How they engineered the Housing Bubble and easily wiped out the dying middle class

My world

I have been posting on the mirror blog for the last two weeks

because they blocked me from posting on this blog from any computer, anywhere.


See how long this lasts.

wow...they actually allowed me into the blog today!

imagine that.

Why playing with the Black Arts is so very dangerous

ROCK NASA HARD PLACE

PLASMA TORNADOES ON THE SUN

An unequal America

They are still fighting terrorism

Leaders of Organized Religion

In truth, Satan's dookey boys...

Kenneth Copeland

Rodney Howard

Pat Robertson

Yeshua - MY Lord and Master

Thank you...

Juicing and Raw Foods: U.S. to cut funds for water testing at beaches

Juicing and Raw Foods: U.S. to cut funds for water testing at beaches: The EPA plans to cut $10 million in grants it gives annually. Water quality advocates worry that swimmers and surfers will be at even great...

Mirror sites

I am in the process of creating mirror sites of this and the other blogs for safety reasons. Usually, they let me go along for awhile, then shut the site down, or block me from posting from any computer. Once I try to log in, I get in some coded endless loop of silliness.

As what happened on the previous four blogs.

So, if you see little mirror links appearing on the link section, that's the site which has the same info, updated weekly.

I have two new mirrors up: one for this blog and for the surfing thingy. I'll get around to doing the health blog too.

So, if the day comes (and it will, because it always does), be prepared and pre-favorite the mirror. In the past, I didn't bother with mirror sites and and all those years from 1995 on were lost. (and please don't send me emails about way back sites and all that. At best they have fragmented info and the network has deleted all the real meat and potatos. )

I'll do what I can to keep things posted. Until I run out of blog sites to work on. And no, i don't have the web site traffic money to run my own or to admin one. So, if the days come as they must that you see no new posts, then that is what has happened. They may leave the site up for awhile, to pretend to pretend that all is normal and they've done nothing amiss, but on our end, we are locked out. This has happened so many times and recently too. the MYBLOGSITE blather blog was locked out by the network on 1-1-12.

Happy New Year

Eye of Horus with a slit

This is on Donna C's site...speaks for itself and is an actual house.

Nephillim hybrid Beast allegiance in architecture

A case in point

This afternoon I was picking up Matt from school. The road in the parking lot I stopped in had more than enough room for two lanes of cars, plus open spaces all around. A woman pulled up in her car directing in front of me while Matt was getting out. She was shaking her fist, yelling, giving me those wonderful gestures we all know so well.

It only takes Matt a few seconds to get out.

So, she pulls up, rolls her window down and makes slapping gestures with her hands screaming, "Slap Him! Hit him more often!" Flips me off, then takes off.

I tell you this so you understand that this happens to us every single day of our lives. These kind of verbal/physical assaults are very common to us.

I've never seen or heard anything like it in my life. Ever.

I've experienced this my whole life and it has only become worse, now that the devils feel this is their time on Earth to do what they will.

If I wrote about each incidence, every year would fill a small book. Some of it is quite shocking and horrific. Most of it is just vile and insane - the ravings, blurtings, and unloading of stunted souls.

Imagine if this was your daily life. Imagine your children going through this every day of their lives since they were small, with no end in sight?

This is our daily bread.

We eat this constantly.

And this is the Satanic network, revealing the spritual nature and caliber of what is truly inside themselves. Black holes reaching out for the darkness, hating any light.

Any light. At all. Ever.

Remote slapping down by the network

Gosh, let's see...Reddit shut us down, Google adsense was turned off and they kept all the earnings, Ebay denied us an account, Youtube disabled monetization this morning, making sure the near 1 million views and viewers never earn revenue for the family.

Only Amazon, which never does anything but give them free face time on our blogs remains.

All in the same week. Within days of each other. That kind of timing is no accident, it's a coordinated attack and plan, set in motion.

See, the word went out. Cut him off, shut him down. Hurt him in the wallet. Make the non-believer in Satan pay for his relationship with Divinity from On High.

And, very often, that's the price for truth and following your heart. When it becomes real and sincere, the Beast System then makes you an enemy to be destroyed.

I once had an LAPD police sergeant tell me to my face, "you are in our 'book" and we'll get you one day."

To my face...

And how did I ever get in their book to have the largest police force in the United States determine I was bad guy number one? In 2005, the LA sheriffs said the same thing.

I spoke, wrote, and discussed the truth of our times. I raised my family with love and sought to be a good man at all times. I dropped all the facades and masks that were holding me back, keeping me down. I decided it was simply better to be direct and honest.

But all that has a continuing price. To this day. As the network constantly reminds me with each lash from the whip.

So thanks boys, for the beatings. All I can say is...get in line. I've been going through this since I was a child, so it's nothing new.

Meh.

Getting to know us...(the point of all these pics)

Hi everyone...el dorko supremo!

Attending church

God is not found in a building made with human hands: 3 places in the New Testament.

The building is where you go to get organized--usually controlled by satanists--religion. Most of the mega rich churches are CIA fronts. In fact, the National Council of Churches was a front created by the CIA and funded by Rockefeller money.

Think about it.

If the Bible says God is not found in a building made with human hands, then Dad means it. He doesn't mean go and get seminary programming from some closet satanist with an agenda. He means to make a personal connection with him. That's what it's all about, regardless of race, creed, or country. Just make a connection with Him; put Him in your heart. Any man that needs or relies upon some "vetted" priest to tell him about God has no relationship of his own.

Get it. No one can give it to you. It's something you do yourself and costs NO MONEY. It doesn't require you to show up at a building dressed like Pat Boone or Debbie Reynolds. That's just group-think and conditioning, some two thousand years worth.

It's between you and Him. It's private. A personal thing and labels or languages mean nothing, save for the sincerity in your heart.

Get ye to it.

Our favorite church



Another church we attend from time to time



Don coming in on sunboard

Add caption

For Billy -this trumps you and every time

Yeshua, the True King of Earth

DB Today



Water...again?



Topa Topa Mountains in Ojai

Late afternoon light in upper Ojai

Don and Matt

Soul surfers

Attending church - Dad's church, not made with human hands

Things that matter...

Talking about things that matter

A radio show in 1996. What matters?

• Love.
• Trying to understand God, yourself, the people around you without masks or lies.
• Avoiding illusions and complete wastes of time.
• Your children and family.
• More love.
• Did I mention love? it's the only thing you can take with you.

The rest stays.

Radio stations ad nauseum.

Don, the enemy of the network (according to them)

Sending Buggles

Playing with water

Going to church

Don playing with an angel of light

See, there is always the beautiful, amazing, and wonderful. And here's the proof.



