The Diary of a Fast
-LIVERY animal, when sick, refuses to eat: It " fasts until it is well. But man, the superior animal, allows reason to replace instinct with disastrous consequences in treating his diseases. He tries short cuts to health and they are often the longest way round.
It was easy last week to write of the theory of Nature Cure. I- come now to a less personally agreeable task, the description of what fasting did for me a year ago ; yet I -feel it a duty to do so, for there must be millions of people with symptoms much worse than mine who might thereby be helped.
My maladies were not complicated. I was nncler- exercised and over-fed, like 90 per cent. of the people I meet in London, and had had a good deal of illness during my service in India. When staying with a friend in Hertfordshire, I had heard of Mr. Lief's health home at Champneys, Tring, and wrote an article on the subject for the Spectator. Some hundreds of letters reached me as the result of that article ; the next step was an experi- mentum in coipore viii. I would not recommend anyone to fast, by the way, without expert advice.
When I arrived at Champneys, I was thoroughly overhauled and told "You can begin your fast at once, Eat an orange every hour to-day, beginning at noon, and nothing else. You can go up to London, for your work whenever you want." Below are some excerpts from my diary :- April 15th, 8 p.m.—Have now eaten eight oranges, walked four miles, read two books, practised some mashie shots. A week of this will send me mad. Indeed, I already feel a little light-headed. But hungry, No !
April 16th, 8 p.m.—Have walked four miles and driven thirty in the car ; pottering about in the open all day. Now I feel cold and head-achey and restless. This is inevitable, I fancy. Had an hour's massage this morning, followed by osteopathic and other treatment. The man in the next room to mine has fasted forty-one days. He looks thin, but is of good colour, and walked ten miles to-day. (I interrupt the narrative here to say that my next-door-neighbour fasted sixty-three days eventually to cure himself of long-standing digestive trouble. When I saw him three months later : I could scarcely believe my eyes : the erstwhile skeleton had become a hale and hearty youth.) Another man has fasted eighteen days and says he has felt hungry all the time. As for me, I don't. I feel the cold greatly. I hear more keenly. I taste better—at least the oranges taste delicious—I was given only four of them to-day. I feel disinclined for concentrated thought. The full moon is gorgebus but looks rainy.
April 17th, 8 p.m.—The days are starting to fly. 1 can't think what I have done, except eat three oranges; I feel far stronger than yesterday. My rest last night was curious. I didn't sleep for more than four hours, but I lay quiet for another six like a contented animal—a dog on a hearthrug. A verse in to-day's Observer describes it ;
" Caught in a golden web of night and moon, Content I lie, a moth in a cocoon."
April 18th.—A glorious day. I lay out in the sun after my massage and electric heat bath. I feel well and strong and not in the least hungry. To-morrow Morning I am driving up to London. " • • ' April 19t.h.—TO4lay I have 'done a day's work in London and feel as if I could easily go another month eating nothing but an occasional orange, but I am told that I shall stop fasting fairly soon and that I shall then be given a milk diet. I am told the most difficult patients to cure are those who have been drugged and inoculated for years. My 'system' is fairly clean, except for that cursed quinine. There is no 'doubt that these three days of fasting have given me a feeling,no, inOre than a feeling, an inner certainty, that I am on the right lines. I feel that I am making a friend of my body, getting to know it for the first time in my forty years of-life. I feel I am helping it instead of coercing it With medicine.
'April 20th; 8 p.m.—Another full day's work in London On an empty stornach.- Feltrather faint during the after- noon While dictating. Fasting isn't good for thinking ; one needs gentle exercise in the open air and mild amuse- ment, not the birth:pangs of jOurnalism. Left at 6' 7 fox Berkhampstead. Saw the weekly cinema on my return and shall be in bed by 10.80 and glad to get there.
April 21.st, 8 p.m.—Last night as soon as I lay down, Yriy heart started' palpitating as 'it does if I drink black coffee. I hive been 'told the thing to do was to get up and 'sip cold 'water, and 'above all, not to be in the least ala'rMed. So little' alarnied was I that' I did -nothing. Tlet it palpitate nntit I went to sleep; which was quite Soon. I woke feeling very fresh and fit after eight hours' dreamless sleep Monger than usual) and went out to the lawn, to join the exercise squad. Then to my morning orange. I forgot to say that each of these days I have been having only three oranges a day and as much water as Ir can conveniently drink. To my surprise I discovered that I had been taken off the orange diet; and was ordered a glass of milk every two Hours. At first I refused it and went for a stroll on the laWn to consider whether I should ask Mr. Lief to let me go on faSting. On reflection; I decided not to. Have fasted six full days already and he knows what's good for me with his huge experience of this sort of thing. Still, I feel a fort- night would have been more heroic. The theory is to take no food until one's tongde is absolutely Clean in the morning ; that is Nattire'S signal she has tidied-up and is ready to begin normal. life again. As I returned for the milk my mouth began to water. I seized the glass and hurried back with it to my room, where I could drink it quietly and alone. I think' I should have bitten anyone 'who tried to take it away from me. I used to say that I disliked cold milk and that it didn't agree with me. That was because drank it with other things. Taken by itself milk is good and kind and clean and is said to have a wonderful faculty of 'eliminating poisons from the system. Is it fantastic to suppose that we absorb some of the qualities of the animals we eat and that there is placidity in the products of the cow ? I wonder.
The rest of the story is soon told.. 1 On April. 22nd I was drinking a glass of milk every :hour. On the "23rd. I Increased the quantity and by the 24th I was taking no less than six quarts, or thirty tumblers of milk a day. I sipped it -ceaselessly. The ecstatic feeling of the fast had now left me and I seemed to be swelling visibly, although ,as a matter of fact I only put on three pounds of weight I had lost -during my orange diet.
On April 26thl was at my officesgain and caused some amusement by ordering a gallon and a half of milk ; a large railway milk-can stood on the floor and I kept filling my glass as I worked.
From April 27th until May 5th my regime was the same. -On May 5th I was ordered to stop tak at Loo pan.. and take nothing until 6.80; when I-.was to haVe a vegetarian dinner. My teeth, after having had nothing to do for nearly three weeks, -felt very strange chewing a salad and some apples. After a week of ordinary:food (except meat) I 'left Champneys, 'feeling' better than I had ever felt before in my life, in fact as well as it is possible to feel.
• I will reserve until -next week a few- final considerations about' fasting. Could I have- made these ac x• less personal I would have gladly-done 'so,. but I do not see how could -describe the treatment except by giving my own experiences. They were truly n revelation: I may add that I have not had -a day's illneSt since, and that-I have learned what seems to me a valuable lesson and one that Should. be widely known: Our average way of living is .wrong. We eat too much.; when our organs protest we try to whip them into submisSion with Inedieine ; the result is disastrous. Better by far is to co-operate with the Power that resides in each 'of us, the rhythm that moves our blood as it sways the tides.
• F. YEATs-BRawg:
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