ii SENSIBILITY OF THE INTERNAL ORGANS 71 



attracted by an interesting book or intellectual preoccupation 

 with some important problem, the sense of hunger disappears, and 

 the hour of the meal may be forgotten. 



The intensity of hunger is not generally proportionate to its 

 duration. It is important to distinguish between the hunger that 

 accompanies forced inanition and that of voluntary fasting. In 

 forced inanition hunger is present from the first in abnormal 

 intensity, and is complicated later on by a peculiar delirium 

 (hunger or starvation delirium) which in recorded cases of ship- 

 wrecks assumed a terrible form of acute mania. In voluntary 

 fasts, on the contrary, perhaps from auto-suggestion, the sensation 

 of hunger may be tolerable in the first two clays of abstinence, 

 and may decrease and entirely disappear after that. Succi, in 

 one of his many fasts of thirty days which we investigated 

 (Florence, 1889), required a narcotic to allay his hunger only in 

 the first two days ; in the remaining twenty-eight he only ingested 

 mineral waters, and showed no sign of suffering. The lawyer, 

 Antonio Viterbi, to avoid the disgrace of execution, resolved to 

 kill himself by starvation: he kept a diary of his fast, and wrote 

 in the last seventeen days, during which he neither ate nor drank, 

 that hunger only lasted one day, reappeared for one short hour 

 on the fifth day, and then disappeared entirely. Thirst, on the 

 contrary, was painful up to two days before death, when it also 

 disappeared. On the eve of his death he wrote the following 

 words : " I reach the term of my existence with the serenity of 

 a just man. Hunger no longer torments me ; thirst has entirely 

 ceased ; stomach and intestines are quiet ; my head is untroubled, 

 my sight clear. The few remaining moments are flowing gently 

 by like the current of a little stream in a delicious meadow. The 

 lamp is going out for lack of oil." 



Thirst, too, is a complicated feeling, located in the first instance 

 at the back of the mouth, whence it spreads and becomes general 

 in proportion as it grows in intensity. It is a sensation of scorch- 

 ing, dryness, and constriction of the throat which spreads over 

 the whole buccal cavity, and is specially associated with a general 

 hyperexcitability, with tachypnea and tachycardia as in fever, 

 hot and fetid breath, and dry, burning skin. At its extreme 

 thirst is more painful than hunger ; the craving and anguish 

 the fate of Tantalus, which is the most appalling the human 

 organism can endure may induce delirium, which soon brings 

 deatli in its train. 



Thirst increases more rapidly than hunger with the duration 

 of the fast, and becomes even more intense. But here, again, \\e 

 must distinguish between forced and voluntary abstinence. As 

 we said above, in Viterbi 's case thirst was painful and lasted 

 much longer than hunger, but il , too, decreased, ami finally dis- 

 appeared in the last two days of life. 



