Siok Khoon Caregiver & International Coordinator

Our Place International caregiver@ourplaceinternational.com

1

Ray Kent Caregiver & Founder Our Place International caregiver@ourplaceinternational.com

Our Place International “Truly the University of Life”

www.ourplaceinternational.com

DON'T FEED THAT CHILD (Reprinted from Dr Shelton's Hygienic Review)

"Daddy, I feel bad," said a little fellow to his father the other day. "Come over here son and let us see what is ailing you," said the father. The little boy walked over to his "daddy" who took him in his arms and immediately detected that he had a slight fever. "Where do you hurt, son: do you have a headache?" he asked. The little fellow replied "No" "Does your stomach hurt?" asked the father. Again the boy replied, "No." "Where do you hurt then," asked daddy. "I don't hurt any where," replied the boy, "just feel rotten."

Then followed a few questions about what the boy had been eating, what he had eaten the day before, where he had been, what he had done, etc., and then the father said: "You go into your room and go to bed and don't eat anything until your fever is gone and you will soon be all right." Protesting that he did not want to do without food, the little fellow went to bed and in the course of a few hours was all right again.

Pain, fever, and inflammation suspend the digestive secretions, stop the rhythmic contractions (miscalled hunger contractions) of the stomach and cut off the desire for food. All of the necessary physiological conditions of digestion are absent when child or adult is acutely ill.

The dry mouth and tongue seen in fever are matched by a similar dryness of the stomach. The coated tongue and bad taste in the mouth prevent any relish of food.

In even a mild gastritis (catarrhal inflammation of the stomach) large quantities of mucous are poured into the stomach. The reader may get a picture of this if he will imagine all the mucous that pours from the membranes of the nose and throat in a cold pouring into the stomach from the membrane lining the stomach.

In severe gastritis the amount of mucous poured out is even greater. In typhoid fever the condition of the stomach and intestine is worse than that of the stomach in gastritis.

In all acute disease --- measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough, diphtheria, etc., --- there is more or less gastritis and in all of them digestion is suspended. Pneumonia

Siok Khoon Caregiver & International Coordinator

Our Place International caregiver@ourplaceinternational.com

2

Ray Kent Caregiver & Founder Our Place International caregiver@ourplaceinternational.com

Our Place International “Truly the University of Life”

www.ourplaceinternational.com

suspends the digestive function as surely as does typhoid fever.

With these facts in mind, how foolish becomes the popular advice to the sick to eat "plenty of good nourishing food to keep up strength." Instead of feeding and nourishing the body and keeping up the strength it does just the opposite. Indeed, it is an everyday occurrence to see a mild feverishness that would end in a day or two persist and grow worse due to feeding. All "fever" require fasting.

Fasting shortens the course of the illness; feeding prolongs it. Feeding increases the pain and discomfort and causes the temperature to rise. It increases restlessness and thus prevents rests. The sick child that is fed cries much, sleeps little or none at all and keeps the whole household awake at night.

The sick child that is not fed rests peacefully and sleeps most of the time. Parents do not realize how much unnecessary suffering they cause their feverish children and how much avoidable anxiety they cause themselves by feeding their sick children.

Complications result almost wholly from feeding and drugging. They almost never develop in cases that are not fed and not drugged. If fasting is instituted at the very outset of whooping cough the child may never whoop. Vomiting does not occur in whooping cough when no food is given. Scarlet fever ends in four to five days and no complications develop. Measles, pneumonia, diphtheria, smallpox, etc., soon end if no food is given.

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