2 Influence of Inanition on Metabolism. 



Food is usually ingested at more or less regular periods, so tliat the anabolic 

 processes proceed without interruption; but, by withholding food, the anabolic 

 activities may be depressed to such an extent as to make the study essentially 

 one of katabolism. Consequently, studies of the transformations in the body 

 during inanition are of great value and, logically, at least, should precede the 

 studies in which anabolic and katabolic processes are combined. 



While it may legitimately be considered that the first day without food is 

 not a true fast, i. e., a metabolism in which body material alone is involved, 

 because of the presence of unabsorbed or partially digested food in the ali- 

 mentary tract, it nevertheless seems highly probable that by the time the second 

 day of fasting begins the body is living essentially upon its own substance. 

 Since, however, the retention of fecal matter may result in a more or less 

 prolonged absorption and thus vitiate in a small way the assumption that 

 only preformed body material is being consumed, experiments of more than 

 two days' duration are necessary, and consequently experiments during pro- 

 longed fast should be included in any complete and accurate study of meta- 

 bolism during inanition. 



Although as a rule man is disinclined to fast more than half a day, many 

 persons have lived with no food whatever for periods as long as 30 or 40 days. 

 It is important here to distinguish between complete abstinence from both 

 food and water and abstinence from food alone. Experiments have shown that 

 life can not be sustained for any considerable period when both food and 

 drink are withheld. It was the popular impression, at least in the early and 

 middle ages, that certain persons were able to subsist upon body material alone 

 for much longer periods of time, extending, indeed, into years. Fasts of more 

 than one day's duration may be divided into six classes. 



RELIGIOUS FASTING. 



Fasting as a religious rite has in many recorded instances been prolonged, 

 and more or less complete. The accounts of such fasts are, however, so clouded 

 by superstition and show such a lack of accurate observation that they are 

 without value to science. They served only to maintain popular belief in the 

 ability of some religious ascetics to subsist solely on the eucharist, and of some 

 possessed of devils to abstain from food altogether. Of the numerous recorded 

 instances of this form of complete or partial inanition, many are cited by 

 Hammond 2 and Luciani." 



'Fasting girls; their physiology and pathology. New York, 1879. In this little 

 volume Hammond refers to cases cited by Gbrres (La Mystique divine naturelle et 

 diabolique, Paris (1861), 1, p. 194); and Wanley (Wonders of the little world, 

 London, 1806, p. 375). 



* Das Hungern, Leipzig, 1890, p. 70. 



