I then administered Coca's Pulse Test (see the Appendix) and quickly
discovered Elizabeth was wildly intolerant to wheat and dairy
products. Following the well known health gurus of that time like
Adelle Davis, I had self-righteously been feeding her home-made
whole wheat bread from hand-ground Organic wheat, and home-made
cultured yogurt from our own organically-fed goats. But by doing
this I had only maintained her insanity. Elizabeth was an
intelligent young woman, and once she understood what was causing
her problems, she had no trouble completely eliminating certain
foods from her diet. She shuddered at the thought that had she not
come to my place and discovered the problem, she would probably have
died on the back ward of some institution for the chronically
mentally ill.

As for me, I will always be grateful to her for opening my eyes and
mind a little wider. Elizabeth's case showed me why Russian
schizophrenics put on a 30 day water fast had such a high recovery
rate. I also remembered all the esoteric books I had read extolling
the benefits of fasting. I also remembered two occasions during my
own youth when I had eaten little or nothing for approximately a
month each without realizing that I was "fasting." And doing this
had done me nothing but good.

Once when I was thirteen my mother sent my "little" brother and I to
a residential fundamentalist bible school. I did not want to go
there, although my brother did; he had decided he wanted to be a
evangelical minister. I hated bible school because I was allowed
absolutely no independence of action. We were required to attend
church services three times a day during the week, and five services
on Sunday. As I became more and more unhappy, I ate less and less;