leansing their bodies; and yet in no
medical work that treats of diseases and their causes is there to be
found a hint that any special disease has its origin in uncleansed skin
as a chronic condition. That will be a small-minded reader who draws
conclusions from these statements that the author is not highly in favor
of having bodies and clothes kept so habitually clean as not to be an
offence to the finest fibred olfactory nerve at close range. In the
use, then, of water on the body be physiologically sensible, and not the
slaves of the bath-tub or "medicated" waters.

Lay readers, I draw my message to a close. I have addressed it to you
because your minds are open and free. Draw near and listen while I talk
rather than write. Let me look into your eyes, see the play on all the
lines of expression, as I would were you in my consulting-room. Mine has
reached your ears as a lone voice from the depths of some wilderness; I
have tried so to speak with my pen that you could catch an echo as if
from between the lines of every page.

You will not banish your medical adviser, for you still need his
knowledge of the workings of disease, if you do not need the drugs you
formerly believed necessary; but you will now be able in a more
intelligent way to diminish the possibilities of the future need of him.

Since these wonderful fasts in Philadelphia others are occurring over
the country from the contagion of example. Many are certain to be
undertaken as a last resort where hope has departed; and death will
come; and then there will be the confusion of tongues, as in the case of
Mrs. Meyer. Her case has been the third one that I know of where the
press has spread the news of death from starvation.

I have given you the case of Mrs. Meyer that you may know that no matter
how hopeless any case may be considered, no matter how given up by
venders of drugs, if a fast be advised and death come, death from
starvation will be the general verdict. Hence on as fasts multiply, so
will the press continue to make special note of all who chance to die
because they had ceased to add distress to their bodies by foods that
were only taken as the medicinal dose. All this you need to take into
account in those cases you would advise where the medical faculty has
retired in defeat.

Never in my entire professional life have I been so depressed by
discordant voices as during this sixty-day fast just ended. All the air
has been charged, darkened