The Hygienic Dictionary
The illness that cannot be cured by fasting,
cannot be cured by anything else.
old German proverb
Autointoxication. [1] the accumulations on the bowel wall become a breeding ground for unhealthy bacterial life forms. The heavy mucus coating in the colon thickens and becomes a host for putrefaction. The blood capillaries to the colon begin to pick up the toxins, poisons and noxious debris as it seeps through the bowel wall. All tissues and organs of the body are now taking on toxic substances. Here is the beginning of true autointoxication on a physiological level. Bernard Jensen, Tissue Cleansing Through Bowel Management. [2] All maladies are due to the lack of certain food principles, such as mineral salts or vitamins, or to the absence of the normal defenses of the body, such as the natural protective flora. When this occurs, toxic bacteria invade the lower alimentary canal, and the poisons thus generated pollute the bloodstream and gradually deteriorate and destroy every tissue, gland and organ of the body. Sir Arbuthnot Lane. [3] The common cause of gastro-intestinal indigestion is enervation and overeating When food is not digested, it becomes a poison. Dr. John.H. Tilden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921.
Autolysis. The process of enzymatic digestion wherein the body breaks down its own tissues and converts them to food for the nourishment of other, more vital tissues.
Beauty. [1] Beauty is but the reflection of wholeness, of health. It is easy to demonstrate that the forms and proportions of man and of every animal and plant, which are in their highest and most perfect state, are also the most beautiful. Herbert Shelton, Natural Hygiene: Man’s Pristine Way of Life.
Constipation. [1] a clogging up of the large intestine by a building up (on) the bowel wall to such an extent that feces can hardly pass through. Autointoxication is a direct result of intestinal constipation. Faulty nutrition is a major underlying factor in constipation. The frequency or quantity of fecal elimination is not an indication of the lack of constipation in the bowel. Bernard Jensen, Tissue Cleansing Through Bowel Management.
Cure. [1] There is no “cure” for disease; fasting is not a cure. Fasting facilitates natural healing processes. Foods do not cure. Until we have discarded our faith in cures, there can be no intelligent approach to the problems presented by suffering and no proper use of foods by those who are ill. Shelton, The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing. [2] All cure starts from within out and from the head down and in reverse order as the symptoms have appeared. Hering’s Law of Cure. [3] Life is made up of crises. The individual establishes a standard of health peculiarly his own, which must vary from all other standards as greatly as his personality varies from others. The individual standard may be such as to favor the development of indigestion, catarrh, gout, rheumatic and glandular inflammations, tubercular developments, congestions, sluggish secretions and excretions, or inhibitions of various functions, both mental and physical, wherever the environmental or habit strain is greater than usual. The standard of resistance may be opposed so strenuously by habits and unusual physical agencies–that the body gives 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. [4] rest is the foundation on which all curative therapeutics must be based. Physiological rest is of more importance than all other forms of rest. Dr. John. H. Tilden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921.
Detoxification. [1] Fasting does permit a marked increase in the elimination of toxins and waste from the body. It does permit the organs of elimination to bring their work up to date–to balance the books as it were. There is no state of impaired health in which this increased elimination is not of distinct value. Shelton, The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing. [2] A good rule to remember is that the bowel can be cleared of toxins (by physic or enemas) in twenty- four hours; the blood in three days; the liver in five days; provided no food is eaten. Henry Bieler, M.D., Food Is Your Best Medicine.
Diagnosis. [1] The truth of the matter is that nomenclature is rather superfluous; and that is not the worst part of it; unfortunately it is confusing. It has a tendency to make laymen and young physicians really believe that, when a name is given to a disease, the cause is understood. Nothing, however, could be more erroneous than this conclusion; for ordinary diagnosing throws no light on the real cause. Dr. John. H. Tllden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921.
Diet. [1] In much that has been written concerning the matter of diet there are so many sweeping statements, so many conflicting processes of proof, impossible rules, and foolish conclusions, that no wonder is felt that the whole subject is usually ignored as too intricate. There are many who try to enforce personal ideas upon others in this connection; very persistent people these, to whom the term, “crank,” may well be applied, and a “crank,” who has picked up some scientific jargon and who thinks himself cured of his ailments, works more harm than good in the world. This class may be extended to include those who really have been benefited by a diet that happens to suit personal requirement, and it comprises also the one-food people who are in continual search of what not to devour, with the idea of reducing the universe to whole wheat and pecans. These people at each encounter with their fellow-men discover in the latter disease symptoms identical with their own, and insist that the remedy to which they have had recourse shall be applied. It is absurd for any who are not familiar with the chemistry of foods to endeavor to talk learnedly of their action in human physiological economy . . . Linda B. Hazzard, Scientific Fasting.