If you have buggles, they will come

No magic needed, required, or ALLOWED. Only a loving heart...and they come. They hide from the dark souls following black agendas. The smell drives them away; fyi.

The smell of a rotting corpse, a dead or stunted soul.

A few years back, when the network started coming out of their closet.

A few years back, when the network started signalling to all the other hybrid nephillim that they were "coming out" this movie was part of that massive subliminal conditioning project.





It serves and served two purposes:



1. To condition the unobservant that slit eyes was common and to take it in stride.


2. To the devils. They were coming out in every way, including their Satanic heritage. Simone as just the beginning.



Now, it's in rock videos, magazine print ads, you name it.



Because with Billy Boy turning 30 this year, they feel that nothing can stop them. And, for a time, it will seem that way.



For seven years.


Then it's all over. It stops. They stop. And so does Earth.

And according to the Satanic credo that's in all their grimoires, book of shadows, wiccan law, Crowley's Book of the Law, etc, etc, their only "law" is




Do what you want.

a scene from SIMONE, a few minutes into the movie

Practicing the "craft"

Almost every person I knew or have met, engages in minor or major witchcraft to some extent. Some are full-blown coven "den mothers" others just diddle around with the witches board (oija), and other aspects. Most of the women cast spells and consult vessels (hags). Most of them hide it when I'm around, denying it outright. Others are more open and honest, and don't care if I know.

However, more and more, they are open with it. Those that would have never revealed their dark allegiances ten or more years ago, have no problem nowadays not only flaunting it, but also tattooing it on their bodies like some badge of dishonor. And usually, they are sigils tattooed on major chakra centers - which allows for better demonic influences and their weilding of magic for their own selfish purposes. It's just how it is.

These days...

In our family, we consult Dad (the Father) in prayer and fasting. And we get the answers we need and the guidance. Our problem is we live in wholly Satanic times and in a city eye-ball deep in black majic, covens, grottos, and mind control. We're like the lepers among the black sheep of earth. We tend to stand out, get sneers and are openly attacked in public, and all the usual.

Mostly, we are openly hated with a contempt that is off the charts. In public, entire groups of lesbian witches and coven members sneer and spit at us and on us. This happens on a regular basis. All we have to do is show up somewhere to get this effect.

The women are the worst. For every guy that gets all hostile and violent (and as always, a total stranger), we get fifty women that just literally swear at us, openly spit in our direction, and say the most vulgar things. It's really something to see. Especially those network "friends" who happen to be around when this happens. They are all smiles and giggles.

Deuteronomy 18:10-12 says, "Let no one be found among you who… practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells…Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD..."

Billy, The Beast, Baphomet, and Christmass...

Human sacrifice, service to the Beast and his false annointing, demonic possession, the Passion of Christ, ritual elements...welcome to the Beast system, already in place and serviced by over 1 billion (yes billion) satanists worldwide. This is what they do. This is what they want.

Murder...death...gore...pain...cruelty...evil.

And they may smile and smile and still be a villian.

---------------------------

Controlling you with subliminal messages: Coca-cola

It's all about control...and a plan

Smart Chips in electronics...forcing you to purchase new laptops, printers, cell phones, et al

A few years ago, I had a Motorola flip phone. It worked great, took great pics, etc. Then, all of a sudden, it started eating batteries, making them drain with just one phone call. So, I bought more batteries - three in all - and they all did the same thing, drained in one phone call.

I went to ATT and asked the guy what was happening.

"Your phone is over two years old."

So you are saying that when a cell phone gets to a certain point in time after activation, it starts to malfunction?

"That's Motorola for you."

Wow...

But, I had known for years, as a Computer Engineer, that they put what I call "death chips" into products that kill them after either

so many power ups,
so many calls,
a certain amount of time,
so many print cycles,
etc.

Since around 2002, all electronic products - even your blender if it has digital circuitry - will only work for a given period of time and then WILL STOP WORKING, EVEN IF NOTHING IS WRONG WITH IT!

This is the age we live in.

This forces everyone to get the latest thing. Which isn't so much about money, but about forcing the population into the latest era "smart" products which are constantly tracked and monitored at all times.

That's the real reason. Control.

Police Officer Caught On Tape Saying He Can "Make Up" Evidence

Be Nobody’s Valentine

Each year on February 14th countless millions of people celebrate a day known as “St. Valentine’s Day.” Millions of heart-shaped cards and boxes of chocolates are given as gifts, and even churches have Valentine parties on this so-called “Day of Love.” In schools, from pre-school and kindergarten on up, children draw names from a box and exchange heart-shapes notes which “pair off” the children and is said to be “all in fun.” People of all ages get into the act, and the words that are heard everywhere on that day are, “Be My Valentine.”






The sad fact is that most people never question the origin of the customs that they involve themselves with. Most people do not ask questions but do what everybody else does, never stopping to consider how the Almighty God of Heaven feels about their activities. When we consider that Valentine’s Day is a day of preoccupation with the heart, it is essential that we listen to the following words spoken by the Almighty, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his wages, and according to the fruit of his doings.” Jeremiah 17:9-10






Christians should be known by their discernment and should be asking questions regarding Valentine’s Day. What is the origin of this unusual day? Why is there a preoccupation with the color red? Where did the heart shape come from, and what does it mean? These and other questions will now be answered, as we examine the roots and pagan origin of this popular day.






In the days of the Roman Empire, the month of February was the last and shortest month of the year. February originally had 30 days, but when Julius Caesar named the month of July after himself, he decided to make that month longer and shortened February to 29 days while making July a month of 31 days. Later when Octavius Caesar, also known as Augustus, came to power, he named the month of August after himself, and not be outdone he also subtracted a day from February and gave the month of August 31 days. To this very day it remains that way. The ancient Romans believed that every month had a spirit that gained in strength and reached its peak or apex of power in the middle or ides of the month. This was usually the 15th day, and it was a day when witches and augurs, or soothsayers worked their magic. An augur was a person filled with a spirit of divination, and from the word augur we get the word “inaugurate”, which means to “take omens”. Since February had been robbed by Caesars and had only 28 days, the ides of February became the 14th day of that month. Since the Ides of a month was celebrated on the preceding eve, the month of February was unique, because it was the 13th day that became the eve of the Ides that month, and it became a very important pagan holiday in the Empire of Rome. The sacred day of February 14th was called “Lupercalia” or “day of the wolf.” This was a day that was sacred to the sexual frenzy of the goddess Juno. This day also honored the Roman gods, Lupercus and Faunus, as well as the legendary twin brothers, who supposedly founded Rome, Remus and Romulus. These two are said to have been suckled by wolves in a cave on Palatine Hill in Rome. The cave was called Lupercal and was the center of the celebrating on the eve of Lupercalia or February 14th. On this day, Lupercalia, which was later named Valentine’s Day, the Luperci or priests of Lupercus dressed in goatskins for a bloody ceremony. The priests of Lupercus, the wolf god, would sacrifice goats and a dog and then smear themselves with blood. These priests, made red with sacrificial blood, would run around Palatine Hill in a wild frenzy while carving a goatskin thong called a “februa.” Women would sit all around the hill, as the bloody priests would strike them with the goatskin thongs to make them fertile. The young women would then gather in the city and their names were put in boxes. These “love notes” were called “billets.” The men of Rome would draw a billet, and the woman whose name was on it became his sexual lust partner with whom he would fornicate until the next Lupercalia or February 14th.






