Introduction. 3 



Aside from those directly cormected with, the church and religious orders, 

 numerous instances of prolonged fasting, in general by young girls, are 

 recorded. 4 



However interesting these and the many similar instances may be to the 

 psychologist and theologian, they can of necessity have no scientific value, and 

 any attempt to discuss them and the degree of probability of the various con- 

 ditions asserted as controlling them would be out of place here. Our present- 

 day knowledge of the processes of metabolism is fixed to such a degree that 

 fasts as prolonged as many of the religious fasts were asserted to have been 

 are inconceivable. It remains, however, to be proven that there may not be 

 instances of suspended animation approximating the hibernation of the cold- 

 blooded animals, in which man may subsist on his own body substance for a 

 period of months. On this point, however, scientific observations are lacking. 



FASTING OF THE INSANE. 



A characteristic of many delusions is a revulsion towards food and drink, 

 so marked indeed that in many instances all the skill of the trained psychiatrist 

 is required to combat it. In a large proportion of such cases, artificial feeding 

 must be resorted to. 



In a number of instances such insane patients have been allowed to fast for 

 a number of days and observations of more or less value have been made upon 

 their general condition of nutrition. In many other instances the fasting had 

 proceeded for a considerable time before the condition of the patient became 

 known to the physician. Hammond 5 cites the case recorded by Esquirol 8 of 

 a person suffering with melancholia who died after 18 days of complete absti- 

 nence; Desportes, 7 of a similar patient who lived for two months, consuming 

 only a little water. 



Francis 8 reports a case of a supposedly bewitched negress who took but two 

 small cups of water during 3 weeks. ITcXaughton " reports a case of a young 

 man who lived with no food, but with water, for 53 days. 



Other cases are cited by Luciani, 10 and it is unmistakably true that fasts of 

 weeks, if, indeed, not months, have been observed in cases of insanity. Modern 



4 Hammond refers specifically to the work of Bucoldianus, " De puella quae sine 

 cibo et potu vitam transigit," Parisiis Ann., mdxlii; Citesius, Opuscula Medica, 

 Parisiis, 1639, p. 64; Fabricius, Observationum et curationum chirurgicae, centuria 

 secunda, Genevae, 1611, p. 116; Fowler, A complete history of the Welsh fasting 

 girl (Sarah Jacob), with comments thereon, and observations on death from star- 

 vation, London, 1871. 



5 Loc. cit., p. 64. 



"Des maladies mentales, Paris, 1838, p. 203. 



7 Du refus de manger chez les alienes, These de Paris, 1864. 



6 New York Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. n, p. 31, cited by Hammond. 

 Copeland's Dictionary of Medicine, vol. i, p. 31, cited by Hammond. 



10 Loc. cit., p. 218. 



