12 7
" 13 2-1/4
" 14 3-1/4
" 15 5
" 16 5-3/4
--------
112-1/16

The next fast, under the care of Mr. Ritter, still holds the record as
being the most remarkable for its number of days and the miracle of
results. The following account of it appeared in the _North American_,
one of whose editors had personal knowledge of its history:

"Leonard Thress, of 2618 Frankford Avenue, has learned how to
live without eating. By physical experience he has proved not
only that food is not a daily necessity of the human system, but
that abstinence therefrom for protracted periods is beneficial.
Indeed, it saved his life. He has just finished a fifty days'
fast. When he began it he was on the brink of the grave and his
physicians had abandoned hope. When he ended it he was in better
health than he had enjoyed for years, although in the meantime
he had lost seventy-six pounds, falling away from two hundred
and nine to one hundred and thirty-three pounds.

"Thress, who is about fifty-seven years old, was attending the
Grand Army Encampment at Buffalo in the fall of 1898, when he
caught a violent cold, which settled in his bronchial tubes. It
proved so stubborn that his general health became affected, and
a year later dropsy developed. His condition grew steadily
worse, and at Christmas time, 1899, it was such that he could
neither walk nor lie prostrate, but was compelled to sit
constantly in an armchair. His doctors exhausted their skill in
the effort to bring relief, and eventually, in the early part of
last January, they told him that their medicines refused to act,
and that his death was a question of only a few days.

"Up to this time Thress had been subsisting on the meagre diet
permitted to a man in his condition, but his stomach rebelled
even at that. He had heard of the Dewey fasting cure and its
boasted efficacy against all human ills, and, though he had
little faith, death was already looming before him, and he knew
that he could lose nothing by the experiment.

"He began to fast on January 11 by taking in the morning a
portion of Henzel's preparation of salts in a glass of water and
the juice of two oranges, and in the evening a hot lemonade. For
twenty-five days he also drank a te