WHEN AND WHY TO FAST
Worry, anger, and grief are also most detrimental to progress towards cure. One instance comes to mind in which a case had fasted but eight days for functional disease of no especial gravity. Improvement had been continuous, but differences existed between the patient and her husband, and the latter, in an interview with his wife on the eighth day of her fast, so angered and distressed her that a nervous congestive chill, with suffusion of blood to the brain and lungs, occurred, and death resulted immediately from these causes. No amount of argument could convince the orthodox mind that the fast had not brought about death in this case. But the woman would have died just as surely had the scene described taken place before the omission of food, when the patient was ill and nervously weaker than at the time when anger and grief were so strongly excited.
In cases of functional disease, when the patient is not so depleted as to be bed-ridden, moderate daily exercise is most beneficial. In fact, it is recommended that the ordinary duties of life be continued, if such be possible.
In many instances this can be done, and benefit accrues from exercise, because of its as-
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