Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/42

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FASTING, HYDROPATHY, EXERCISE.

but I do believe that an unperverted child could be locked up with a couple of helpless lambs, and that, like Sir William's Hindus, it would lie down and die, sooner than save its life by sacrificing that of its dumb fellow-creatures. For, quite aside from moral scruples, the protests of instinct would prevent. Starvation—hunger intensified to the degree of fearful torture—would fail to overcome the natural aversion to the taste of raw (i.e., undisguised) flesh food.

And cooking cannot destroy all the disease-germs which the "corpse-eater" transfers to his own body. The task of assimilating wolf-food is an affront to our digestive organs. Our stomachs, bowels, and teeth are those of a fruit-eating creature.

"Don't you think there is something objectionable about a draughty bedroom window in this changeable climate of ours?" a Connecticut foggy asked Dio Lewis.

"That's just my opinion," said the facetious doctor; "in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases the draught isn't near strong enough."

And the main objection to ecclesiastic fasts is the circumstance that they were rarely persistent enough. "Fasting," i.e., abstaining from meat