ealth by Mr. Rathbun's starvation
methods.'"

The doctor is astonished, and so am I that he is astonished. This would
seem to imply that he has never had cases of acute sickness in which the
amount of food taken during many days or even weeks was too small to
play any part as a life-prolonging factor.

"It was a foolish, even dangerous experiment." How foolish or dangerous?
What vital organs suffered? Was there evidence of a loss of anything but
fat? What organs were "necessarily paralyzed" during the fast? Evidently
not the brain, else longer days of labor would not have been possible;
and the grave future possibilities in heart action, impoverished blood,
nervous system, upon organs of nutrition "necessarily paralyzed" for
days; and the extreme limit of nine or ten days before death from
starvation; and that without food the _body_ lives on its own tissues!

One can easily see that the earnest doctor is full of strong impressions
that have little of the flavor of science: truth that is not
self-evident should have the instant logic in easy reach. I may here say
that my hygienic scheme has from the first been subject to similar
attacks by physicians from the standpoint of impressions, but no
physician has ventured into print against it after becoming aware of its
physiologic basis.

I am happy to assure all readers that in all the involuntary fasts of my
cases of acute sickness or in the voluntary fasts in chronic disease,
has there been any other than improved general health as the result.
Notably was this the case in a man who fasted ten years ago for forty
days for an ulcer of the stomach, and who had been troubled with
indigestion for more than forty years. He had become nearly a mental and
physical wreck when he took to his bed with an abolished appetite. There
have since been some ten years of nearly perfect health, and now in his
seventy-seventh year he is the youngest-looking man for his age I have
ever seen. He walks the streets with the gait of a youth of twenty. To
do without food without hunger does not tax any vital power, as Dr.
Shrady may yet become aware.

XII.

The next fast to have a brief notoriety as the "most remarkable on
record" occurred in Philadelphia, the medical center of America, and
beneath the very shadow of its great medical schools; in Philadelphia, a
city that surpasses all other cities for the wisest conservatism, for
all-around level-headedness. Its journals are rar