CURED BY FASTING.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 856, 30 June 1910, Page 5

CURED BY FASTING.

BRONCHIAL ASTHMA. MUCH RELIEF AFTER 32 DAYS. CIVIL SERVANTS UNDER DEWEY* Dr. Dewey, the American physician, who believes that half the ills flesh i£ heir to can be cured by judicious fasting, has a considerable number of followers in New Zealand, and the idea seems to bo in favour at the Wellington Post Office. Not long ago, Mr. Faber, of the accountants' branch, fasted intermittently for kidney complaint quite successfully, but he did not keep the fast at any one time for more than a fortnight. A second "case" now undergoing the fast cure is a better illustration of what this curious treatment con effect. The subject is Mr. P. Tyrrell, of the registration branch of the Wellington Post Office, and in the course of an interview with a Dohikiox reporter yesterday disclosed his personal experiences quite freely'and intelligently. "I have been fasting now," said Mr, Tyrrell, "for 32 days, and am much better to-day than I was when I started. My trouble was bronchial asthma, or that's what I was told it was. Everybody used to ask mo if I had asthma on. hearing me cough, and I could not do any climbing without feeling exhausted. X" could not climb Pirie Street without resting at least six times to gain my breath. Now I can walk up the hill without taking a rest at all—it is great to be able to walk up a hill—after you'TO had a taste of asthma!" "What do you drink?" "Only water—at no stated intervals, just when I feel I want it. Occasionally I have sucked the juice of a mandarin; but only tv>o or three altogether through the fast. I probably drink about threo or four pints of water a day." "Do you feel any effect at all from tie fast?" "Well, I feel I'm getting thin. I have lost two stone in weight since I began the fast—that is a little under a pound a day. I have been at work every dayseven hours a day—and the only ill effect, if it can be called so, is that I feel a little weak in the legs at the end of tho day. But that is nothing—l have got thin, but my complexion nas improved wonderfully, and my eyes are brighter than they were. "Some people who go in for tho fasting cure have a bad time the first two or threo days—at the end of the'second day they usually want to get at the food— but I have not felt hungry at all, and don't feel hungry now. The idea, I understand, is to keep on fasting until you become what Dr. Dewey terms 'naturally hungry.' So far 1 have not felt any desire to eat, so will keep on for a bit yet."