Digestion. [1] Food is taken into the stomach and bowels, where it is dissolved–brought into the liquid state–and then absorbed into the circulation and distributed throughout the body . This process is called nutrition. When nutrition is going on normally, the standard of health is normal–a full dinner taken into a tired body cannot be digested properly any meal at all, eaten by one in great mental anguish, over some great trouble, cannot be digested. Dr. John H. Tilden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921.
Disease. [1] Alcohol is not a disease; it is a distillation from fermented grain–from starch. Grain, starch, bread, and alcohol are not diseases. If a man in health (standard health) takes small portions of alcohol, frequently repeated, he will gradually lose his power of coordination of mind and body. This gradation from full bodily control to a helpless lump of protoplasm is not disease; it represents different states of health. If the drunk man is diseased, what is the disease? There has been no entity added or generated. As soon as the alcohol is eliminated, the man returns to his former state–not suddenly, but gradually as he departed. If he eats grain, starch, or bread beyond his assimilative capacity, he develops certain symptoms of poisoning. Is not the man’s state the same as that of his normal being, plus overeating? Surely nothing has been added–no entity has gained entrance; hence, if the drunk state, or the food-poisoned state, is a disease, then what is disease? Certainly not an entity, but a state of health brought on by any influence that increases, decreases, or perverts the state of man recognized as health. There is no such thing as disease per se. “Disease” is a word that should not carry other meaning than that a sick man is one whose health standard has been lowered by some external or internal influence which has disturbed nutrition. John H. Tilden, M.D., Impared Health, Vol I. [2] Disease is remedial effort. Shelton, The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing. [3] The Hygienic System is not a system of treating and curing “disease” and “disorder.” It does not recognize the existence of hundreds or thousands of “diseases,” but regards all of these many so-called “diseases” as varying expressions of the same thing. Shelton, The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing.
Doctors. [1] In the matter of disease and healing, the people have been treated as serfs. The doctor is a dictator who knows it all, and the people are stupid, dumb, driven cattle, fit for nothing except to be herded together, bucked and gagged when necessary to force medical opinion down their throats or under their skins. I found that professional dignity was more often pomposity, sordid bigotry and gilded ignorance. The average physician is a fear-monger, if he is anything. He goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may scare to death. Dr. John H. Tilden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, Vol. 1, 1921. [2] Today we are not only in the Nuclear Age but also the Antibiotic Age. Unhappily, too, this is the Dark Age of Medicine–an age in which many of my colleagues, when confronted with a patient, consult a volume which rivals the Manhattan telephone directory in size. This book contains the names of thousands upon thousands of drugs used to alleviate the distressing symptoms of a host of diseased states of the body. The doctor then decides which pink or purple or baby-blue pill to prescribe for the patient. This is not, in my opinion, the practice of medicine. Far too many of these new “miracle” drugs are introduced with fanfare and then reveled as lethal in character, to be silently discarded for newer and more powerful drugs Henry Bieler, Food is Your Best Medicine. [3] There is no form of ignorance that is so difficult to overcome and to instruct as is of the “scientific” mind. And, when the latter, as it sometimes does, obtains a conception of its error, it is extremely loth to admit, first, that it has not always been in possession of the truth, and, second, that it should render due credit to the mind responsible for its change of concept or belief. And, if the position of the individual be such that he may with authority employ the power of mere assertion, it is usually much the easier way to announce as one’s own discovery that which formerly one has denied and condemned, perhaps through prejudice, but more often through sheer ignorance. Linda Burfield Hazzard, Scientific Fasting. [4] To keep the ranks as thin as possible, students must be selected, and entrance to the profession made as impossible as it can be made, so that only young men of leisure and wealth, or of special favor, may enter. This bars many men of strong ideals and inventive imagination and original thought. As the practice of healing requires as much of art as of science, and as long college training kills the art faculties, our present plan of making doctors ends in the construction of a very complicated human machine that has no more independent mental action than the mechanical jumping-jack. This result, however, is exactly as the heads of the profession desire. That is, they think they do; but, being mechanical human machines themselves, they desire the rubber, the elasticity, the fluidity, the adjustability, taken out of students; and they have almost accomplished their desire. The result is that the average medical man is as incapable of making an independent movement as a mechanical toy. Dr. John H. Tilden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, Vol. 1, 1921.