Thus, February 14th became a day of unbridled sexual lust. The color “red” was sacred to that day because of the blood and the “heart shape” that is popular to this day. The heart-shape was not a representation of the human heart, which looks nothing like it. This shape represents the human female matrix or opening to the chamber of sacred copulation.






When the Gnostic Catholic Church began to get a foothold in Rome around the 3rd century A.D., they became known as Valentinians. The Catholic Valentinians retained the sexual license of the festival in what they called “angels in a nuptial chamber”, which was also called the “sacrament of copulation.” This was said to be an reenactment of the marriage of “Sophia and the Redeemer.” As the participants of the February 14th ritual began their sexual sacrament, presided over and watched by the priests known as Valentinians, the following literary was spoken: “Let the seed of light descend into thy bridal chamber, receive the bridegroom… open thine arms to embrace him. Behold, grace has descended upon thee.”






As time went on, the Orthodox Church suppressed the Gnostic Catholics and manufactured “St. Valentine”, whose day continues to be celebrated in these modern times.






It should be without saying that the Christians should avoid Valentine’s Day like a plague. In God’s eyes, it is still “Lupercalia”, the “Day Of The Wolf.” Men become wolves, as they carry on the Satanic rituals of fornication, which means sexual intercourse without marriage. We have heard of the “wolf whistle”, and we all know that wolves do not whistle. It is lustful men and women, who carry on Satan’s blasphemy to this very day.


In conclusion, we must ask ourselves, “Should a true Christian be associated in any way with this celebration of evil roots? Should we be doing what the heathen have done for so many years and try to justify it as love?” Romans 12:2 answers this very well, “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…”






The shocking information in this tract can be easily verified at any public library. If you want more information, please contact us at:






Last Trumpet Ministries International


PO Box 806


Beaver Dam, WI 53916






These tracts have been prayed over, and you will never be the same after reading this message. May our Lord Jesus Christ grant unto you a desire to walk in His truth.






Pastor David J. Meyer

Your Daily Messenger and sons

Randy, always a radiant smile

At church, the gathering of angels

Matthew - Strength, wisdom, and beauty

Nathan - a man without guile

Nick - words from the wise

Surfer Dude - Got mit uns

They took away more food today

With all the sites and Youtube, adsense, only activated for ONE MONTH, was already earning 600 a month, average.


We were thrilled, because it meant at least a way to get food on the table, considering every job me and my sons apply for is a CLOSED DOOR. ALWAYS. And when we do get work, it's day labor stuff.


Day Labor...


Day labor means slave wages. Not enough to pay for anything but the gas and food for the day to do the job. See? Slavery is still very much alive in the USA. Especially here southern California.


Every day, i get several malware attacks, by going to mainstream sites. When my IP shows up somewhere, it's attack city.

This is what hapens to freejacks that refuse the Beast System, as we have.

My son Nathan is a 4.3 GPA and has had straight As from grade 7 onward, five years ongoing. He's a junior now, but not a single university wants him, talks to him, or considers him. Nathan was composing music at age 8. Was solving MIT and Caltech physics problems at age 10, and every year takes any birthday or xmas money he gets and buys chemistry and physics books at the highest level. For giggles, he sits and solves complex master's level physics problems and proves them in under five minutes.

FIVE MINUTES.

He's been doing that for 6 years. (He's also the most courageous person I've ever met and is the best surfer in the family - he could go pro)

BUt as far as his school system is concerned, he doesn't exist. i haven't talked about it, because it sounds like all bragging and ego and really, it's his business, not the world's. I'm just pointing out how at every turn, we are blocked. Stopped. Made non-persons.

All we are is marks to be played and stepped on and it has been that way for years.

Day in and day out, we literally pool together our pocket change for food. Gas. Anything... When a donation comes in at the last minute, it means the lights get paid, or the rent, or gas. Many times, that doesn't happen. On birthdays, gifts aren't given because there is no money for that kind of thing. We buy stuff used and second hand, mostly. My son Matt had only two pairs of pants he has been wearing for the last 3 years and the seats are all out in them. Only in recently we were able to buy him another pair. Thirty dollars is a lot of money when you only have 3 in your pocket.

...Between October and Late December, both Matt and I went on fasts totalling 5 weeks plus, only because there wasn't enough food for everyone, so he and I made the sacrifice to not eat, so the others could. We felt the younger ones needed food more, and we simply didn't have enough money to feed us all. I was so amazed at Matt's love to do this - he's only 18 and to go on long fasts to make the food stretch farther. I never even heard of something like that, except in books, and here was my son, not eating so others might. This is what we do to get by, most of the time.

All our surf stuff was bought at yard sales or second hand shops.

Except for the food. (smile)

This is the life of our family. And, after the videos and stuff put up recently, the network bitch slapped us yet again for just doing what we do. But, they are punishing my kids for my activities. But, with evil, that's how they roll. Get them all, hurt them all. Always.

My sons sleep 3 in a room on a floor in sleeping bags. Have for years. Because we cannot afford anything larger than a shitbox for a apartment. Just like in a 3rd world country.

But still, we sing, we play, we smile, we LOVE.

Because THAT'S HOW WE ROLL.

And, it's all we've been left with. Our joy, love, and each other. It's all we have.

Or ever will have.

Google has disabled my adsense...

the network giveth...the network taketh away.

The Lizard People

Making an example out of a freejack

I am very well aware of the fact that the Beast Network uses the misfortune they create for me - and others - as an example to their own minions. As in...

"See. This will happen to you. Stay in the fold. IF you leave it, your fate will be as his is. Only worse."

Blah blah blah.

Maybe. Maybe not. Everyone is different with a different set of circumstances. But your soul will be free. You'll be connected to Dad, the Great Father. And your spiritual life will be abundant with love, miracles, and wonders beyond words.

I'll take Dad anytime.

