RATIONAL FASTING

Regeneration Diet

And Natural Cure

For All Diseases

By A R N O L D E H R E T

Translated from the German

Synopsis of Contents:

I. The common Fundamental Cause in the Disease

II Remedies for the Removal of the Common Fundamental

Cause of Diseases and the Prevention of their

Reoccurrence.

III. The Fundamental Cause of Growing Old and Ugly, of

the Falling Out and Getting Gray of the Hair.

IV. The Death.

1. The Common Fundamental Cause in the

Nature of Diseases

All the phases of the process of development of the

medical science, including those of the earliest periods of

civilization, have in their way of understanding the causal

nature of diseases that one thing in common that the

diseases, owing to external causes, enter into the human

body and thus, by force of a necessary or at least

unavoidable law, disturb it in its existence, cause it pain

and at last destroy it. Even modern medical science, no

matter how scientifically enlightened it pretends to be, has

not quite turned away from this basic note of demoniac

interpretation. In fact, the most modern achievement,

bacteriology, rejoices over every newly discovered bacillus

as a further addition to the army of beings whose accepted

task it is to endanger the life of man.

Looking at it from a philosophical standpoint, this

interpretation differs from the mediaeval superstition and

the period of fetishism only in the supplemental name.

Formerly it was an “evil spirit,” which imagination went so

far as to believe in “satanic personages;” now this same

dangerous monster is a microscopically visible being

whose existence has been proven beyond any doubt.

The matter, it is true, has still a great drawback in the

so-called “disposition”—a fine word!—but what we really

are to understand by it, nobody has ever told us. All the

tests on animals, with their symptom-reactions, do not

prove anything sure, because these occur only by means of

injection into the blood-circulation and never by

introduction into the digestive channel through the mouth.

There is something true in the conception of “external

invasion” of a disease, as well as in heredity, however not

in the sense that the invader is a spirit (demon) hostile to

life, or a microscopic being (bacillus); but all diseases

without exception, even the hereditary, are caused—

disregarding a few other unhygienic causes—by

biologically wrong, “unnatural” food and by each ounce of

over-nourishment, only and exclusively.

First of all I maintain that in all diseases without

exception there exists a tendency by the organism to secrete

mucus, and in case of a more advanced stage—pus

(decomposed blood). Of course every healthy organism

must also contain a certain mucus—lymph, a fatty

substance of the bowels, etc., of a mucus nature.) Every

expert will admit this in all catarrhalic cases, from a

harmless cold in the nose to inflammation of the lungs and

consumption, as well as in epilepsy (attacks showing froth

at the mouth, mucus). Where this secretion of mucus does

not show freely and openly, as in cases of ear, eye, skin or

stomach trouble, heart diseases, rheumatism, gout, etc.,

even in all degrees of insanity, is mucus the main factor of

the illness, the natural secretive-organs not being able to

cope with it any longer, the mucus entering the blood and

causing at the respective spot where the vessel-system is

probably contracted owing to an over-cooling (cold), etc.,

heat, inflammation, pain, fever.

We need only to give a patient of any-kind nothing but

“mucusless” food, for instance fruit or even nothing but

water or lemonade: we then find that the entire digestive

energy, freed for the first time, throws itself upon the

mucus-matters, accumulated since childhood and

frequently hardened, as well as on the “pathologic beds”

formed therefrom. And the result? With unconditional

certainty this mucus which I mark as the common basic and

main cause of all diseases will appear in the urine and in

the excrements. If the disease is already somewhat

advanced so that in some spot, even in the innermost

interior, there have appeared pathologic beds, i.e.

decomposed cellular tissues, then pus is also being

secreted. As soon as the introduction of mucus by means of

“artificial food,” fat meat, bread, potatoes, farinaceous

products, rice milk, etc., ceases, the blood-circulation

attacks the mucus and the pus of the body themselves and

secretes them through the urine, and in the case of heavily

infected bodies, even through all the openings at their

command as well as through the mucus membranes.

