaking world; and my own part in the work of propaganda has been made more than easy by opposition displayed. I believe that I have a cause to defend, a truth to uphold, a principle for which, if need be, I shall die fighting.
Linda Burfield Hazzard.
Seattle, Wash., May 16, 1910.
Horace Fletcher's Fast
Dec. 11, 1910.
Mr. Horace Fletcher,
Care Editor of Good Health,
Battle Creek, Mich.
My dear Mr. Fletcher,—It must have been a year and a half ago that we had our talk on the subject of fasting; you promised me that you would investigate it. I have only just seen the copy of the November Good Health, and discovered that you carried out your promise. There are some things in connection with your account about which I want to ask you.
You say that you have come to agree with Dr. Kellogg, that autointoxication continues during the fast; and that your reason for this is that at the end of a couple of weeks you found yourself developing weakness, bad breath, coated tongue, etc. You broke your fast because these symptoms grew worse and worse. Now surely if a person is going to give a fair trial to the claims of the fasters, he should follow their instructions, and he should not proceed in opposition to their most important advice. You say that for four days you took no water, and that after that you took only a pint or so a day. In this you violated the leading injunction of every advocate of fasting with whose writings I am acquainted; I have read the books of Bernarr Macfadden, C. C. Haskell, and Dr. L. B. Hazzard, all of whom have treated scores and hundreds of patients by means of the fast, and all of whom are strenuous on the point that one should drink as much water as possible. I myself while fasting have taken at least a glass every hour. I believe that a very great deal of your trouble may have been caused by your procedure in this respect.