How you see yourself

I used to know this guy a long time ago who used to tell anyone he would meet, "I went to the same High School as Elvis Presley!"

It was sad.

See, for people who base their self-esteem and self-image upon how others see them, and then seek approval of others so as to exalt themselves in the eyes of others, indicating to everyone but themselves that their identity is in a shambles. In short, they need the pedastal lift and are actively needing, wanting, others to think that some oblique, distant connection to someone important or famous somehow makes them "special" and therefore better than everyone else around them.

And there's the crux. This kind of failure of mind and identity believes that others must think something special - especially if the boost is fraudulent or contrived - in order for them to feel whole and gain the approval of others. Secretly, in their heart of hearts, they realize subconsciously they are scoundrels and have to replace that with a false mask which is presented to everyone for approval.

By the late 1990s I had an ego wall. It was filled with college degrees, teaching credentials, engineering degrees, awards, honors, letters and pics from very famous people, ad nauseoum. It actually filled TWO walls. All before the age of 40. By anyone's standards, it represented an amazing life of accomplishment, most of it attained before the age of 35.

In 2005, I burned all but three of them. A couple of degrees to give to my sons. The rest went into the fireplace.

You see, one day I realized that all that blather didn't matter. It wasn't who I was and had nothing to do with the real Don or what was in his heart. It was just a bunch of bench markers of points in my life.

So what.

They didn't mean anything.

Who cares.

Certainly not I.

I still run into people with this same problem. They believe that because they used the same bathroom as some other dead person, that makes them special. Whether it's being related to some dead ancestor or some gold star they got in grade school as a child.

It does not. Nothing does.

What makes you special is what makes all of us special. Being who we are on Earth, with every chance to be wonderful people with good hearts. That makes you special.

Nothing else.

Not what you have, have done, or where you have been. Those are just bench markers.

And referencing them to anyone just makes everyone with eyes to see how desperate you are for your self-image to be pushed from where it really is.

It's better to look honestly at yourself in the mirror and do it.

As long as your reality is determined by the opinion of others, than you are DOOMED. You will never be free and will always be a slave to the group.

In short...

You'll just be yet another go-along-to-get-along droid with no mind of your own.

That...that is a wasted life.

Be a rose...rather than a thorn

DB quotes

“The world was a playground for the foolish and an exalted wonder of love and magic for the wise.”



“Magic is magic except to the magician.”



The clocks had struck their dreadful purpose and the time now brought all circumstances into the circle.”



“As in other tests it was now the moment of decision; she was given a final chance to reverse the inevitable course of destiny—ever does free will move through the gate that binds the past and future.”



“Wherever suffering raised its ugly head, these angels of compassion could be found—in a home, in a relationship, or when mankind decided its conflicts on some forgotten piece of land turned into a graveyard with weapons of war.”



"The past, present, and future are all the same. Connected. See that and understand how important choice is in all we do."

Reddit is the Satanic Network

We ran all the analytics on the web traffic from Reddit. Within two hours of signing up, we were blocked. Every site, blog, the works.

Pretty fast, wasn't it?

For a late friday night, weekend thing.

The "community" has reach into all things and has its people controlling everything.

Now, reddit has banned me from linking altogether. To anything. Anywhere.

I see...

When someone is blacklisted by the Beast System, you see it, feel it, live it. As I have for a very long, long time.

They even suppress the stats of these blogs, web sites, youtube, everything. They keep the ad rates so low, that they can never, regardless of traffic volume, ever rise beyond a small bag of pennies per day.

Analytics reviewing traffic info reveals that these sites and others receive over 10,000 + visitors every day.

But you don't see that number on the counters. In fact, most of the counters go backward from time to time.

Fascinating...

The Fasting Cure

by Upton Sinclair


Mitchell Kennerley, New York and London, MCMXI,
Copyright 1911

In the Cosmopolitan Magazine for May, 1910, and in the Contemporary Review (London) for April, 1910 I published an article dealing with my experiences in fasting. I have written a great many magazine articles, but never one which attracted so much attention as this. The first day the magazine was on the news-stands, I received a telegram from a man in Washington who had begun to fast and wanted some advice; and thereafter I received ten or twenty letters a day from people who had questions to ask or experiences to narrate. At the date of writing eight months have passed, and the flood has not yet stopped. The editors of the Cosmopolitan also tell me that they have never received so many letters about an article in their experience. Still more significant was the number of reports which began to appear in the news columns of papers all over the country, telling of people who were fasting. From various sources I have received about fifty such clippings, and few but reported benefit to the faster.





As a consequence of this interest, I was asked by the Cosmopolitan to write another article, which appeared in the issue of February, 1911. The present volume is made up from these two articles, with the addition of some notes and comments, and some portions of articles contributed to the Physical Culture magazine, of the editorial staff of which I am a member. It was my intention at first to work this matter into a connected whole, but upon rereading the articles I decided that it would be better to publish them as they stood. The journalistic style has its advantages; and repetitions may perhaps be pardoned in the case of a topic which is so new to almost everyone.



I have reproduced in the book several photographs of myself which appeared in the magazine articles. Ordinarily one does not print his picture in his own books; but when it comes to fasting there are many "doubting Thomases," and we are told that "seeing is believing." The two photographs of myself which appear as a frontispiece afford evidence of a really extraordinary physical recuperation; and the reader has my word for it that there was nothing in my way of life to account for it, except three fasts, of a total of thirty days. There is one other matter to be referred to. Several years ago I published a book entitled Good Health, written in collaboration with a friend. I could not express my own views fully in that book, and on certain points where I differed with my collaborator, I have come since to differ still more. The book contains a great deal of useful information; but later experience has convinced me that its views on the all-important subject of diet are erroneous. My present opinions I have given in this book. I am not saying this to apologize for an inconsistency, but to record a growth. In those days I believed something, because other people told me; today I know something else, because I have tried it upon myself.



My object in publishing this book is two-fold: first, to have something to which I can refer people, so that I will not have to answer half a dozen "fasting letters" every day for the rest of my life; and second, in the hope of attracting sufficient attention to the subject to interest some scientific men in making a real investigation of it. Today we know certain facts about what is called "autointoxication"; we know them because Metchnikoff, Pawlow [sic] and others have made a thorough-going inquiry into the subject. I believe that the subject of fasting is one of just as great importance. I have stated facts in this book about myself; and I have quoted many letters which are genuine and beyond dispute. The cures which they record are altogether without precedent, I think. The reader will find in the course of the book (page 63) a tabulation of the results of 277 cases of fasting. In this number of disparate cases there were only about half a dozen definite and unexplained failures reported. Surely it cannot be that medical men and scientists will continue for much longer to close their eyes to facts of such vital significance as this.



