e by fasting, a not impossible
suggestion. And if, therefore, we have in fasting the suggestion of a
remedy which offers us the hope of eradicating such a fearful disease
from the human system, it certainly behoves us to make use of it.

As a rule it seems to me that bad forms of blood-poisoning of this
nature are incurable. In three or four generations they destroy the
strain affected by it, do what we will. Meantime it shows all the
signs and symptoms of a hereditary disease, for the children are born
suffering, showing a coppery rash, and old before they are young. And
when they get a little older they have no bridges to their noses,
their teeth are ill-formed, their vision is imperfect, their
intellects dull. It seems as if nature could not forgive crimes of
this nature. She seems to treat them as the unpardonable sin. If we
find cancer appearing in a family at 55 years of age in 3 or 4
successive generations, there is no proof of heredity in that. Inquire
and see if like causes acting on like organisms in 3 or 4 successive
generations have not produced the disease each time. The children are
not born cancerous, and our efforts to prevent the disease may
succeed. But children often _are_ born with specific disease, and
there is no doubt at all about its being a hereditary disease. Even
now I should not like to sanction marriage in the case of this man who
has heroically fasted for 56 days, although he seems for the present
to have got rid of his disease. But the outlook is hopeful, more
hopeful than I thought, and in the hope that the suggestion may convey
a message of hope to those who are willing to do penance for crimes
against the body, I send out these remarks. The opinion expressed by
the patient that he was getting rid of the Salvarsan which had been
injected into his blood to cure his disease is, of course, his own
only. I offer no opinion upon it. But I think the whole case very
instructive, and it will be deeply interesting to follow it up with
special regard to the inquiry whether the pathological test remains
negative. The reflective reader of these remarks will need no hint
from me to suggest how a study of questions of this sort raises in our
minds all sorts of other questions, physical, metaphysical,
philosophical, social, religious; what are laws of nature, how they
come to be what they are, whether they can be disregarded without
paying the penalty, and whether we men are bond or free. Each of us
w