Drugs. [1] I firmly believe that, if the whole materia medica could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes. Oliver W. Holmes, M.D. [2] If the body of any sick man endeavors to eliminate poisons (the effort to do so) manifested by any kind of symptoms and a new and dangerous poison is introduced into the circulation, the elimination through the symptoms is more or less stopped because the body instinctively sets to work to neutralize these (new) poisons as far as it is possible. The symptoms return just as soon as the life is saved, and the same procedure is repeated until the patient dies or–if intelligent enough–casts medicine aside in time and seeks to save himself by drugless healing. Prof. Arnold Ehret, Mucusless Diet Healing System. [3] To live by medicine is to live horribly. Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778).
Elimination diet. [1] The principle here (is) that the diet gives better results as it approaches a fast . Not only is it true that the less “value” the food possesses, the more good the patient derives from its use, but it is also true that the less the patient takes of the food and the more nearly he fasts, the more rapidly he recovers. Shelton, The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing.
Emaciate. [1] To make thin, as by starvation or illness. (Latin emaciare: ex-, completely + maciare, to make thin. American Heritage Dictionary.
Enervation. [1] In states of enervation, enzymic secretions run low, and, as a result, so-called bacterial fermentation take(s) place . If a person spends all his nerve energy in keeping warm, he has none left for taking care of food. All other influences work the same way. Anything that reduces the nerve energy lowers the digestive function. Dr. John H. Tilden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921. SEE ALSO: FERMENTATION. [2] Man’s body has sensation and mind, and every tittle of the body is supplied with nerves that control the mechanism of every tittle or cell. Whether the work of the cell is done well or poorly depends entirely on the energy imparted by the nerves. Dr. John H. Tilden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921.
Enzymes. [1] digestive secretions–enzymes–unorganized ferments–are necessary to dissolve food and prepare it for absorption, and that bacteria–organized ferments–are necessary to dissolve food and prepare it for expulsion from the body. Bacteria are necessary to dissolve food taken in excess of what can be liquefied and utilized by enzymatic digestion. Dr. John H. Tilden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921.
Fasting. [1] A period of time during which the body is adequately nourished by autolysis. [2] “Fasting begins with the omission of the first meal and ends with the return of natural hunger. Shelton, The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing. [3] primarily a rest of the organism. Shelton, The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing. [4] Fasting does not do anything. It really stops the doing. In thus stopping certain activities, it permits, even reinforces, certain tissue changes and chemical readjustments in the body which result in increased vigor and improved health. Shelton, The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing. [5] To sum up, fasting, by affording the organs of the body a rest, by withholding raw materials and by stopping the flow of decomposition poisons from the alvine canal, permits the repair and recuperation of the organs of the body, the consumption of a burdensome nutritive excess, the removal of circulating and deposited toxins, the normalization of blood chemistry, cellular and tissue rejuvenation, the adsorption of deposits, exudates, effusions and growth, and improves the body’s powers of digestion and assimilation. If there are any “diseased” conditions in which some or all of these results are not desirable, I have not seen them. Then, although fasting cures nothing and is no panacea, it is useful in all “diseased” conditions. Shelton, The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing. [6] Fasting is but a means to an end. It is a cleansing process and a physiological rest which prepares the body for future right living. Shelton, The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing.