I do not pretend to be the discoverer of the fasting cure. The subject was discussed by Dr. E. H. Dewey in books which were published thirty or forty years ago. For the reader who cares to investigate further, I mention the following books, which I have read with interest and profit. I recommend them, although, needless to say, I do not agree with everything that is in them: "Fasting for the Cure of Disease," by Dr. L. B. Hazzard; "Perfect Health," by C. C. Haskell; "Fasting, Hydrotherapy and Exercise," by Bernarr Macfadden; "Fasting, Vitality and Nutrition," by Hereward Carrington. Also I will add that Mr. C. C. Haskell, of Norwich, Conn., conducts a correspondence-school dealing with the subject of fasting, and that fasting patients are taken charge of at Bernarr Macfadden's Healthatorium, 42nd Street and Grand Boulevard, Chicago, Ill., and by Dr. Linda B. Hazzard, of Seattle, Washington.



Perfect Health!


Have you any conception of what the phrase means? Can you form any image of what would be your feeling if every organ in your body were functioning perfectly? Perhaps you can go back to some day in your youth, when you got up early in the morning and went for a walk, and the spirit of the sunrise got into your blood, and you walked faster, and took deep breaths, and laughed aloud for the sheer happiness of being alive in such a world of beauty. And now you are grown older–and what would you give for the secret of that glorious feeling? What would you say if you were told that you could bring it back and keep it, not only for mornings, but for afternoons and evenings, and not as something accidental and mysterious, but as something which you yourself have created, and of which you are completely master?



This is not an introduction to a new device in patent medicine advertising. I have nothing to sell, and no process patented. It is simply that for ten years I have been studying the ill health of myself and of the men and women around me. And I have found the cause and the remedy. I have not only found good health, but perfect health; I have found a new state of being, a potentiality of life; a sense of lightness and cleanness and joyfulness, such as I did not know could exist in the human body. "I like to meet you on the street," said a friend the other day. "You walk as if it were such fun!"



I look about me in the world, and nearly everybody I know is sick. I could name one after another a hundred men and women, who are doing vital work for progress and carrying a cruel handicap of physical suffering. For instance, I am working for social justice, and I have comrades whose help is needed every hour, and they are ill! In one single week's newspapers last spring I read that one was dying of kidney trouble, that another was in hospital from nervous breakdown, and that a third was ill with ptomaine poisoning. And in my correspondence I am told that another of my dearest friends has only a year to live; that another heroic man is a nervous wreck, craving for death; and that a third is tortured by bilious headaches. And there is not one of these people whom I could not cure if I had him alone for a couple of weeks; no one of them who would not in the end be walking down the street "as if it were such fun!"



I propose herein to tell the story of my discovery of health, and I shall not waste much time in apologizing for the intimate nature of the narrative. It is no pleasure for me to tell over the tale of my headaches or to discuss my unruly stomach. I cannot take any case but my own, because there is no case about which I can speak with such authority. To be sure, I might write about it in the abstract, and in veiled terms. But in that case the story would lose most of its convincingness, and some of its usefulness. I might tell it without signing my name to it. But there are a great many people who have read my books and will believe what I tell them, who would not take the trouble to read an article without a name. Mr. Horace Fletcher has set us all an example in this matter. He has written several volumes about his individual digestion, with the result that literally millions of people have been helped. In the same way I propose to put my case on record. The reader will find that it is a typical case, for I made about every mistake that a man could make, and tried every remedy, old and new, that anybody had to offer me.



I spent my boyhood in a well-to-do family, in which good eating was regarded as a social grace and the principal interest in life. We had a colored woman to prepare our food, and another to serve it. It was not considered fitting for children to drink liquor, but they had hot bread three times a day, and they were permitted to revel in fried chicken and rich gravies and pastries, fruit cake and candy and ice-cream. Every Sunday I would see my grandfather's table with a roast of beef at one end, and a couple of chickens at the other, and a cold ham at one side; at Christmas and Thanksgiving the energies of the whole establishment would be given up to the preparation of delicious foods. And later on, when I came to New York, I considered it necessary to have such food; even when I was a poor student, living on four dollars a week, I spent more than three of it on eatables.



I was an active and fairly healthy boy; at twenty I remember saying that I had not had a day's serious sickness in fourteen years. Then I wrote my first novel, working sixteen or eighteen hours a day for several months, camping out, and living mostly out of a frying-pan. At the end I found that I was seriously troubled with dyspepsia; and it was worse the next year, after the second book. I went to see a physician, who gave me some red liquid which magically relieved the consequences of doing hard brain-work after eating. So I went on for a year or two more, and then I found that the artificially-digested food was not being eliminated from my system with sufficient regularity. So I went to another physician, who gave my malady another name and gave me another medicine, and put off the time of reckoning a little while longer.



I have never in my life used tea or coffee, alcohol or tobacco; but for seven or eight years I worked under heavy pressure all the time, and ate very irregularly, and ate unwholesome food. So I began to have headaches once in a while, and to notice that I was abnormally sensitive to colds. I considered these maladies natural to mortals, and I would always attribute them to some specific accident. I would say, "I've been knocking about down town all day"; or, "I was out in the hot sun"; or, "I lay on the damp ground." I found that if I sat in a draught for even a minute I was certain to "catch a cold." I found also that I had sore throat and tonsillitis once or twice every winter; also, now and then, the grippe. There were times when I did not sleep well; and as all this got worse, I would have to drop all my work and try to rest. The first time I did this a week or two was sufficient but later on a month or two was necessary, and then several months.


The year I wrote "The Jungle" I had my first summer cold. It was haying time on a farm, and I thought it was a kind of hay-fever. I would sneeze for hours in perfect torment, and this lasted for a month, until I went away to the sea-shore. This happened again the next summer, and also another very painful experience; a nerve in a tooth died, and I had to wait three days for the pain to "localize," and then had the tooth drilled out, and staggered home, and was ill in bed for a week with chills and fever, and nausea and terrible headaches. I mention all these unpleasant details so that the reader may understand the state of wretchedness to which I had come. At the same time, also, I had a great deal of distressing illness in my family; my wife seldom had a week without suffering, and my little boy had pneumonia one winter, and croup the next, and whooping-cough in the summer, with the inevitable "colds" scattered in between.