If potatoes, grain-meal, rice or the respective meatmaterials

are being boiled long enough, we receive a jellylike

slime (mucus) or paste used by bookbinders and

carpenters. This mucus substance soon becomes sour,

ferments, and forms a bed for fungi, moulds and bacilli. In

the digestion, which is nothing else but a boiling, a

combustion, this slime or paste is being secreted in the

same manner, for the blood can use only the ex-digested

sugar transformed from starch. The secreted matter, the

superfluous product, i.e., this paste or slime is a foreign

matter to the body and is being completely excreted in the

beginning. It is, therefore, easy to understand that in the

course of life the intestines and the stomach are gradually

being pasted and slimed up to such an extent that this paste

of floral and this slime of faunal origin turn into

fermentation, clog up the blood-vessels and finally

decompose the stagnating blood. If figs, dates or grapes are

boiled down thick enough we also receive a pap which,

however, does not turn to fermentation and never secretes

slime, and which nobody calls slime, but which is called

syrup. Fruit-sugar, the most important thing for the blood,

is also sticky, it is true, but is being completely used up by

the body as the highest form of fuel, and leaves for

excretion only traces of cellulose, which, not being sticky,

is promptly excreted and does not ferment. Boiled-down

sugar, owing to its resistance against fermentation, is even

used for the preservation of food.

Each healthy or sick person deposits on the tongue a

stinking mucus as soon as he reduces his food or fasts. This

occurs also on the mucous membrane of the stomach, of

which the tongue is an exact copy. In the first stool after the

fasting this mucus makes its appearance.

I recommend to the physicians and searchers to test my

claims by way of experiments which alone are entitled to

real scientific recognition. The experiment, the question put

to nature, is the basis of all natural science and reveals the

infallible truth, no matter whether it is stated by me or

somebody else. Furthermore, I recommend to those who

are brave enough to test on their own bodies the following

experiments which I undertook on mine. They will receive

the same answer from nature, i. e., from their organism,

provided that the latter be sound in my sense. “Exact” to a

certain degree reacts only the clean sound, mucusless

organism. After a two years' strict fruit-diet with

intercalated fasting cures, I had attained a degree of health

which is simply not imaginable nowadays and which

allowed of my making the following experiments:

With a knife I made an incision in my lower arm; there

was no flow of blood as it thickened instantaneously;

closing up of the wound, no inflammation, no pain, no

mucus and pus: healed up in three days, blood-crust thrown

off. Later, with vegetaric, food including mucus-formants

(starch food), but without eggs and milk: the wound bled a

little, caused some pain and pussed slightly, a light

inflammation, complete healing only after some time. After

that the same wounding, with meat-food and some alcohol:

longer bleeding, the blood of a light color, red and thin,

inflammation, pain, pussing for several days, and healing

only after a two days' fasting.

I have offered myself, of course in vain, to the Prussian

Ministry of War for a repetition of this experiment. Why is

it that the wounds of the Japanese healed much quicker and

better in the Russo-Japanese war as those of the “Meat and

Brandy Russians?” Has nobody for 2,000 years ever

thought it over why the opening of the artery and even the

poison cup could not kill Seneca, after he had despised

meat and fasted in the prison? It is said that even before

that Seneca fed on nothing but fruit and water.

All disease is finally nothing else but a clogging up of

the smallest blood vessels, the capillaries, by mucus.

Nobody will want to clean the water-conduit of a city, a

pipe-system, which is fed with soiled water by a pump, the

filters of which are clogged up, without having the watersupply

shut off during the cleaning process. If the conduit

supplies the entire city or a portion of it with unclean water,

or if even the smallest branch-pipes are clogged up, there is

no man in the world who would repair or improve that

respective spot; everybody thinks at once of the central, of

the tank and the filters, and these together with the

pumping machine can be cleaned only as long as the water

supply is shut off.

“I am the Lord, thy physician”—English and modern:

nature alone heals, cleans, “unmucuses” best and infallibly

sure, but only if the supply or at least the mucus supply is

stopped. Each “physiological machine,” man like beast,

cleanses itself immediately, dissolves the mucus in the

clogged-up vessels, without stopping short, as soon as the

supply, of compact food at least, is interrupted. Even in the

case of the supposedly healthiest man this mucus, as

already mentioned then appears in the urine where it can be

seen after cooling off in the proper glass tubes! Whoever

denies, ignores or fights this uniform fact, because,

perhaps, it goes against him or is not scientific enough for

him, is jointly guilty of the impossibility of the detection of

the principal cause of all diseases, and this, in the first

place, to his own detriment.