Fermentation. [1] When enzymatic fermentation–digestion–ends, bacterial fermentation of the remainder of the food begins. And when food is not digested, it becomes a poison . The bacteria cause acetic and alcoholic fermentation of the carbohydrate (starchy) foods; and the same bacteria cause a putrefactive decay in the nitrogenous or proteid (animal) foods, with the development of toxin and the giving-off of offensive gasses which are toxic. In both forms of fermentationthe normal alkalinity of the blood is reduced, causing such minor systemic derangements as irritability, despondency, fault-finding, general nervousness, headaches, tired feelings, backache, gas in the bowels, constipation. This is a state of malaise that makes its victim easy prey to the palliation of overstimulation. At first, relief is found in more eating, because all food is more or less stimulating; but with the increase in food stimulation come more and more discomfort, more wants . This is man’s state of being where he parts company with normal comfort and begins to cultivate abnormal, artificial or toxic comfort. It is here that more food than is needed for health and well-being is taken . It is from this point that the Caucasian seeks relief in alcoholics, tobacco, coffee, tea and a few of the various palliative remedies of the world; while the Chinaman begin to woo his “white lady”–the extract of the poppy flower, the East Indian to chew his bhang, the West African his kola, the Yemen Arab his khat and other peoples resort to some sort of anesthesia. Since the world began, man has endeavored in some way to secure relief from his discomforts by resorting to ecstasy, incantations, drugs, hypnotism, or any unnatural palliation, rather than earnestly to search for cause and remove it. The drug system of treating disease appeals to this maudlin sentiment; hence its great popularity. Dr. John H. Tilden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921.
Food. [1] Life is a tragedy of nutrition. In food lies 99.99% of the causes of all diseases and imperfect health of any kind. Prof. Arnold Ehret, Mucusless Diet Healing System. [2] But elimination will never heal perfectly just so long as you fail to discontinue the supply of inside waste caused by eating and “wrong” eating. You may clean and continue to clean indefinitely, but never with complete results up to a perfect cleanliness, as long as the intake of wrong or even too much right foods, is not stopped. Prof. Arnold Ehret, Mucusless Diet Healing System. [3] Cooked food favors bacterial, or organized, ferment preponderance, because cooking kills the unorganized and organized ferments, and both are needed to carry on the body’s digestion. Raw foods–fruits and vegetables–favor unorganized-ferment digestion, because these foods carry vitamins, which are unorganized ferments–enzymes. Dr. John H. Tilden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921. [4] Its not what kind of food you eat, vegetarian or meat. The Eskimos lived healthy lives on fish and blubber. What matters is that the foods eaten carry forward the protoplasm of the microorganisms grown with a natural balance of the elements. Mans’ intestinal tract is a root turned inside out. The purpose of eating is to recreate a population of soil organisms in the intestinal tract. Protoplasm from the microorganisms can then be adsorbed right into the blood. Private conversation with John Hamaker in Secrets Of The Soil, Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird.
Functional disease. [1] Functional disease is that in which the vital organs in general are in condition to do their work, but certain of them have become unable partially or wholly to function by reason of congestion and irritation, the result of food chemically changed into noxious substances . In this state fermentation and putrefaction occur in the intestinal canal and elsewhere, and toxins are produced that enter the blood, thus deranging the vital processes . its ultimate consequence, functionally caused organic disease . Functionally caused disease is a condition that always admits of full recovery and cure is a certainty when natural law is permitted its course. Linda B. Hazzard, D.O., Scientific Fasting.
Healers. [1] for “afflictions” or disease cannot be “cured.” Nature–our subconscious–has a full monopoly on the power to heal. Healing is nature’s prerogative; and she could not, even if she would, delegate the task to physician or to the academies of medical science. Toxemia Explained, John H. Tilden, M.D. [2] When all the people shall know that the making and the curing of disease are in their own hands, then schools for teaching health will be more popular than drugs, vaccination, and surgical vandalism. Dr. John H. Tilden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921.
Health. [1] We cannot afford to accept anything but the highest standard of physiological and biological excellence as normal. Anything short of the highest excellence and integrity of structure and the highest vigor and efficiency of function must be recognized as a state of impaired health . Our word health is derived from the Saxon word for whole. Heal is derived from the same word and means to restore to a state of wholeness, soundness or integrity. Holy comes from the same root and signifies wholeness and purity of mind in a phrase, it is a sound mind in a sound body. Herbert Shelton, Natural Hygiene: Man’s Pristine Way of Life.
Hunger. [1] Hunger is at all times to be distinguished from appetite. Hunger is discriminative and preserves the body. Appetite is abnormal desire and ultimately destroys. Hunger is primarily indicated in the mouth, and, if not relieved, it becomes an organic craving that can be satisfied only by digestible food; but appetite cannot be so silenced; it continually searches for this or for that; it is never satisfied. Linda B. Hazzard, Scientific Fasting.
