When, on the other hand, food is administered in quantities insufficient to repair the daily waste, then the reserve store of glycogen in the liver is first called upon, thereafter the adipose tissue is laid under contribution, and finally the protein tissues themselves are compelled to sacrifice their substance to the urgent demand for fuel for the production of energy, to keep the internal machinery of the heart, lungs, digestive organs, etc, at work, and heat, to facilitate their functioning. It is painfully pathetic to read of the victims of the fasting craze who, under the misconception that they can burn up all the accumulated waste matter of the body only and therewith rid themselves of all seeds of disease, at the same time leaving their bodily tissues clean, pure, wholesome, and intact, submit to days and even weeks of starvation under the euphemistic title of "fasting for health." I was gravely informed the other day of one who had triumphantly and successfully passed through the ordeal for over thirty days, and was assured that not a vestige of disease existed; but impatient to claim her reward in renewed vigour, broke her fast just one meal too soon, and succumbed to the effects. It is ludicrous were it not a matter of such serious import to listen to the unmitigated nonsense, supposed to be science, which emanates from the votaries of this practice. Elsewhere I have used the following language to describe the effects likely to be produced by fasting: "The simile which best fits the fasting man is not that of a furnace whose bars are choked with ashes and whose flues are clogged up with soot, so that a general conflagration is welcome to clear away the obstruction in order to produce more effective combustion. It is rather that of a furnace which has disposed of its extraneous combustible material and proceeds to attack the furnace bars and flues and even the very boiler plates themselves, so that an explosion is imminent." 1

1 See Modern Theories of Diet (Arnold), p. 331.