The Fasting Cure

by Upton Sinclair

I am so crowded with work that I cannot take the time to write you on this subject of Fasting as I would like. I have had nearly seventeen years' experience studying and practising the "no-breakfast plan and fasting for the cure of disease." I have followed the no-breakfast plan all that time without a single break, and I know it has been of exceedingly great value to me. It has also been my privilege and pleasure to advise in thousands of cases covering nearly all forms of disease, and where the Law of Fasting has been followed faithfully, there have always been splendid results.

Aside from the omission of the breakfast, I have fasted a great many times from one day to four weeks, and always the results have been beneficial. This could not have been the case if Dr. Kellogg's contention is correct, that autointoxication continues and increases during a fast. If his idea is correct on this point, instead of one improving and at last overcoming the disease entirely, there would not only be a continuation of the disease but an increase, and death would naturally result. Should autointoxication continue and increase while one is fasting, the time would not come when the tongue would be clean and natural hunger manifest itself. On the contrary, there would be an increase of the coating on the tongue until death finally resulted.

I think if Mr. Fletcher had continued his fast until his tongue had become clean, which certainly would be the case, he would have written a very different letter. In the case of Mrs. Tarbox, whose letter I enclose, on the thirty-seventh day of her fast, her tongue was perfectly clean and she had natural hunger, and she was well on the way to recovery from the terrible cancerous growth and condition in which I found her. Since Mrs. Tarbox' cure, I have had several other cases of cancer cured through fasting. You will note the case of Mrs. Hobson, copy of whose letter I enclose, and the case of Mr. Davis is another very interesting case as well as that of Mrs. Osborne. These persons would not have been cured if autointoxication had been going on and increasing.

Dr. Dewey's contention I know to be true, that during a fast the heart, lungs, and brain are supported by the predigested food stored up in the body. These organs take the nourishment and not the poison, for during a fast the eliminating organs work to the very limit to force the poison out of every cell of the body, so that during a fast all the poison in the body is growing less every hour, and when it is all eliminated natural hunger manifests itself, the tongue is clean, and the patient is ready to build up and have a clean physical organism. The use of the enema is exceedingly important during a fast. I believe that it hastens the cure at least twenty-five per cent, and perhaps more than that.

Mr. Fletcher's own letter is to my mind a refutation to Dr. Kellogg's claim as to the continuation and increase of autointoxication, for he tells the benefits that he has received during his fast of seventeen days, and those benefits would have been greatly increased if he had continued the fast until his tongue was clean. His sense of taste had become so refined by the fast that his food was more delicious than ever before, which showed that the refining process had been going on all through his body. Another benefit that he mentions is the lessening of his desire for sugar, that he is satisfied with the sugar sweet that is in the food itself, which is so much more healthful than the cane sugar. Another thing that he speaks of is the reduction in his weight, which he needed. I sincerely hope that Mr. Fletcher will fast again, and make it a complete fast, for I think he will have a very different story to tell from what he tells in this letter.

Charles Courtney Haskell.

Dec. 28, 1910.

Dear Mr. Sinclair,—I have your letter of the 14th inst. and its enclosures.

To those who have carefully and scientifically undergone or advised the fast, the cause of the symptoms that Dr. Kellogg and all of the rest of us recognize as indicating self-poisoning, is readily discovered to lie in the inability of the organs of elimination to promptly convey from the body the products of food supplied in excess of digestion. It is a conclusion that cannot be escaped that, when the refuse from broken-down tissue and from food ingested beyond the needs of the body is discharged into the intestines, and when means of removal are not at hand, re-absorption at once begins and continues until the canal is cleansed. Self-poisoning, autointoxication, ensues, and all of its symptoms were emphatically shown in the fast of seventeen days that Mr. Fletcher essayed. These results are also often observed when feeding is in progress, and in this connection I refer to an article written by Dr. Kellogg for Good Health in the summer of 1908. In it he says, "The writer's observations, extending over a considerable number of years, have brought him to the conclusion that the cases which are benefited by fasting are practically without exception cases of autointoxication, generally cases of intestinal autointoxication, though perhaps also including some cases of metabolic autointoxication." It seems to me that the Doctor has not made it quite clear just why, if the fast is the certain producer of the condition, he recommends it for the cure of the condition. Perhaps "similia similibus" or "the hair of the dog theory" is implanted in the Doctor's ego.

As we review the situation, covering in origin thousands and thousands of years of wrong living, the facts are patent. The processes of digestion and assimilation as functions have long since lost natural expression. Drugs and heredity have created in them an inability to cope with their work without assistance, and have in many instances caused a positive cessation of normal action.