26 MARCH 1927, Page 17

THE FASTING CURE

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]

SIR,—I read the article on the fasting treatment of diseases in your issue of March 5th with great interest. I fasted forty-five days in 1917 for a complication of diseases, including chest trouble, heart affection, stasis and finally diabetes, after being examined by various medical men and being given a short time to live. My diseases vanished completely within the first twenty-two days. I never slept so well or felt so fit in my life after the sixteenth day, and carried on in the vain belief that the need for food would never reassert itself. I was hungry on the forty-fifth day, a really keen persistent desire for food. I broke the fast on the evening of the forty- sixth day, my weight then being exactly eighty-four lbs. Three months later, after rigidly adhering to the one meal a day plan (taken each evening) off a varied menu of raw fresh fruits, salads, eggs, milk, fresh beef, mutton, tripe, whole wheat grains and nuts, I weighed 140 lbs.

Since then I have been closely identified with scores of both short and long fasts, including those of my wife, both my sons, my daughter, and my grand-daughter. We have no use for drugs, oils, lotions, ointments or any other medicament, nostrum or branch of any healing artifice. There is something (Matt. iv. 3, 4) in the Divine example.— I am, Sir, &c., JOHN W. ARMSTRONG. 8 While's View, Bradford, Yorks.