43, I had lung fever, followed, for nearly
two years, by a cough, and accompanied by a very indifferent appetite. A
piece of bread three inches square and one inch thick would serve me for
a meal. A hard fit of coughing, however, was sure to follow every meal.
I also became very much emaciated. In the fall of 1844, I took some
medicine which removed my cough.

"Through the winter and spring of 1845, I had diarrhoea; and in the
last of May, I was suddenly and completely prostrated. I had risen in
the morning more unwell than usual, but before flight I was suffering
intolerable pain through the kidneys and back; and it was not till the
lapse of two weeks that I was able to walk about the house. All this
while I was entirely destitute of an appetite, though my stomach
continually craved acids. For six months, I lived almost wholly on
fruit. Four good-sized apples a day,[M] was all that I required. My
drink was, for the most part, catnip tea. Sometimes I could take sugar
and milk in my tea; at others, milk could not be borne. I drank four
teacupfuls of it a day.

"While I was at one period expectorating largely, I had custards made
from the white of eggs, sweetened with loaf sugar, of which I took
three table-spoonfuls, every twenty-four hours. I slept but little--not
more than two hours in twenty-four.... My bowels were very costive; I do
not suppose there were more than two or three natural evacuations during
the whole of the six months I am describing."

A more particular account of her diet, in 1846, is elsewhere given. It
is in the following words: "During this year I took but little food, and
that of the simplest. I lived chiefly on fruit, such as apples,
currants, strawberries, gooseberries, and blueberries, and other acid
fruits."

Some years later than this, Miss Adams was still living very simply. "My
food," she says, "is raised bread, and butter, apple or pumpkin pie, and
fruit in small quantity. I do not require more than a third as much food
as most females. In fact, I can eat but little of any thing. My food,
even now, distresses me very much, unless I vomit it. I eat no animal
food, and roots of every kind distress me. I drink tea; I cannot drink
water; it seems, in swallowing it, more like a solid than a liquid."

There would be no difficulty in adding largely to the list of cases of
dyspepsia which have been cured on the starvation plan; but these must
suffice for the present chapter.

FOOTNOTES: