FAITH AND FASTING [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] .
Sin,—When a hitherto apathetic person ".gets religion," _he usually behaves as though it had been reserved for him to discover and expound the full benefits of Christianity. When a layman " gets medicine," his behaviour is often very similar. Such was the reflection suggested to me by Mr. Yeats-Brown's admirable article on " Faith and Fasting."
Of course, he does not mean to imply, that he.discovered fasting, or even that he has re-discovered it, but the earelesie' reader might easily carry away such an impression Ero:M general tenor of the article. And the careless readet would also carry away a very false impression of what is meant, by fasting. Come, come, Mr. Yeats-Brown F To the real faster, five oranges in fifty hours is not fasting ; nor is a spent on " nothing but milk " even a reasonable caricature of the sad discipline which real fasting undoubtedly, is.
The Chalcedon Council, consisting of six hundred and thirty fathers, decreed Fasting to be a withholding of meat, drink, and all natural food. from the body, for the determinel, time. But Ecclesiastical fasts have fallen sadly from .the grace of those days. Medical fasts have, on the contraryi, stiffened in recent years. Allen's starvation treatment of liabetes means a three days' abstinence from everything
save water. The scheme of Dr. Gue1pa, of Paris, is even more severe, for it includes fairly active purgation, an addition which is said to render the absence of food much more bearable.
The advice contained in Mr. Yeats-Brown's penultimate paragraph is admirable. " Fast Give your digestion a rest . . . Give Nature time to tidy up the debris accumu- lated . ." But can Mr. Yeats-Brown, or anyone else, imagine an ordinary, overfed, bourgeois Briton who would patiently accept such advice from his doctor ? The medical man who ventures upon such counsel (I speak of what I know) is at once dubbed a dangerous lunatic, not only by that particular patient, but by the whole community, because tid- ings of lunacy spread rapidly, and four fat meals a day are articles, not only of food, but of faith. There are doctors who have attained to the position which enables them with impunity to say, " If you do as I tell you, and consent to starve, you will get well : if you don't do as I tell you, and continue to stuff, you will surely go to the devil, thus reaping your just reward." But they are not many ; and they are not popular.—I am, Sir, &c.,
LEONARD WILLIAMS, M.D. 77 Harley House, N.W.1.-
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