''The Fasting Cure'' is 1911 non-fiction book on
fasting
Fasting is the abstention from eating and sometimes drinking. From a purely physiological context, "fasting" may refer to the metabolic status of a person who has not eaten overnight (see " Breakfast"), or to the metabolic state achieved after ...
by
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American writer, muckraker, political activist and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in seve ...
. It is a reprinting of two articles written by Sinclair which were originally published in the ''
Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan may refer to:
Food and drink
* Cosmopolitan (cocktail), also known as a "Cosmo"
History
* Rootless cosmopolitan, a Soviet derogatory epithet during Joseph Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign of 1949–1953
Hotels and resorts
* Cosmopoli ...
'' magazine. It also includes comments and notes to the articles, as well as extracts of articles Sinclair published in the ''
Physical Culture
Physical culture, also known as Body culture, is a health and strength training movement that originated during the 19th century in Germany, the UK and the US.
Origins
The physical culture movement in the United States during the 19th century ...
'' magazine. The book is dedicated to
Bernarr Macfadden
Bernarr Macfadden (born Bernard Adolphus McFadden, August 16, 1868 – October 12, 1955) was an American proponent of physical culture, a combination of bodybuilding with nutritional and health theories. He founded the long-running magazine pub ...
.
Sinclair was keenly interested in health and nutrition. He experimented with various diets, and with fasting. He writes extensively about
fasting
Fasting is the abstention from eating and sometimes drinking. From a purely physiological context, "fasting" may refer to the metabolic status of a person who has not eaten overnight (see " Breakfast"), or to the metabolic state achieved after ...
in ''The Fasting Cure'', which became bestseller. Sinclair believed that periodic fasting was important for health, saying, "I had taken several fasts of ten or twelve days' duration, with the result of a complete making over of my health". Sinclair favored a raw food diet of predominantly vegetables and nuts. For long periods of time, he was a complete vegetarian, but he also experimented with eating meat. His attitude to these matters is fully explained in the book's final chapter, "The Use of Meat".
The book makes sensational claims of fasting curing practically all diseases, including
cancer
Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...
,
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
,
asthma
Asthma is a long-term inflammatory disease of the airways of the lungs. It is characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and easily triggered bronchospasms. Symptoms include episodes of wheezing, cou ...
,
syphilis
Syphilis () is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium ''Treponema pallidum'' subspecies ''pallidum''. The signs and symptoms of syphilis vary depending in which of the four stages it presents (primary, secondary, latent, an ...
, and the
common cold
The common cold or the cold is a viral infectious disease of the upper respiratory tract that primarily affects the respiratory mucosa of the nose, throat, sinuses, and larynx. Signs and symptoms may appear fewer than two days after exposu ...
.
Contemporary reception
The book was condemned in ''The Monthly Cyclopaedia and Medical Bulletin'' by gastroenterologist Anthony Bessler, who described treating many sickly patients who had followed the advice published in Sinclair's ''The Contemporary Review'' and ''Cosmopolitan Magazine'' articles. The accompanying article in ''
Current Literature
''Current Literature'' is an American magazine published in New York City from 1888 to 1925. Its first owner and editor, Frederick Somers, debuted the periodical in July 1888. Editors and contributors included: George W. Cable, Bliss Carman, L ...
'' criticized Sinclair as a "faddist pure and simple, one whose mind is obsessed by a series of notions one after another, none resting upon any basis that can be called scientific or even sensible."
Legacy
In his book ''Terrors of the Table: The Curious History of Nutrition'' (2005), British biophysicist
Walter Gratzer describes Sinclair as "the most credulous of
faddists." Gratzer also writes, "In what passes for a caveat he remarks
n his book ''The Book of Life'' (1921) 'I have known two or three cases of people dying while they were fasting, but I feel quite certain that the fast did not cause their death.' The irony in all this farrago is that we now have good evidence for an increased life-span in rodents kept in laboratory conditions on a very low-calorie diet."
Likewise, in the book ''Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything'' (2017), authors
Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen write, "Although modern doctors would strongly disagree with Sinclair's unsolicited medical advice, there have been some recent promising studies on the impact of fasting on mice with cancer. Human studies, however, are still lacking."
In popular culture
Sinclair appears in
T. C. Boyle
Thomas Coraghessan Boyle, also known as T. C. Boyle and T. Coraghessan Boyle (born December 2, 1948), is an American novelist and short story writer. Since the mid-1970s, he has published sixteen novels and more than 100 short stories. He won the ...
's novel ''
The Road to Wellville
''The Road to Wellville'' is a 1993 novel by American author T. Coraghessan Boyle. Set in Battle Creek, Michigan, during the early days of breakfast cereals, the story includes a historical fictionalization of John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of ...
'' (1993), which is built around a historical fictionalization of
John Harvey Kellogg
John Harvey Kellogg (February 26, 1852 – December 14, 1943) was an American medical doctor, nutritionist, inventor, health activist, eugenicist, and businessman. He was the director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. The ...
, the inventor of
Corn Flakes
Corn flakes, or cornflakes, are a breakfast cereal made from toasting flakes of corn (maize). The cereal, originally made with wheat, was created by Will Kellogg in 1894 for patients at the Battle Creek Sanitarium where he worked with his broth ...
and the founder of the
Battle Creek Sanitarium
The Battle Creek Sanitarium was a world-renowned health resort in Battle Creek, Michigan, United States. It started in 1866 on health principles advocated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church and from 1876 to 1943 was managed by Dr. John ...
. In the book, Sinclair and his first wife, Meta, appear as patients at the Sanitarium. Later, Kellogg is outraged when he discovers that another of his patients has been fasting after reading a typescript of Sinclair's ''The Fasting Cure''.
See also
*
Water fasting
Fasting is the abstention from eating and sometimes drinking. From a purely physiological context, "fasting" may refer to the metabolic status of a person who has not eaten overnight (see "Breakfast"), or to the metabolic state achieved after com ...
*
Hereward Carrington#Dieting
*
Edward H. Dewey
Edward Hooker Dewey (21 May 1837 - 21 December 1904), best known as Edward H. Dewey, was an American physician. He was a pioneer of therapeutic fasting and the inventor of the "No Breakfast Plan".
Career
Dewey graduated from the College of Medic ...
*
Linda Hazzard
Linda Laura Hazzard (''née'' Burfield; December 18, 1867 – June 24, 1938), nicknamed the "Starvation Doctor" was an American quack, swindler and convicted serial killer noted for her promotion of fasting, pummeling and hours-long enemas as tre ...
*
Otto Buchinger
Otto Buchinger (February 16, 1878 at Darmstadt – April 16, 1966 at Überlingen) was a German physician, credited with being the first to systematically document the beneficial effects of fasting on a number of diseases.
Buchinger studied medi ...
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fasting Cure, The
1911 non-fiction books
Books by Upton Sinclair
Fasting
Alternative medicine publications
Works originally published in Cosmopolitan (magazine)