Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise

What shall we do to be saved?" is a question which, from a physical point of view, can be answered in less than ten words: "Learn to interpret the language of your sanitary instincts." To him who has mastered that task, the science of health is not a sealed book.

"And let me assure you, in measured words alive with conviction, that long series of cases running through seventeen years of attendance has been a line of evidence, line upon line, of the self-sufficiency of Nature to right herself in attacks of disease, no matter what the disease, or how severe its character."-E. H. Dewey, M.D.

Every living organism is a self-regulating apparatus. Our nervous system performs its functions by a combination of alarm signals that apprise us of an infinite variety of external dangers and internal needs, in a language that has a distinct expression for every want of our alimentary and respiratory organs, for every distress of our tissues, sinews and muscles, for every needed reaction against the influence of abnormal circumstances. Our skin protests against injurious degrees of heat or cold; our lungs against atmospheric impurities; our eyes against the intrusion of the smallest insect. The human body is a house that cleanses its own chambers and heats its own stoves, opens and shuts its windows at proper intervals, expels mischievous intruders and promptly informs its tenant of every external peril and internal disorder.

If it were not for the perverting influence of baneful sanitary superstitions we should run no risk of mistaking poison for food, nor of substituting unnatural for natural stimulants. We should never have conceived the idea that the sick must be forced to swallow virulent drugs; all our "ailments and pains, in form, variety and degree beyond description," could be cured by the three remedies of Nature: Exercise, fasting and refrigeration.

The application of those remedies is not followed by distressing after effects. It does not develop a morbid hankering for a repetition of the prescription in constantly increasing doses.