Inanition. [1] Exhaustion, as from lack of nourishment; the condition or quality of being empty. American Heritage Dictionary.
Long life. [1] Not infrequently when the writer is checking some one up for his bad habits, the victim of the bad habits will triumphantly point to some one eighty, ninety or a hundred years old who has practiced the same bad habits all his life without apparent evil resulting. On investigating, it will be found that the prodigy of bad habits is a very moderate man; that he is like an old friend of the writer who once boasted in a twitting manner with a twinkle in his eyes: “Doctor, it seems to me that my life is a refutation of your theories; I have indulged a little in about all the vices all my life, and have had no sickness!” My answer to him was: “You are fortunately married to a remarkable woman–an angel without wings. You are very active; you take great pleasure in your work, and you have as an avocation your garden, in which you take great pleasure in excelling; and look at your accumulation of curios; not a junk-shop filled with bad air and morbid relics–ghostly reminders of a dead past when knight-errantry was in blossom! You are alive and keeping in touch with the now; and have wholesome visions of what evolution has in store for the coming generations of wide-awake, live people. You leave the dead past to bury the past. Your vices you do not worship and allow them to usurp your time and attention. Your habits do not run you. A wholesome optimism pervades your being. Mentally and physically you are wholesomely blended–no warring elements find hostelry in you.” John Tilden, Constipation, A New Reading On The Subject, 1924.
Medicine, its practice in general. [1] I was at one time a great lover of the medical profession. . . . I no longer hold that opinion. . . . Doctors have almost unhinged us. . . . I regard the present system as black magic. . . . Hospitals are institutions for propagating sin. Men take less care of their bodies and immorality increases. . . . ignoring the soul, the profession puts men at its mercy and contributes to the diminution of human dignity and self control. . . . I have endeavoured to show that there is no real service of humanity in the profession, and that it is injurious to mankind. . . . I believe that a multiplicity of hospitals is not test of civilization. It is rather a symptom of decay. Mahatma Ghandi, The Health Guide, 1965.
Organic disease. [1] Organic disease, whether inherent, or the result of continued functional disturbance, or of physical shock, is that in which one or more of the organs of the body is deformed, undeveloped or other wise structurally disabled so as to interfere with its work, a state comparable to that of a machine with a defective cog. While this form of disease is usually beyond the hope of recovery, its harmful results may be reduced to a minimum by means of judicious application of the fast at properly regulated intervals; and a combination of abstinence from food with corrective dieting will lengthen life of the sufferer to the degree to which the defective organism will permit vitality to operate. Linda B. Hazzard, D.O., Scientific Fasting.
Poison. [1] Drugs essentially are poisons. The degree they are taken determines the effect. A small amount gives a stimulant. A greater amount acts as a sedative. A larger amount acts as a poison and can kill one dead. This is true of any drug. L. Ron Hubbard, HCOB 28 Aug 1968 II. [2] Everything is a poison that cannot be assimilated by the living organism and used by it to sustain life. Every substance that can have no place in normal metabolic processes of the body wastes the body’s energies in resisting and expelling it, thus inevitably inducing debility and premature death. In other words, poisons are those substances which the living organism cannot use, but must resist and expel. Herbert Shelton, Natural Hygiene: Man’s Pristine Way of Life. [3] Eat a pound of bread–it will not injure a well person. The natural appetite craves it. The stomach digests it, and it is assimilated and becomes a part of the living organism. It is a food. Eat a pound of tobacco-it will kill you. The natural appetite rejects it. It is not digested by the stomach, nor assimilated, nor changed in the system. It is a poison. If you drink a pound of alcohol–it will kill you, or at least seriously injure you. The natural appetite rejects it. A pound of tea, cooked and eaten as food would kill any person. Wm. Bailey Potter, M.D., “Health Reform,” 1859.
Protein. [1] When the movement for Naturopathy and a meatless diet began in the last century, the men of Medical Science were endeavoring to prove by mathematical figures that physical and mental efficiency have to be kept up thru daily replacement of protein with a certain quantity for the average man. In other words, it became the vogue–it became a mania, to suggest and to do exactly the opposite of Nature’s laws whenever a person felt weak, tired rapidly, became exhausted or sick in any way . High protein foods act as stimulation for a certain time, because they decompose at once in the human body into poison. Prof. Arnold Ehret, Mucusless Diet Healing System.