After the Helicon Hall fire I realized that I was in a bad way, and for the two years following I gave a good part of my time to trying to find out how to preserve my health. I went to Battle Creek, and to Bermuda and to the Adirondacks; I read the books of all the new investigators of the subject of hygiene, and tried out their theories religiously. I had discovered Horace Fletcher a couple of years before. Mr. Fletcher's idea is, in brief, to chew your food, and chew it thoroughly; to extract from each particle of food the maximum of nutriment, and to eat only as much as your system actually needs. This was a very wonderful idea to me, and I fell upon it with the greatest enthusiasm. All the physicians I had known were men who tried to cure me when I fell sick, but here was a man who was studying how to stay well. I have to find fault with Mr. Fletcher's system, and so I must make clear at the outset how much I owe to it. It set me upon the right track--it showed me the goal, even if it did not lead me to it. It made clear to me that all my various ailments were symptoms of one great trouble, the presence in my body of the poisons produced by superfluous and unassimilated food, and that in adjusting the quantity of food to the body's exact needs lay the secret of perfect health.



It was only in the working out of the theory that I fell down. Mr. Fletcher told me that "Nature" would be my guide, and that if only I masticated thoroughly, instinct would select the foods. I found that, so far as my case was concerned, my "nature" was hopelessly perverted. I invariably preferred unwholesome foods--apple pie, and toast soaked in butter, and stewed fruit with quantities of cream and sugar. Nor did "Nature" kindly tell me when to stop, as she apparently does some other "Fletcherites"; no matter how much I chewed, if I ate all I wanted I ate too much. And when I realized this, and tried to stop it, I went, in my ignorance, to the other extreme, and lost fourteen pounds in as many days. Again, Mr. Fletcher taught me to remove all the "unchewable" parts of the food--the skins of fruit, etc. The result of this is there is nothing to stimulate the intestines, and the waste remains in the body for many days. Mr. Fletcher says this does not matter, and he appears to prove that it has not mattered in his case. But I found that it mattered very seriously in my case; it was not until I became a "Fletcherite" that my headaches became hopeless and that sluggish intestines became one of my chronic complaints.



I next read the books of Metchnikoff and Chittenden, who showed me just how my ailments came to be. The unassimilated food lies in the colon, and bacteria swarm in it, and the poisons they produce are absorbed into the system. I had bacteriological examinations made in my own case, and I found that when I was feeling well the number of these toxin-producing germs was about six billions to the ounce of intestinal contents; and when, a few days later, I had a headache, the number was a hundred and twenty billions. Here was my trouble under the microscope, so to speak.



These tests were made at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, where I went for a long stay. I tried their system of water cure, which I found a wonderful stimulant to the eliminative organs; but I discovered that, like all other stimulants, it leaves you in the end just where you were. My health was improved at the sanitarium, but a week after I left I was down with the grippe again.



I gave the next year of my life to trying to restore my health. I spent the winter in Bermuda and the summer in the Adirondacks, both of them famous health resorts, and during the entire time I lived an absolutely hygienic life. I did not work hard, and I did not worry, and I did not think about my health except when I had to. I live[d] in the open air all the time, and I gave most of the day to vigorous exercise--tennis, walking, boating and swimming. I mention this specifically, so that the reader may perceive that I had eliminated all other factors of ill-health, and appreciate to the full my statement that at the end of the year's time my general health was worse than ever before.



I was all right so long as I played tennis all day or climbed mountains. The trouble came when I settled down to do brain-work. And from this I saw perfectly clearly that I was over-eating; there was surplus food to be burned up, and when it was not burned up it poisoned me. But how was I to stop when I was hungry? I tried giving up all the things I liked and of which I ate most; but that did no good, because I had such a complacent appetite--I would immediately take to liking the other things! I thought that I had an abnormal appetite, the result of my early training; but how was I ever to get rid of it?



I must not give the impression that I was a conspicuously hearty eater. On the contrary, I ate far less than most people eat. But that was no consolation to me. I had wrecked myself by years of overwork, and so I was more sensitive. The other people were going to pieces by slow stages, I could see; but I was already in pieces.



So matters stood when I chanced to meet a lady, whose radiant complexion and extraordinary health were a matter of remark to everyone. I was surprised to hear that for ten or fifteen years, and until quite recently, she had been a bed-ridden invalid. She had lived the lonely existence of a pioneer's wife, and had raised a family under conditions of shocking ill health. She had suffered from sciatica and acute rheumatism; from a chronic intestinal trouble which the doctors called "intermittent peritonitis"; chronic catarrh, causing deafness. And this was the woman who rode on horseback with me up Mount Hamilton, in California, a distance of twenty-eight miles, in one of the most terrific rain-storms I have ever witnessed! We had two untamed young horses, and only leather bits to control them with, and we were pounded and flung about for six mortal hours, which I shall never forget if I live to be a hundred. And this woman, when she took the ride, had not eaten a particle of food for four days previously!



That was the clue to her escape: she had cured herself by a fast. She had abstained from food for eight days, and all her trouble had fallen from her. Afterwards she had taken her eldest son, a senior at Stanford, and another friend of his, and fasted twelve days with them, and cured them of nervous dyspepsia. And then she had taken a woman friend, the wife of a Stanford professor, and cured her of rheumatism by a week's fast. I had heard of the fasting cure, but this was the first time I had met with it. I was too much burdened with work to try it just then, but I began to read up on the subject--the books of Dr. Dewey, Dr. Hazzard and Mr. Carrington. Coming home from California I got a sunstroke on the Gulf of Mexico, and spent a week in hospital at Key West, and that seemed to give the coup de grave to my long-suffering stomach. After another spell of hard work I found myself unable to digest corn-meal mush and milk; suddenly I was ready for a fast.



I began. The fast has become a commonplace to me now; but I will assume that it is as new and as startling to the reader as it was to myself at first, and will describe my sensations at length.



I was very hungry for the first day--the unwholesome, ravening sort of hunger that all dyspeptics know. I had a little hunger the second morning, and thereafter, to my very great astonishment, no hunger whatever--no more interest in food than if I had never known the taste of it. Previous to the fast I had had a headache every day for two or three weeks. It lasted through the first day and then disappeared--never to return. I felt very weak the second day, and a little dizzy on arising. I went out of doors and lay in the sun all day, reading; and the same for the third and fourth days--intense physical lassitude, but with great clearness of mind. After the fifth day I felt stronger, and walked a good deal, and I also began some writing. No phase of the experience surprised me more than the activity of my mind: I read and wrote more than I had dared to do for years before.



During the first four days I lost fifteen pounds in weight--something which, I have since learned, was a sign of the extremely poor state of my tissues. Thereafter I lost only two pounds in eight days--an equally unusual phenomenon. I slept well throughout the fast. About the middle of each day I would feel weak, but a massage and a cold shower would refresh me. Towards the end I began to find that in walking about I would grow tired in the legs, and as I did not wish to lie in bed I broke the fast after the twelfth day with some orange juice.



