While there is Fruit there is hope

While there is life--and fruit--there is hope. When this truth is
realised by the laity nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand
professors of the healing art will be obliged to abandon their
profession and take to fruit-growing for a living.

Many people have heard vaguely of the "grape cure" for diseases arising
from over-feeding, and the lemon cure for rheumatism, but for the most
part these "cures" remain mere names. Nevertheless it is almost
incredible to the uninitiated what may be accomplished by the
abandonment for a time of every kind of food in favour of fruit. Of
course, such a proceeding should not be entered upon in a careless or
random fashion. Too sudden changes of habit are apt to be attended with
disturbances that discourage the patient, and cause him to lose patience
and abandon the treatment without giving it a fair trial. In countries
where the "grape cure" is practised the patient starts by taking one
pound of grapes each day, which quantity is gradually increased until he
can consume six pounds. As the quantity of grapes is increased that of
the ordinary food is decreased, until at last the patient lives on
nothing but grapes.[1] I have not visited a "grape cure" centre in
person, but I have read that it is not only persons suffering from the
effects of over-feeding who find salvation in the "grape cure," but that
consumptive patients thrive and even put on weight under it.

The _Herald of Health_ stated, some few years back, that in the South of
France where the "grape cure" is practised consumptive patients are fed
on grapes alone, and become quite strong and well in a year or two. And
I have myself known wonderful cures to follow on the adoption of a
fruitarian dietary in cases of cancer, tumour, gout, eczema, all kinds
of inflammatory complaints, and wounds that refused to heal.

H. Benjafield, M.B., writing in the _Herald of Health_, says: "Garrod,
the great London authority on gout, advises his patients to take
oranges, lemons, strawberries, grapes, apples, pears, etc. Tardieu, the
great French authority, maintains that the salts of potash found so
plentifully in fruits are the chief agents in purifying the blood from
these rheumatic and gouty poisons.... Dr. Buzzard advises the scorbutic
to take fruit morning, noon, and night. Fresh lemon juice in the form of
lemonade is to be his ordinary drink; the existence of diarrhoea should
be no reason for withholding it." The writer goes on to show that
headache, indigestion, constipation, and all other complaints that
result from the sluggish action of bowels and liver can never be cured
by the use of artificial fruit salts and drugs.

Salts and acids as found in organised forms are quite different in their
effects to the products of the laboratory, notwithstanding that the
chemical composition may be shown to be the same. The chemist may be
able to manufacture a "fruit juice," but he cannot, as yet, manufacture
the actual fruit. The mysterious life force always evades him. Fruit is
a vital food, it supplies the body with something over and above the
mere elements that the chemist succeeds in isolating by analysis. The
vegetable kingdom possesses the power of directly utilising minerals,
and it is only in this "live" form that they are fit for the consumption
of man. In the consumption of sodium chloride (common table salt),
baking powders, and the whole army of mineral drugs and essences, we
violate that decree of Nature which ordains that the animal kingdom
shall feed upon the vegetable and the vegetable upon the minera