Now the sponge is being squeezed and cleansed of its impurities in a natural manner.  The mucous membranes of stomach and bowels are called upon to assist in the work of housecleaning; hence the coated tongue, lack of appetite, digestive disturbances, nausea, biliousness, sour stomach, fermentation, flatulence and occasionally vomiting and purging.

These digestive disturbances are always accompanied by mental depression, the blues, homesickness, irritability, fear, hopelessness, etc.

With the advent of these cleansing and healing crises the physiological and psychological moment for fasting has arrived.  All the processes of assimilation are at a standstill.  The entire organism is eliminating.

We have learned that these healing crises usually arrive during the sixth week of natural treatment.

To take food now would mean to force assimilation and thereby to stop elimination and perchance to interfere with or to check a beneficial healing crisis.

Therefore we regard it as absolutely essential to stop eating as soon as any form of acute elimination makes its appearance and we do not give any food except acid fruit juices diluted with water until all signs of acute eliminative activity have subsided, whether this require a few days or a few weeks or a few months.

Some time ago I treated a severe case of typhoid malaria.  No food, except water mixed with a little orange or lemon juice, passed the lips of the patient for eight weeks.  When all disease symptoms had disappeared, we allowed a few days for the rebuilding of the intestinal mucous membranes.  Thereafter food was administered with the usual precautions.  The patient gained rapidly and within six weeks weighed more than before the fever.  During the entire period I saw the patient only twice, the simple directions being carried out faithfully by his relatives.

Chapter XXVIII

Hydrotherapy Treatment of Chronic Disease

While in our treatment of acute diseases we use wet packs and cold ablutions to promote the radiation of heat and thereby to reduce the fever temperature, our aim in the treatment of chronic diseases is to arouse the system to acute eliminative effort.  In other words, while in acute disease our hydropathic treatment is sedative, in chronic diseases it is stimulative.

The Good Effects of Cold-Water Applications

(1) Stimulation of the Circulation.  As before stated, cold water applied to the surface of the body arouses and stimulates the circulation all over the system.  Blood counts before and after a cold-water application show a very marked increase in the number of red and white blood corpuscles.  This does not mean that the cold water has in a moment created new blood cells, but it means that the blood has been stirred up and sent hurrying through the system, that the lazy blood cells which were lying inactively in the sluggish and stagnant blood stream and in the clogged and obstructed tissues are aroused to increased activity.