r acquainted with the matter than any
one else, furnished a _Ledger_ reporter with the particulars as
they are here given, the name and address of the young lady, for
obvious reasons, being omitted. Mr. Ritter was at first loath to
have any publicity given the case, but felt upon reflection that
the results were properly a subject matter for inquiry by
physicians, at least, not to speak of others who may be
interested.

"Miss K., by the advice of specialists who had treated her at
home, was put under treatment for melancholy in an institution
for the insane. Mr. Ritter, being an intimate friend of the
family, visited her, and, he says, found her retrograding. She
was receiving three meals a day, with two luncheons between
them. Having built up his own digestive powers by following the
tenets laid down by Dr. Dewey, a Crawford county physician, he
had become a student and advocate of the latter's theory,
briefly stated, that no food should be given to a patient except
in response to a natural call or appetite for it. Believing that
no improvement could result from the course Miss K. was
receiving in the hospital, he prevailed upon her parents to
permit him to have her placed in the home of a friend, and
suggested the fasting process. This was the more readily done as
the physicians in whose care she had been advised her parents to
leave their daughter as much as possible among strangers.

"This young lady, according to Mr. Ritter, was absolutely
without food for forty-five days, beginning October 3 and ending
November 16. He says he did not fear, as others did, that she
would starve, as the authority he depended on had never fed a
sick patient during a practice covering twenty-two years, no
matter how protracted the case might have been, and claimed to
have had only the best results. 'This,' said Mr. Ritter, 'is on
the theory that, since all bodily energy is the result of the
brain, by abstaining from feeding in the absence of appetite
there is all the energy of cure undiverted by needless waste in
the stomach. Feeding the sick, this physician contends, is a tax
on their vital power, adding indigestion to whatever other
troubles exist: because the brain has the power in sickness to
absorb nourishment from the body, as predigested food, so that
it never loses weight, ev