Therewith I also uncover the last secret of

consumption. Or does anybody believe that this enormous

quantity of mucus thrown off by a patient stricken with

tuberculosis for years and years, emanates only from the

lung itself? Just because this patient is then almost forcibly

fed on “mucus” (pap, milk, fat meats) the mucus can never

cease, until the lung itself decays and the “bacilli” make

their appearance, when death becomes inevitable. The

mystery of the bacilli is solved simply thus: The gradual

clogging up by mucus of the blood vessels leads to

decomposition, to fermentation of these mucus products

and “boiled-dead” food - residues. These decay partially on

the living body (pussy abscesses, cancer, tuberculosis,

syphilis, lupus, etc.). Now, everybody knows that meat,

cheese and all organic matter will again “germinate, put

forth bacilli” during the process of decomposition. It is for

this reason that these germs appear and are detectable only

in the more advanced stage of the disease, when, however,

they are not the cause but the product of the disease, and

disease-furthering only in so far as the decomposition, for

instance of the lung, is being hastened by them, because the

excretions of the bacilli, their toxines. act poisoning. If it be

correct that bacilli invade, “infect” from the exterior, then it

is nothing but the mucus which makes possible their

activity, and furnishes the proper soil, the “disposition.”

As already said, I have repeatedly (once for two years)

lived mucusless, i.e., on fruit exclusively. I was no longer

in need of a handkerchief which product of civilization I

hardly need even up to this day. Has anyone ever seen a

healthy animal, living in freedom, to expectorate or to blow

its nose? A chronic inflammation of the kidneys,

considered deadly, which I was stricken with, was not only

healed, but I am enjoying a degree of health and efficiency

which by far surpasses even that of my healthiest youth. I

want to see the man who, being sick to death at 31, can run

without a stop for two hours and a quarter, or make an

endurance march of 56 hours' duration—eight years later.

With this “mucus theory,” well confirmed by my

numerous experiments, there is for the first time put up a

thorough, aetiologic, i.e., a cause—defining uniform

conception of all diseases. If naturopathy here and there

mentions certain affections of the blood as being the

fundamental cause of all disease, this theory has proved

insufficient because the food had been prescribed to be

meatless or its contents of meat greatly reduced, at the

same time, however, introducing so much the more mucus

by means of bread, pap, milk, butter, eggs, cheese and

farinaceous stuffs, especially starch food. That is the reason

why most of the vegetarians in spite of their lauded bill of

fare, are not healthy just the same. I myself was such a

much—and mucus-eater for several years. If a considerable

number of the vegetarians does not soon advance towards

the only natural food, the fruit diet, or at least returns to

eating little, there will be great danger of the shallowingdown

of vegetarianism; not because the principle of “no

meat eating” is bad, but because the healthful effects of the

existing vegetaric nourishment are so inferior. The

representatives of the vegetarian movement are still trying

to prove what man is in need-of as regards boiled meals,

because they themselves as well as all the amateurs in this

field have a fundamentally wrong conception of the fruit

diet as a healing remedy, and go at it in a wrong way. The

hobby of the vegetaric propaganda is the argument that

man is not a carnivore and that, therefore, the eating of

meat is unnatural. With perfect right says the opponent that

the eating of meat is just as “natural” as that of bread,

cabbage, milk, cheese, etc. Professor V. Bunge has

reproached the vegetarians for inconsequence more than a

decade ago, and he is right.

It is surely theoretically correct that man was a mere

fruit eater in times gone by, and biologically correct, that he

can be it even to-day. Or can the horse-sense of man not

conceive, without any proofs and directly, of the fact that

man, before becoming a hunter, lived on fruits only? I even

maintain that he did live in absolute health, beauty and

strength, without pain and grief, just the way the Bible

says. Fruit only, the sole “mucus-less” food, is natural.

Everything prepared by man or supposedly improved by

him is evil. The arguments regarding fruit are scientifically

exact; in an apple or a banana, for instance, is everything

contained what man needs. Man is so perfect that he can

live on one kind of fruit only, at least for quite some time.

This, however, need not necessarily be cocoanut

(Kabakon). But a self-evident truth preached by nature

must not be discarded just because nobody has been able to

apply it in practice on account of civilizational

considerations. From fruit only one becomes first of all ill,

i.e. cleansed; this cleansing process, however, is better to

undergo at home and not in the tropics. No man would have

ever believed me that it is possible to live without food for

126 days, in which 49 at a stretch, during 14 months. Now I

have done it, and yet this truth is not being understood.

Hitherto I say and teach only that fruit is the most natural

“healing remedy.” Whether my calculation is correct will

be proven by the next epidemic. I take, however, this

opportunity to uncover the reasons why the self-evident is

not believed in. When in the previous century somebody

talked about telephoning from Berlin to Paris, everybody

laughed, because there had never been such a thing. Natural

food is not being believed in any more, because almost

nobody practices it and, being a man of civilization, cannot

easily practice it. It must also be considered that contrainterests

fear that the prices of the other, artificial foodstuffs

may drop, and others fear that the food-physiology

may receive a shock and the physicians become

unnecessary. But it is just this fasting and fruit cure which

requires very strict observation and instruction—therefore:

more doctors and less patients who, however, will gladly

pay more if they get well. Thus the social question

regarding doctors is solved—assertion already made by me

publicly in Zurich several years ago.

