This amazing occurrence made my head go bong to say the least; it was obvious that Elizabeth had not been ‘schizophrenic’ because of her genetics, nor because of stress, nor malnutrition, nor hypoglycemia, nor because of any of the causes of mental illness I had previously learned to identify and rectify, but because of food allergies.  Elizabeth was spontaneously cured because she’d had nothing to eat for a week.  The composting pile of leaves hiding her had produced enough heat to keep her warm at night and the heap contained sufficient moisture to keep her from getting too dehydrated.  She looked wonderful, with clear shiny blue eyes, clear skin with good color, though she was slightly slimmer than when I had last seen her.

I then administered Coca’s Pulse Test (see the Appendix) and quickly discovered Elizabeth was wildly intolerant to wheat and dairy products.  Following the well known health gurus of that time like Adelle Davis, I had self-righteously been feeding her home-made whole wheat bread from hand-ground Organic wheat, and home-made cultured yogurt from our own organically-fed goats.  But by doing this I had only maintained her insanity.  Elizabeth was an intelligent young woman, and once she understood what was causing her problems, she had no trouble completely eliminating certain foods from her diet.  She shuddered at the thought that had she not come to my place and discovered the problem, she would probably have died on the back ward of some institution for the chronically mentally ill.

As for me, I will always be grateful to her for opening my eyes and mind a little wider.  Elizabeth’s case showed me why Russian schizophrenics put on a 30 day water fast had such a high recovery rate.  I also remembered all the esoteric books I had read extolling the benefits of fasting.  I also remembered two occasions during my own youth when I had eaten little or nothing for approximately a month each without realizing that I was “fasting.”  And doing this had done me nothing but good.

Once when I was thirteen my mother sent my “little” brother and I to a residential fundamentalist bible school.  I did not want to go there, although my brother did; he had decided he wanted to be a evangelical minister.  I hated bible school because I was allowed absolutely no independence of action.  We were required to attend church services three times a day during the week, and five services on Sunday.  As I became more and more unhappy, I ate less and less; in short order I wasn’t eating at all.  The school administration became concerned after I had dropped about 30 pounds in two months, notified my mother and sent me home.  I returned to at-home schooling.  I also resumed eating.