Quack. The dictionary defines quack as synonymous with charlatan. Etymologically and historically, this is not its true definition. It is a shortening of the German word quacksalber (quicksilver) and was originally applied to those regular physicians who poisoned their patients with mercury. As originally employed, the term was applicable to regular physicians and to no one else. Herbert Shelton, Natural Hygiene: Man’s Pristine Way of Life.
Reserves. The body has stores of nutrition held in reserve. Vitamins, minerals, amino acids, carbohydrates: All the essentials of survival are held in various tissues. Reserve amounts and completeness vary from body to body. During fasting or starvation, these reserves are digested by autolysis and nourish the body. Dr. Isabelle Moser, verbal communication.
Rest. [1] There is no condition of “disease” in which rest of the vital organs is not of benefit to the whole organism. Rest gives all of the organs an opportunity to repair their damaged structures. Rest affords to organs that have been lashed into impotency by overstimulation, an opportunity to recuperate their substances and forces. Shelton, The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing.
Starvation. [1] When nutrition is inadequate for the maintenance of the body. Starvation can begin during fasting when the body’s reserves run out; it can even occur while apparently eating adequate volume if the body’s reserves are depleted and the food contains insufficient nutrition. [2] “Starvation begins with the return of hunger and terminates in death. Fasting is distinctly beneficial; starvation is distinctly harmful. Shelton, The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing. [3] In a scientifically conducted fast death from starvation cannot take place when organic disease is absent . it requires great skill to fast an individual properly, but any tyro can starve a man to death. Linda B. Hazzard, D.O., Scientific Fasting. [4] Dr. E. H. Dewey said, “The body may be well fed but still be starving to death.” This statement may be made more striking and perhaps more lucid by saying that in reality it is the overfed body that is continuously in a starving condition, and this by a process that is much more distressing in effect than is that by which death is caused when food is indefinitely denied. And starving of this sort, starving from overfeeding, is well nigh the universal manner in which the individual existence of man is terminated, for every symptom of disease, every disease epidemic, owes its development to food wrongly combined, and ingested always in excess, and usually far in excess, of body requirement, with malnutrition as its consequence. Linda B. Hazzard, D.O., Scientific Fasting.
Toxemia. [1] “The basic cause of all so-called diseases. In the process of tissue-building (metabolism), there is cell-building (anabolism) and cell destruction (catabolism). The broken-down tissue is toxic. In the healthy body (when nerve energy is normal), this toxic material is eliminated from the blood as fast as it is evolved. But when nerve energy is dissipated from any cause (such as physical or mental excitement or bad habits) the body becomes weakened or enervated. When the body is enervated, elimination is checked. This, in turn, results in a retention of toxins in the blood– the condition which we speak of as toxemia. This state produces a crisis which is nothing more than heroic or extraordinary efforts by the body to eliminate waste or toxin from the blood. It is this crisis which we term disease. Such accumulation of toxin when once established, will continue until nerve energy has been restored to normal by removing the cause. So-called disease is nature’s effort to eliminate toxin from the blood. All so-called diseases are crises of toxemia.” John H. Tilden, M.D., Toxemia Explained. [2] When fermentative and putrefactive toxins are pouring in from the digestive tract in excess of the body’s ability to neutralize and eliminate them and the toxic overflow has been partly stored in the less vital tissues, fasting speedily ends the intake of decomposition toxins and thus gives the organism an opportunity to catch up with its work of excretion . Fasting does not remove the toxins. This is done by the excretory functions of the body. Fasting only affords them the opportunity to perfect their work. Shelton, The Hygienic System, v. 3, Fasting and Sunbathing. [3] Toxins are divided into two groups; namely exogenous, those formed in the alimentary canal from fermentation and decomposition following imperfect or faulty digestion . If the fermentation is of vegetables or fruit, the toxins are irritating, stimulating and enervating, but not so dangerous or destructive to organic life as putrefaction, which is a fermentation set up in nitrogenous matter–protein-bearing foods, but particularly animal foods. Endogenous toxins are autogenerated. They are the waste products of metabolism. Dr. John.H. Tllden, Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921.