16. Questions & Answers

Are there any psychological effects of hospitalization?

Yes, according to Dr. Robert S. Mendelsohn, the psychological dangers of the hospital are every bit as deadly as the physical dangers. He says: "Your hospital stay from the moment you walk in the front door until the moment you walk—or are carried—out has a psychological effect on you similar to a hex or a voodoo curse. Whether you consciously acknowledge it or not, hospital procedures and environment encourage despair and debilitation rather than hope and support. Nobody's optimistic. You see the long faces of the people suffering and dying, and you see the faces of the people who must watch them suffer and die. You see the hospital staff denature their responses and become machines.
And then you are denatured at the admissions desk as you are reduced to a collection of numbers and symptoms belonging not to you but to the doctor. You leave your former world and identity behind. You're literally stripped of your former life as you take off your clothes and hide them and your personal belongings in a closet—artifacts of your real life. That past life is kept from reasserting, its ties with you—your relatives—are restricted from spending more than token amounts of time with you.
"The effect of all these psychological pins is that you relinquish any notion you may have had about having control over your health. Your captors isolate you, alienate you, scare you, depress you, and generally make you feel so anxious that you submit to their every wish. Your spirit broken, you are ready to be a "Good Patient."

What causes gallstones to form? Are operations sometimes necessary?

According to Dr. Shelton, imprudent eating and heavy eating of fatty foods by the enervated and toxemic, and a lack of exercise, are chief among the causes that produce gastrointestinal and biliary irritation leading to stone formation. They do not develop in healthy individuals, but in those who have broken down their health by years of wrong living. Nobody would ever have gallstones if he lived right.
Referring to the gallbladder operation, Dr. Shelton says, "In my opinion there is no necessity to operate for gallstones. Normal nutrition is not restored by removing an effect of impaired nutrition. The great and growing army of postoperative invalids attests to the fact that operations on organs of the body do not restore health. Too many organs are removed that could be saved by the simple expediency of draining them by means of the fast.
"Instead of surgically draining the gallbladder, a fast will enable the body to perform an excellent job of drainage and do it in a way to leave the gallbladder intact and unharmed."

Can tumors be dissolved without having to resort to surgery?

Yes they can. Dr. Shelton has had considerable experience on this subject and he says,

"A woman was told that she had" a fibroid tumor of the uterus about the size of a lemon, and that it should be removed at once. This meant that her womb would be removed and that during surgery reasons might be discovered for removing her ovaries.
"But this would not restore health. She would still be a sick woman. Operations remove effects, not causes. There would probably be a recurrence of tumor. She would also be a physiological cripple. Cutting into the ovaries is like cutting into the brain. The patient rejected the operation and resorted to the fast. Soon the tumor was autolyzed and her organs were saved.
"One case that I cared for was a woman who had a uterine fibroid about the size of a medium-sized grapefruit. Complete absorption of the tumor was brought about in twenty-eight days. This was an unusually rapid rate of absorption and I have never seen it take place so rapidly in another case.
"I have seen tumors in the breast, on the womb, in the abdomen, on the feet and elsewhere absorbed while fasting, and some of these absorptions have been rapid while others have been slow.
"For reasons that are not yet fully understood, some tumors are not affected by the fast, but thousands of tumors, some of them of considerable size, have been completely and permanently removed by fasting. I have had the pleasure of saving hundreds of women from mutilating operations for the removal of the breast, and many more from desexing operations for removal of uterine fibroids. The process is identical with the removal of stores of fat in the tissues. There is nothing mysterious about it.
"Just as fat on any part of the body may be autolyzed and taken up by the lymph stream to be mingled with the blood and used in nourishing the vital tissues of the organism-while no food is being taken, so other tissues may be digested in the same manner and used as food. Muscular tissue, glandular tissue, and other tissues may be called upon to supply nutriment for the more vital tissues, those that have to carry on the most essential functions of life.
"In like manner, the tissues that make up a tumor (neoplasm) are digested and absorbed, the usable portions employed in nourishing the vital tissues, the nonusable portions excreted."