6 Influence of Inanition on Metabolism. 



study of fasting with men. 



While, as was seen in a preceding section, it has not been uncommon for man 

 to fast, efforts to make a scientific study of fasting other than the general 

 observations as to loss in weight, strength, etc., were not made until a com- 

 paratively recent date. Autopsies were occasionally made on the bodies of 

 persons who had died as a result of inanition and the results recorded by 

 attending physicians, but the first scientific experiment to determine the effect 

 of fasting on metabolism in man was not made until 1825, when Lassaigne 1S 

 studied the urea output of an insane patient who fasted 18 days. 



The first observations on the carbon dioxide elimination of man during 

 inanition were made by Scharling " in 1813. 



The most extended researches on the metabolism of man during inanition 

 are those made on the professional faster Succi by Luciani," E. Freund and 

 0. Freund, 19 D. Baldi, 20 Ajello and Solaro, 21 Daiber, 21a Brugsch, 22 and Tauszk. 23 

 The experiments of Lehman, Miiller, Munk, Senator, and Zuntz, 24 on the pro- 

 fessional fasters Cetti and Breithaupt, and the observations of Johansson, 

 Sonden, Landergren, and Tigerstedt 25 on a medical student, included deter- 



Note. Since this report was written, three papers reporting the results of a 15- 

 day experiment (March 9-24, 1906) with a professional fasting woman (Schenk) 

 have appeared from the second medical clinic in Berlin. These three papers 

 appeared in the Zeitschrift fur experimentelle Pathologie und Therapie (1906), 

 vol. 3: Gesammt-N- und Aminosaurennausscheidung im Hunger, Dr. Theodor 

 Brugsch and Dr. Rahel Hirsch, pp. 638-645; Die Saurebildung im Hunger, M. Bon- 

 niger and L. Mohr, pp. 675-687; Ueber die Darmfaulniss im Hunger, R. Baumstark 

 and L. Mohr, pp. 687-691. 



In a private communication Dr. Otto Folin, of the McLean Hospital at Waverley, 



Mass., has announced the analyses of the urine in a 6-day fasting experiment with 



an insane man. Dr. Folin also writes that Dr. E. P. Cathcart, of the University of 



5*v*3%OM* Ed i nburgh) is at present studying the nitrogenous output of man during inanition. 



' Neither of these investigators has as yet published his results. 



With the cooperation of Dr. A. R. Diefendorf, of the Connecticut Hospital for 

 the Insane at Middletown, Connecticut, the writer has recently completed the 

 analyses of the urine of a fasting insane woman who abstained both from food and 

 drink for 110 hours and from food a total of 161 hours. The results are reported in 

 the American Journal of Physiology, 1907, 18. 



16 Jour. d. chim. med. (1825), i, p. 272, cited by Voit (Herman's Handbuch der 

 Physiologie (1881), vi, i, p. 84). Voit also records many other early observations 

 regarding urea output during fasting. 



17 Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie (1843), 45, p. 244. 



13 Das Hungern, Leipzig, 1890. 



"Wiener klin. Rundschau (1901), 15, pp. 69-71 and 91-93. 



* Centralbl. f. klin. Medicin (1889), 10, p. 651. 



21 La Riforma Medica (1893), ix, 2, p. 542. 



" Schweiz. Wchschr. Pharm., 34, p. 395. 



^Ztschr. f. exper. Path. u. Therapie (1905), 1, p. 419. 



^Orvosi hetilap, Budapest (1894), p. 512. 



"Archiv f. path. Anatomie u. Physiol, u. f. klin. Medicin (1893), 131, Supple- 

 mentheft 1-228. 



"Skan. Archiv f. Physiologie (1897), 7, p. 29. 



