'The fasting cure' answered / by Anthony Bassler.

  • Bassler, Anthony, 1874-
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: 'The fasting cure' answered / by Anthony Bassler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    next clay the habit began, to be conquered, and he became quieter. On the fourth day the horse grew docile as a lamb, and the vicious habit had only a few feeble strands left. His change of temperament then became so marked that in the subsequent days I did not hesitate to walk around him while he was lying down,—a thing I never could do before without danger to myself.” “Well,” asked tlie neighbor, ‘Tiow did you finally make out?” “Oh!” said the farmer deprecatingly, “you know what hard luck I been having. Just as I got the.d horse cured of the habit, he died.” iro/’ds of the faker.— “It is no pleasure for me to tell over the tale of my headaches or to discuss my unruly stomach.” How often we have seen this statement in the testi- monials of the patent-medicine vender or the charlatan’s advertisement in the lay press! Does not the public still stand in need of the advice of the wisest of its leaders, to stop the employment of these mean business tricks? Then, again, “the fast is to me the key to eternal youth” (he should have said youth’s eternity), “the secret of perfect and permanent health”; and, “it is enough for me to Icnow that I am proof against all of the common affections which plague us, and against all the chronic troubles.” One of his fasts will surely be his last and will cure him for all time. Further on appears this line “As one man, who wrote me a letter of enthusiastic gratitude, expresses it: T have spent over $500 in the last ten years trying to get well on medicine. It costs me only 30 cents to use your method, and for that 30 cents I obtained relief a million-fold more beneficial than $500 worth of medicine.’ ” How similar is the fiavor of all of this to the claims of the medicine faker and charlatan! Of course, a good presentation must be made or the book will not sell; so why not the business methods that have worked so successfully before? A catcher after every fad, etc.— There are certain people in this world who are born faddists. One wears a monocle in public, or perhaps an inch-wide silk tape to his eye-glasses, —both of which are discarded when the wearer is alone. Another malces a specialty of fancy waistcoats, and the next of some peculiar mode of talking to attract the public. But there is a type, prevalent mainly among people of the so-called literary class, though common enough among others, which is mentally warped on the subject of health fads. It is largely among these persons that the cults, -isms, -pathies, etc., have their sway. Eegarding these people it has been stated that they are the ones in whom ‘Trains are cheap,” but the great majority of them sail through life with their heads in the clouds and their feet rarely touching the earth. As a rule, they are as impractical a group of individuals for the substantial advance of the world’s problems as can be seen, and as far as their own physical welfare is concerned tliey are lucky to have God’s grace and the accommodations of nature to assist them. The author of “The Fasting Cure” is one of these, as the following shows: “I had discovered Horace Fletcher a couple of years before,” and his “idea was very wonderful to me.” He next went tlirough the books of Metchnikoff and Chittenden and tried the diets advanced; then came to Dr. Salisbury’s