Almost all fasting attempts fail on account of the

ignorance of the fact that with the beginning of mucusless

diet the old mucus is being excreted so much more forcibly

until that person is absolutely clean and healthy. Thus the

seemingly most healthy person has first to pass through a

condition of sickness (cleansing), or to go through an

intermediate stage of illness to a higher level of health.

This is the great cliff around which so very few

vegetarians have failed to go, discarding the highest truth

just like the mass of people is doing. I have proven this

here in the “Vegetarische Warte” competently on the basis

of experiments and facts, and refuted the greatest objection,

that of under-nourishment, by an actual fasting experiment

of 49 days with preceding fruit diet. My state of health was

only improved by this radical excretion of mucus,

disregarding a few unhygienic circumstances during the

test. I received numerous letters of appreciation, especially

from the educated classes. The mass of the adherents of

vegetarianism “mucuses” gaily ahead. Vegetarianism has to

show representatives of both sexes who do not differ by

anything from Munich beer-stomachs: a consequence of the

daily stuffing up with “mucus-food” of all kinds.

Contrasting herewith it can only be said that the poisons

(so-called by them): meat, alcohol, coffee and tobacco are

in the long run comparatively harmless, as long as they are

used moderately.

In order to avoid misunderstanding on the part of

teetotalers and vegetarians, I must insert here a few

explanations. Meat is not a foodstuff but only a stimulant

which ferments, decays in the stomach ; the process of

decay, however, does not begin in the stomach but at once

after the slaughtering. This has already been proven on

living persons by Prof. Dr. S. Graham, and I complete this

fact by saying that meat acts as a stimulant just by means of

these poisons of decay, and therefore is being regarded as a

strengthening foodstuff. Or is there anyone who can show

me chemico-physiologically that the albumen molecule

going through the process of decay is being newly

reformed in the stomach and celebrates its resurrection in

some muscle of the human body? Exactly like alcohol, the

meat acts in the beginning delusively as if stimulating

strength and energy, until the entire organism is penetrated

by it and the break-down inevitable. All the other

stimulants act likewise.

The fundamental evil of all non-vegetaric forms of diet

consists always in the overeating of meat, as it is the origin

of all the other evils, especially of the craving for alcohol.

If fruit is eaten almost exclusively, the eagerness for cup or

glass loses itself to chastise himself against it, simply

because meat produces the demon thirst. Alcohol is a

proven kind of antidote for meat, and the gourmand of the

big city, who eats almost nothing but meat, must therefore

have wines, Mocha and Havana, in order to at least in some

way counteract the heavy meat-poisoning. It is a wellknown

fact that, after an opulent dinner, one feels

decidedly fresher, physically and mentally, if the

stimulants, poisonous in themselves, are taken moderately,

than to stuff one's self full with the good eating to the very

fatigue.

I absolutely declare war on meat and alcohol; through

fruit and moderate eating these great evils are radically

diminished. But whoever finds it impossible to entirely

give up meat and alcohol is, if he takes them moderately,

still far ahead of the vegetaric much-eater. The American

Fletcher proves this most evidently by his tremendous

success, and his secret is explained by my experiments

which show that a person becomes most efficient and

develops best in his health if he eats as little as possible.

Are not the oldest people as a rule the poorest? Have not

the greatest discoverers and inventors sprung from poverty,

i.e., been little eaters? Were not the greatest of mankind,

the prophets, founders of religions, etc., ascetics? Is that

culture, to live in Berlin, dining excellently thrice a day,

and is that social progress that each working man eats five

times a day and then pumps himself full with beer at night?

If the sick organism can regenerate by eating nothing, I

think the logical consequences is that a healthy organism

needs but little food in order to remain healthy, strong and

persevering.

All so-called miracles of the saints have their only

origin in ascetics, and are to-day impossible but for the

reason that, although much praying is done, no fasting is

adhered to. This is the only solution of this quarrel. We

have no more miracles because we have no more saints,

i.e., sanctified and healed by ascetics and fastings. The

saints were self-shining, expressed in modern language:

medial or radioactive, but only because through ascetics

they were “godly” healthy, and not “by special grace.” I

just wish to mention here that I myself have succeeded in

visible, electric effluences, but only by external and internal

sun-energies- (sun-baths and food from the “sun-kitchen,”

fruit.)

