than usual.  The standard of resistance may be opposed so strenuously by habits and unusual physical agencies—­that the body breaks down under the strain.  This is a crisis.  Appetite fails, discomfort or pain forces rest, and, as a result of physiological rest (fasting) and physical rest (rest from daily work and habits), a readjustment takes place, and the patient is “cured.”  This is what the profession and the people call a cure, and it is for the time being—­until an unusual enervation is brought on from accident or dissipation; then another crisis.  These crises are the ordinary sickness of all communities—­ all catalogued diseases.  When the cold is gone or the hay-fever fully relieved, it does not mean the patient is cured.  Indeed, he is as much diseased as before he suffered the attack—­the crisis—­and he never will be cured until the habits of life that keep up toxin poisoning are corrected.  To recover from a crisis is not a cure; the tendency is back to the individual standard; hence all crises are self-limited, unless nature by maltreatment is prevented from reacting.  All so-called healing systems ride to glory on the backs of self-limited crises, and the self-deluded doctors and their credulous clients, believe, when the crises are past, that a cure has been wrought, whereas the real truth is that the treatment may have delayed reaction.  This is largely true of anything that has been done except rest.  A cure consists in changing the manner of living to such a rational standard that full resistance and a balanced metabolism is established.  I suppose it is not quite human to expect those of a standardized school of healing to give utterance to discovered truth which, if accepted by the people, would rob them of the glory of being curers of disease.  Indeed, nature, and nature only, cures; and as for crises, they come and go, whether or not there is a doctor or healer within a thousand miles. Dr. John.  H. Tilden, Impaired Health:  Its Cause and Cure, 1921.

The accelerated healing process that occurs during fasting can scarcely be believed by a person who has not fasted.  No matter how gifted the writer, the experiential reality of fasting cannot be communicated.  The great novelist Upton Sinclair wrote a book about fasting and it failed to convince the multitudes.  But once a person has fasted long enough to be certain of what their own body can do to fix itself, they acquire a degree of independence little known today.  Many of those experienced with fasting no longer dread being without health insurance and feel far less need for a doctor or of having a regular checkup.  They know with certainty that if something degenerates in their body, their own body can fix it by itself.

Like Upton Sinclair and many others who largely failed before me, I am going to try to convince you of the virtues of fasting by urging you to try fasting yourself.  If you will but try you will be changed for the better for the rest of your life.  If you do not try, you will never Know.