—designed for and tending to the removal of a difficulty of whose existence you were unaware, and which, if suffered to remain and accumulate, might prove the destruction of the house you live in. And that, instead of its symptoms needing to be suppressed, they are themselves curative operations, and that what should be called the disease, lies back of them, as the real disorder or difficulty which they are intended to remove."
The physiological rationale of the fasting instinct is this: The task of digestion monopolizes the vital energies of the organism to a degree that interferes with emergency work. While the kitchen is undergoing repairs to undo the mischief of a storm or a conflagration, the cook would ask to be excused from routine drudgery. No care could obviate the risk of her fritters getting sprinkled with plaster-dust or showers of soot, and pending renovation she would expect her folks to shift with cold lunch, preserves, and other winter-stores of the pantry. Even thus Nature tries to remove the obstacles of a remedial problem. When mustering her energies for a struggle with a critical disorder she prefers to be exempted from other work, and, as it were, get her hands free for the effective and rapid ac-