The entire world is quarreling now regarding these

questions and miracles. And here is the solution on the

basis of experiments which everybody can repeat if he is

brave enough. But it is apparently easier to write books,

preach and pray, or to say that I am an exception. This is

true, but only as far as pluck and understanding are

concerned. Physiologically all men are equal, and whoever

cannot be moderate may learn it from me if he wishes to be

a real searcher. If a man eats little and is healthy he can

digest for quite a length of time the most absurd food, meat

and starch (mucus), i.e., he can again excrete it; naturally,

he becomes and remains still more perfect and clean if he

eats but little fruit, and of this he needs the least because it

is the most perfect food. This eternal truth by natural law

man of today will and cannot admit, and has a wellfounded

fear of it, because he is built up of dead-boiled

food and his cells die off and are excreted as soon as he

takes sun-baths, fasts or eats the living cells of fruit. But

this cure must be done with the greatest care. Medicine has,

as long as this is possible, to protect man from a breakdown

of his cells, to hold him above water, only to make him

then die of the disease so much more promptly and quickly,

which to-day is fervently wished for. Vegetarianism cannot

deny that the consumers of meat and alcohol can also boast

of much health and great deeds and high age, but taken

individually and as a people, only so long as but little is

eaten and no over-nourishment caused. The “too much”

takes less revenge in case of meat-eating because meat

contains proportionally less “mucus” than the starchcontaining,

i.e. “mucus” vegetaric food and the celebrated

vegetaric dinners with so and so many dishes daily. I

myself have not cared for many years for any meals; I eat

only when I have appetite and then so little that it does not

cause any harmful effect, if, on account of an experiment, I

am obliged to eat something which in itself is not entirely

free from objection.

If the most serious diseases can be cured by fasting—

which has been proven in thousands of cases—and if by

this way of living one gets even stronger “if it is done

right,” then the most energetic food, the fruit, should cause

one so much the more to become strong and healthy. This

has been also scientifically proven by the merited Dr.

Bircher. It is true, the science of cure by nature has

recognized the fact that something must get out of the sick

organism, but it has so far ascribed the greatest importance

to physical stimulations and ignored entirely the real

natural moment of the process of cure; the abstaining from

food and the fruit-diet, or at least only tried to substitute it

by an alcohol and meatless diet. This does not mean much

in the face of my “mucus-theory.” And what is this

mucusless alcohol not accused of to-day! It will soon be

made the scape-goat of all diseases, because here and there

is found a depraved one who, consuming it in enormous

quantities, ends in delirium. Just compel a drinker to fast a

few days or to eat nothing but fruit—I can bet that the best

glass of beer will have lost its taste for him. This shows thatthe entire “civilized” mess, from beefsteak down to the

apparently harmless oatmeals, creates the desire for these

detested antidotes: alcohol, coffee, tea, tobacco. Why?

Because much-eating paralyzes and only the use of

stimulants restores.

Here is the true and fundamental reason for the

increase of alcohol consumption: the over-nourishment,

especially with meat. Prof. Dr. Graham says in his

“Physiology of Nourishment”; “A drinker can reach a high

age, a glutton never.” This is true, because the acute

alcohol acting as a stimulant, especially the modern beer, is

less harmful in the long run than the chronic stuffing-up of

the digestive channel with mucus food.

I now ask: what appeals more to reason—to wipe out

the masses of mucus, piled up since childhood and having

infected the cellular tissues of the body right there

(symptoms of illness), by sweating, baths, artificial cold

(kneipp cures), massage, sport, etc., at the expense of

vitality (especially of the heart) and the duration of life . . .

or simply to stop the further supply of mucus? Or is there

anybody who wants to prove to me that even the best chef

or confectioner is capable of producing something better

than an apple, a grape or banana? If nourishment by mucus

and over-eating is the true fundamental cause of all

diseases without exception, which I can prove to anybody

on his own body, then there can exist but one natural

remedy, i.e., fasting and fruit-diet. That every animal fasts

in case of even the slightest uneasiness, is a well-known

fact and to culture and thanks to man feeding them, have

lost their sharp instinct for the right kind of food and the

natural hours of feeding—and therewith their proper state

of health and acuteness of sense,—they will nevertheless,

when sick, accept only the most necessary food; they fast

themselves back to health. Poor, sick man, however, must

under no circumstances live on short rations for more than

1 or 2 days, for fear that he may “lose strength.”

