rkable that I at once gave up all eating in the
morning, and with such reviving effects upon all my powers that the
results began to be noticed by all friends.

So originated the no-breakfast plan. Up to this time I had never had a
thought of advising anyone to do without food when desired; much less
that any of the three daily meals should be given up. My war was against
feeding when acute sickness had abolished all desire for food, and this
I had been able to conduct many years without exciting suspicion of a
general practice of homicide.

The improvement in my own case was so instant and so marked that I began
to advise the same to others, and with the result that each would make
known the redeeming work to suffering friends, and so the idea spread in
a friend-to-friend way.

Now the American breakfast, in point of sheer necessity, is believed to
be the most important meal of the day, as the means for strength that is
to be called out for the forenoon of labor, and believed with a force of
insistence that warrants a conclusion that a night of sleep is more
exhausting to all the powers than the day of labor.

To go into the fresh air, to do anything with an empty stomach, is to
invite a fainting by the way, is the general impression; but there were
scarcely any cases in which there was not sufficient improvement to
prevent all possibility of a return to the heavy breakfasts that had
been abandoned.

How did this scheme affect me in a professional way, that is, in the
reputation as a physician of average balance of brain functions? Some of
my professional brethren of strong conviction and ready command of
language began at once to try to abolish the dangerous heresy by
suggesting that on this one subject I was absolutely crazy. Of course,
their patrons took up this idea with avidity; and so there was a babble
of tongues, with myself the central point of attack as crank-in-chief of
all cranks. This is not the language of exaggeration; for whatever the
law and modern civilization permitted to abolish me professionally was
inflicted with tongues by the thousands, the war being made all the more
exciting and interesting by the enthusiasm of new recruits to the heresy
from the professional domains of my medical brethren.

What did I gain by this professionally? Mostly the odium of heresy
during the first few years; but with it was the supreme satisfaction
that came from seeing more additions to bright eyes and happy f