A little
starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best
medicines and the best doctors. I do not mean a restricted diet; I mean
total abstention from food for one or two days. I speak from experience;
starvation has been my cold and fever doctor for fifteen years, and has
accomplished a cure in all instances. The third mate told me in Honolulu
that the 'Portyghee' had lain in his hammock for months, raising his
family of abscesses and feeding like a cannibal. We have seen that in
spite of dreadful weather, deprivation of sleep, scorching, drenching,
and all manner of miseries, thirteen days of starvation 'wonderfully
recovered' him. There were four sailors down sick when the ship was
burned. Twenty-five days of pitiless starvation have followed, and now
we have this curious record: 'All the men are hearty and strong; even the
ones that were down sick are well, except poor Peter.' When I wrote an
article some months ago urging temporary abstention from food as a remedy
for an inactive appetite and for disease, I was accused of jesting, but I
was in earnest.
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