Already have physicians called the fasting: wonder

cures, cure of the uncured, cure of all cures, etc. Certain

charlatans have brought this infallible, but at the same time

dangerous cure, to discredit. I have done in fasting the most

significant thing in centuries: 49 days, world-record (see

“Vegetarische Warte,” 1909, book 19, 20, 22, 1910, book 1

and 2). Furthermore I am the only one who combines this

cure with systematically and individually adapted fruit-diet,

which makes it astonishingly easier and absolutely

harmless. We are, therefore, undoubtedly put in a position

to heal diseases which the school-medicine designates as

incurable. On the basis of my detection that this mucus

coming from cultured food, is the fundamental cause and

main factor in the nature of all diseases, symptoms of age,

obesity, falling out of the hair, wrinkles, weakness of

nerves and memory, etc., there is justified hope for the

creation of a new phase of development of the progressive

healing methods and biological medicine.

Already Hippokrates had uniformly recognized the

“disease-material” for all diseases. Prof. Jäger has defined

the “Common” as “Stench,” but not discovered the source

of this “bad smell.” Dr. Lahmann and other representatives

of the physical-dietetic tendency, especially Kuhne, came

on to the tracks of this “common foreign matter.” But all of

them did not show, recognize or prove by experiment that it

is just this mucus of culture-food, which loads up our

organism from very childhood, and attacks it at a certain

degree of fermentations forms pathologic beds, i.e.,

decomposes the cellular tissue of the body itself into pus

and decay. It is being mobilized in case of casual colds or

high temperatures, etc., and produces, in its tendency to

leave the body, symptoms of abnormal functions which

hitherto have been regarded as the disease itself. It is,

therefore, for the first time possible to define what is meant

by “disposition.” The more the “mucus” (bad mother's milk

and all its substitutes) is being administered from childhood

on, or the less this mucus is being excreted, owing to

hereditary weakness, through the organs made to perform

this task, the greater is the inclination to catch cold, fever,

to freeze, to admit parasites, to get sick and to grow old.

Very likely by this the veil has been lifted from the secret

which hitherto has always surrounded the nature of the

white-corpuscles. I believe, that here, as in many other

cases, we have to do with an error of the medical science.

The bacteria throw themselves upon the white largest

extent of this mucus denounced by me. Are not the bacteria

being bred on this mucus by the millions outside of the

organism?—on potatoes, broth, gelatine, i.e., on mucus,

i.e., nitrogenous, vegetable or animal substances consisting

of an alcalically reacting fluid containing granulated cells

of the appearance of the white blood-corpuscles! Perhaps in

an entirely healthy condition the so-called mucus

membrane should not at all be white, slimy, but clean and

red like on animals. Perhaps this “corpse-mucus” is even

the cause of the paleness of the white race? Paleface!

Corpsecolor!

With this “mucus-theory” to be confirmed by

experiment the spectre “disease” has been finally deprived

of its demoniac mask. He who believes me can heal not

only himself, if everything else fails, but we have for the

first time been given the means to radically prevent disease

and to make it definitively impossible. Even the dream of

lasting youth and beauty is now about to become true.

The animal, and especially the human organism is,

from a mechanical standpoint, a complicated tube-system

of blood-vessels with air-gas impetus by means of the lungs

in which the blood-fluid is constantly kept moving and

regulated by the heart as a valve. The decomposition of the

air-gas is accomplished by each breath in the lungs

(separating of the air into oxygen and nitrogen): thus the

blood is constantly kept moving and the human body does

its service incredibly long without fatigue. Let nobody

come to me with the silly excuse of the “daily experience

of the absolutely natural compulsion of much-eating,”

prescribed for working man, etc., before it has not been

experienced by such complainant, how long it is possible to

work or march, without fatigue, after fasting or fruit-food.

Fatigue is in the first place a reducing of strength by too

much digestion-work, secondly a clogging-up of the heated

and consequently narrowed-down blood-vessels, and

thirdly a “self- and re-poisoning” through the excretion of

mucus during the motion. All organic substances of animal

origin excrete cyan groupes in their decomposition, which

the Chemist Hensel has defined as bacilli proper. The air is

not only the highest and most perfect operating material of

the human body, but simultaneously the first element for

the erection, repair, substitute, and very likely, the animal

organism derives nitrogen also from the air. On certain

caterpillars an increase of weight through air alone has

been stated.