Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 88, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 April 1910 — WHEN ILL, DON’T EAT [ARTICLE]

WHEN ILL, DON’T EAT

Much Virtue In Short Fasts and in Boycotting Breakfast. My panacea for every ill to which my flesh is heir is fasting. I prefer short fasts, repeated frequently, says Elizabeth Towne in the Nautilus. Twenty-four to fifty-six hours I Would call a short fast. Sixty hours is the longest I have ever gone without food. If I had some specific disease to overcome I should certainly turn to long fasts as the cure. I would begin by fasting for thirtysix hours once every week. Later I would take two or three days’ fast once in a couple of weeks, repeating several times. After I had accustomed my system to this, so thoroughly that I would feel better when fasting than when eating regularly, I would start out on a long fast. I would keep up this fast until my mouth watered for food. When this symptom came, I would eat again, beginning very moderately, and Fletcherizing to the limit. After a few weeks I would start in again for a long fast, and keep it up until nature gave the signal for eating. This signal is always a real hunger, accompanied by watering of the mouth. The ordinary run of people never feel real hunger—they don?t know what it is like. Not until you have fasted a while does nature have a chance to teach you her really delightful signal for more grub. Try it!' William and I always remind me of Jack Spratt and his wife. One of us is thin and the other is not. I leave you to guess which. But we both find fasting the only preventive and cure for all ills to which the sedentary one is heir. By the way, I just heard of a very large woman who reduced her flesh thirty-five pounds in a few months by fasting from breakfast. William and I have eaten no breakfast for more than ten years (excepting a very light and occasional one if we happened to- be visiting). That makes about 3,650 breakfasts we have missed. I don’t know what William would look like if he had eaten all those breakfasts, but I am sure that I should be weighing at least 2.50 by this time. No breakfast is simply a short fast every day. Here is my vote for the boycott on meat. William’s, too. And here is my vote for the boycott on breakfasts. William’s, too —though I found, some orange peel this morning alongside of the editorial he had been writing.