I took the juice of a dozen oranges during two days, and then went on the milk diet, as recommended by Bernarr Macfadden. I took a glassful of warm milk every hour the first day, every three quarters of an hour the next day, and finally every half-hour--or eight quarts a day. This is, of course, much more than can be assimilated, but the balance serves to flush the system out. The tissues are bathed in nutriment, and an extraordinary recuperation is experienced. In my own case I gained four and a half pounds in one day--the third--and gained a total of thirty-two pounds in twenty-four days.



My sensations on this milk diet were almost as interesting as on the fast. In the first place, there was an extraordinary sense of peace and calm, as if every weary nerve in the body were purring like a cat under a stove. Next there was the keenest activity of mind--I read and wrote incessantly. And, finally, there was a perfectly ravenous desire for physical work. In the old days I had walked long distances and climbed mountains, but always with reluctance and from a sense of compulsion. Now, after the cleaning-out of the fast, I would go into a gymnasium and do work which would literally have broken my back before, and I did it with intense enjoyment, and with amazing results. The muscles fairly leaped out upon my body; I suddenly discovered the possibility of becoming an athlete. I had always been lean and dyspeptic-looking, with what my friends called a "spiritual" expression; I now became as round as a butter-ball, and so brown and rosy in the face that I was a joke to all who saw me.



I had not taken what is called a "complete" fast--that is, I had not waited until hunger returned. Therefore I began again. I intended only a short fast, but I found that hunger ceased again, and, much to my surprise, I had none of the former weakness. I took a cold bath and a vigorous rub twice a day; I walked four miles every morning, and did light gymnasium work, and with nothing save a slight tendency to chilliness to let me know that I was fasting. I lost nine pounds in eight days, and then went for a week longer on oranges and figs, and made up most of the weight on these.



I shall always remember with amusement the anxious caution with which I now began to taste the various foods which before had caused me trouble. Bananas, acid fruits, peanut butter--I tried them one by one, and then in combination, and so realized with a thrill of exultation that every trace of my old trouble was gone. Formerly I had had to lie down for an hour or two after meals; now I could do whatever I chose. Formerly I had been dependent upon all kinds of laxative preparations; now I forgot about them. I no longer had headaches. I went bareheaded in the rain, I sat in cold draughts of air, and was apparently immune to colds. And, above all, I had that marvellous, abounding energy so that whenever I had a spare minute or two I would begin to stand on my head, or to "chin" myself, or do some other "stunt," from sheer exuberance of animal spirits.



For several months after this experience I lived upon a diet of raw foods exclusively mainly nuts and fruits. I had been led to regard this as the natural diet for human beings; and I found that so long as I was leading an active life the results were most satisfactory. They were satisfactory also in the case of my wife and still more so in the case of my little boy: the amount of work and bother thus saved in the household may be imagined. But when I came to settle down to a long period of hard and continuous writing, I found that I had not sufficient bodily energy to digest these raw foods. I resorted to fasting and milk alternately--and that is well enough for a time, but it proves a nervous strain in the end. Recently a friend called my attention to the late Dr. Salisbury's book, "The Relation of Alimentation to Disease." Dr. Salisbury recommends a diet of broiled beef and hot water as the solution of most of the problems of the human body; and it may be believed that I, who had been a rigid and enthusiastic vegetarian for three or four years, found this a startling idea. However, I make a specialty of keeping an open mind, and I set out to try the Salisbury system. I am sorry to have to say that it seems to be a good one; sorry, because the vegetarian way of life is so obviously the cleaner and more humane and more convenient. But it seems to me that I am able to do more work and harder work with my mind while eating beefsteaks than under any other regime; and while this continues to be the case there will be one less vegetarian in the world.



The fast is to me the key to eternal youth, the secret of perfect and permanent health. I would not take anything in all the world for my knowledge of it. It is nature's safety valve, an automatic protection against disease. I do not venture to assert that I am proof against virulent diseases, such as smallpox or typhoid. I know one ardent physical culturest, a physician, who takes typhoid germs at intervals in order to prove his immunity, but I should not care to go that far; it is enough for me to know that I am proof against all the common infections which plague us, and against all the "chronic" troubles. And I shall continue so just as long as I stand by my present resolve, which is to fast at the slightest hint of any symptom of ill-being--a cold or a headache, a feeling of depression, or a coated tongue, or a scratch on the finger which does not heal quickly.



Those who have made a study of the fast explain its miracles in the following way: Superfluous nutriment is taken into the system and ferments, and the body is filled with a greater quantity of poisonous matter than the organs of elimination can handle. The result is the clogging of these organs and of the blood-vessels--such is the meaning of headaches and rheumatism, arteriosclerosis, paralysis, apoplexy, Bright's disease, cirrhosis, etc. And by impairing the blood and lowering the vitality, this same condition prepares the system for infection--for "colds," or pneumonia, or tuberculosis, or any of the fevers. As soon as the fast begins, and the first hunger has been withstood, the secretions cease, and the whole assimilative system, which takes so much of the energies of the body, goes out of business. The body then begins a sort of house-cleaning, which must be helped by an enema and a bath daily, and, above all, by copious water-drinking. The tongue becomes coated, the breath and the perspiration offensive; and this continues until the diseased matter has been entirely cast out, when the tongue clears and hunger reasserts itself in unmistakable form.



The loss of weight during the fast is generally about a pound a day. The fat is used first, and after that the muscular tissue; true starvation begins only when the body has been reduced to the skeleton and the viscera. Fasts of forty and fifty days are now quite common--I have met several who have taken them.



Strange as it may seem, the fast is a cure for both emaciation and obesity. After a complete fast the body will come to its ideal weight. People who are very stout will not regain their weight; while people who are underweight may gain a pound or more a day for a month. There are two dangers to be feared in fasting. The first is that of fear. I do not say this as a jest. No one should begin to fast until he has read up on the subject and convinced himself that it is the thing to do; if possible he should have with him someone who has already had the experience. He should not have about him terrified aunts and cousins who will tell him that he looks like a corpse, that his pulse is below forty, and that his heart may stop beating in the night. I took a fast of three days out in California; on the third day I walked about fifteen miles, off and on, and, except that I was restless, I never felt better. And then in the evening I came home and read about the Messina earthquake, and how the relief ships arrived, and the wretched survivors crowded down to the water's edge and tore each other like wild beasts in their rage of hunger. The paper set forth, in horrified language, that some of them had been seventy-two hours without food. I, as I read, had also been seventy-two hours without food; and the difference was simply that they thought they were starving. And if at some crisis during a long fast, when you feel nervous and weak and doubting, some people with stronger wills than your own are able to arouse in you the terrors of the earthquake survivors, they can cause their most direful anticipations to be realized.



