(Discusses various methods of building up the body after a fast, especially the milk diet.) There remains the question of how to break the fast, and this is the most important part of the problem. You may undo all the good of your fast by breaking it wrong, and you are a thousand times as apt to kill yourself then, as while you are fasting. When your hunger comes back, it comes back with a rush, and some people have not the will power to control it.
I do not advocate a complete fast in any case except of serious chronic disease, and then only under the advice of someone with experience; but I advocate a short fast of a week or ten days for almost every common ailment, and I know that such a fast will help, even where it may not completely cure. You may go on fasting so long as you are quiet and happy; but when you find you are becoming too weak for comfort, or for the peace of mind of your family physician and your friends, you may break your fast, and show them that it is possible to restore your strength and body weight, and then they won't bother so much when you try it again! Take nothing but liquid foods in the breaking of a fast; I recommend the juices of fruits and tomatoes, also meat broths. If you have fasted a week or two, take a quarter of a glass; if you have fasted a month, take a tablespoonful, and wait and see what the results are. Remember that your whole alimentary tract is out of action, and give it a chance to start up slowly. Take small quantities of liquid food every two hours for the first day. Then you can begin taking larger quantities, and on the next day you can try some milk, or a soft poached egg, or the pulp of cooked apples or prunes. Do not take any solid food until you are quite sure you can digest it, and then take only a very little. Do not take any starchy food until the third day.
I have known people to break these rules. I knew a man who broke his fast on hamburg steak, and had to be helped out with a stomach pump. Once I broke a week's fast with a plate of rich soup, because I was at a friend's house and there was nothing else, and I yielded to the claims of hospitality, and made myself ill and had to fast for several days longer.
The easiest way to break a fast is upon a milk diet. I have seen hundreds of people take this diet, and very few who did not get benefit. The first time I fasted, which was twelve days, I lost 17 pounds, and I took the milk diet for 24 days thereafter, and gained 32 pounds. I took it at MacFadden's Sanitarium, where I had every attention. Since then, I have many times tried to take a milk diet by myself, but have never been able to get it to agree with me. I do not know how to explain this fact; I state it, to show how hard it is to lay down general rules. On the milk diet you take into your system two or three times as much food as you can assimilate, and this is a violation of all my diet rules; but it appears that the bacteria which thrive in milk produce lactic acid, which is not harmful to the system, and if you do not take other foods you may safely keep the system flooded with milk.
After a fast you should begin with small quantities of milk, and by the third day you may be taking a full glass of warm milk every half hour or every twenty minutes, until you have taken seven or eight quarts per day. It is better to take it warm, but sometimes people take it just as well without warming. Dr. Porter, who has a book on the milk diet, insists upon complete rest, and makes his patients stay in bed. MacFadden, on the other hand, recommends gymnastics in the morning before the milk, and during the afternoon he recommends a rest from the milk for a couple of hours, followed by abdominal exercises to keep the bowels open. This is very important during a fast, because you are taking great quantities of material into your system and it must not be permitted to clog. Therefore take an enema daily, if necessary to a free movement. Also take a warm bath daily. Take the juice of oranges and lemons if you crave them.
Upon one thing everyone who has had experience with the milk diet agrees, and that is the necessity of absolute mental rest. If you become excited, or nervous, or angry on a milk diet, you may turn all the contents of your stomach into hard curds, and may put yourself into convulsions. The wonderful thing about the milk diet is the state of physical and mental bliss it makes possible. It is the ideal way of breaking a fast, because it leaves you no chance to get hungry; you have all the food you want, and your system is bathed in happiness, a sense of peace and well-being which is truly marvelous and not to be described. You gain anywhere from half a pound to two pounds a day, and you feel that you have never before in your life known what perfect health could be. The fast sets you a new standard, you discover how nature meant you to enjoy life, and never again are you content with that kind of half existence with which you managed to worry along before you discovered this remedy.............