The other danger is in breaking the fast. A person breaking a long fast should regard himself as if he were liable to seizures of violent insanity. I know a man who fasted fifty days, and then ate half a dozen figs, and caused intestinal abrasions from which he lost a great deal of blood. I would dwell more upon this topic were it not for my discovery of the "milk diet." When you drink a glass of milk every half-hour you have no chance to get really hungry, and so you glide, as if by magic, from a condition of extreme emaciation to one of blooming rotundity. But very frequently the milk diet disagrees with people; and these have to break the fast with very small quantities of the simplest foods--fruit juices and meat broths for the first two or three days at least.




I will conclude this chapter by narrating the experiences of some other persons with the fasting cure. With the exception of one, the second case, they are all people whom I know personally, and who have told me their stories with their own lips.



First, I give the case of my wife. She has always been frail, and subject to sore throats since girlhood. In the past five years she has undergone three major surgical operations and had several serious illnesses besides. Two years ago she had a severe attack of appendicitis. The physician made a wrong diagnosis, and kept her alive for about ten days with morphine. She was then too low to risk an operation, and was not expected to live. It was several months before she was able to walk again, and she had never fully recovered from the experience. When she began the fast she was suffering from serious stomach trouble, loss of weight, and neurasthenia.



I did not think that she would be able to stand a fast. She had more trouble than I--some nervousness, headache and nausea. But she stood it for ten days, when her tongue cleared suddenly. She had lost twelve pounds, and she then gained twenty-two pounds in seventeen days. She then took another fast of six days with me, and with no more trouble than I experienced the second time--walking four miles every morning with me. She is now a picture of health, and is engaged in accumulating muscle with enthusiasm.



Second, a man well on in life, who had always abused his health. He suffered from asthma and dropsy, and was saturated with drugs. He had not been able to lie down for several years. He weighed over 220 pounds, and his legs were "like sacks of water, leaking continually." His kidneys had refused to act, and after his doctors had tried all the drugs they knew, he was told that he was dying. His brother, who narrated the circumstances to me, persuaded him not to eat the supper that was brought in to him, and so he lived through the night. He fasted seven days, and went for four weeks longer on a very light diet, and is now chopping wood and pitching hay upon his farm in Kentucky.


Third, a young physician, as a college boy a physical wreck from dissipation, now twenty-four. "A born neurasthenic." He was attacked by appendicitis twice in succession. He fasted five days after the last attack, and six days later on. Gained thirty-five pounds, and is a splendidly developed athlete; he runs five miles in 26 minutes 15 seconds, and rode a wheel 500 miles in seven days.



Fourth, a young lady, who had suffered a nervous collapse caused by overwork and worry. The bones of her spine had softened; her hip-bones tilted upwards three-quarters of an inch; she was "barely able to crawl on two sticks." She fasted ten days, and again eight days, and took the milk diet for six weeks. I have seen her every day for the last eight or ten weeks, and I do not think that I ever met a woman who impressed me as possessing more superabundant and radiant health.



Fifth, a young man, injured in a railroad wreck; a rib broken and the outer lining of the lungs punctured. Still has an opening for drainage, caused by chafing of the membranes. Suffered in succession attacks of bronchitis, typhoid, pneumonia and pleurisy. Was reduced from 186 to 119 pounds, and had planned to take his life. Fasted six days, gained twenty-seven pounds, and plays tennis vigorously, in spite of having an opening in his chest. Recently walked 442 miles in eleven days.



Sixth, a lady, married, and [] a life-long sufferer from stomach trouble; had experienced six attacks of inflammatory rheumatism, resulting in valvular heart disease and the loss of the use of her limbs. Fasted four times--four, eight, twenty-eight, and fourteen days. I can best describe her present condition by saying that all this summer she arose every morning at daybreak, walked four and a half miles, went for a swim, and then walked home for breakfast.



Seventh, an Episcopal clergyman, who had suffered almost all his life from indigestion; had an acute attack of gastritis, followed by nervous prostration and complete breakdown. Specialists had diagnosed his case as "prolapsed stomach and bowels, autointoxication and neurasthenia," and told him that he could not expect to get well in less than five years. He was so emaciated that he could hardly creep around, and, despite the fact that he had a wife and six children, was contemplating suicide. He fasted eleven days, and then gained thirty pounds. I am prepared to testify that he is the most hard-working, cheerful and athletic clergyman it has ever been my fortune to meet.



I have taken some trouble to investigate the subject of the fast, and to meet people who have been through the experience. I could give a dozen more cases such as the above if space permitted. I know one man who reduced his weight from 365 pounds to 235. I know one little girl whose spine was bent in the shape of a letter U lying sideways, and who, by means of fasting and a diet of fruits exclusively, has come four inches nearer to straightness in a few months. She has the complexion of perfect health, and is rapidly recovering the use of arms and legs, which were paralyzed years ago.



The reader may think that my enthusiasm over the fasting cure is due to my imaginative temperament; I can only say that I have never yet met a person who has given the fast a fair trial who does not describe his experience in the same way. I have never heard of any harm resulting from it, save only in cases of tuberculosis, in which I have been told by one physician that people have lost weight and not regained it.






I regard the fast as Nature's own remedy for all other diseases. It is the only remedy which is based upon an understanding of the fundamental nature of disease. And I believe that when the glad tidings of its miracles have reached the people it will lead to the throwing of 90 percent of our present materia medica into the wastebasket. This may be unwelcome to those physicians who are more concerned with their own income than they are with the health of their patients; but I personally have never met any such physicians, and so I most earnestly urge it upon medical men to investigate the extraordinary and almost incredible facts about the fasting cure.






Shortly after the above was completed the writer had another interesting experience with the fast. He had occasion to do some work which kept him indoors for a couple of weeks, under considerable strain; and after that to spend the greater part of a week in the dentist's chair suffering a good deal of pain; and finally to spend two days and nights in a railroad train. He arrived at his destination with every symptom of what long and painful experience has taught him to recognize as a severe attack of the "grippe." (The last attack laid him up in hospital for a week, and left him so reduced that he could hardly stand.) On this occasion he fasted, and although circumstances compelled him to be up and about during the entire time, every trace of ill-feeling had left him in two days. Having started, however, he continued the fast for twelve days. During this time he planned a play, and wrote two-thirds of it, and he has reason to think that it is as good work as he has ever done. It is worth noting that on the eighth day he was strong enough to "chin" himself six times in succession, though previous to the fasting treatment he had never in his life been able to do this more than once or twice.