LONG FASTINGS AND STARVATION. 541 



some difference between those which can drink a little and those 

 which drink a great deal. The last die sooner. 



There is always less suffering when it is possible to drink ; for 

 it is a characteristic of privation that thirst torments more than 

 hunger, and those who have told of what they have suffered on 

 such occasions have usually emphasized this fact. But I do not 

 believe that the hour of death is much delayed by the ingestion 

 of drinks. 



In considering cases of fasts endured by men, we have to dis- 

 tinguish between the experimental fast, carefully arranged for 

 and limited to a certain number of days ; the fast which I call 

 cliarlatanish ; and the compulsory fast, which is inflicted upon 

 persons who have been surprised by accidents, such as ship- 

 wrecks or land-slides, or who have been left in the wastes of 

 the desert. 



Experimental Fasts. Mr. Ranke, a German physiologist, 

 felt no great inconvenience for forty-eight hours, and his worst 

 sufferings were in the earlier stage. His symptoms were great 

 muscular weakness, impossibility of sustaining prolonged move- 

 ments, fibrillary shiverings, and headache. The most striking 

 phenomena were insomnia with nightmare and throbbing in the 

 head. Beginning nineteen hours after he had taken his last food, 

 he determined by experiment what was his daily diminution of 

 weight, and the rate of consumption of carbon and nitrogen per 

 kilogramme and per hour. He found that the consumption of 

 carbon was twenty times that of nitrogen ; that he lost in weight 

 about 1*2 gramme per kilogramme per hour; and that he pro- 

 duced fourteen litres of carbonic acid per kilogramme per hour. 

 The last number is important. In the normal condition we pro- 

 duce eighteen litres of carbonic acid per kilogramme and per 

 hour. As Mr. Ranke's case was not one of illness or any kind 

 of weakness, the question arises as to the purpose served by these 

 four litres of surplus carbonic acid. The most obvious answer is 

 that they are a luxury. In some experiments which I made, the 

 rate of production by my subject, while fourteen litres during the 

 fast, rose by one third after he had eaten a hearty meal, and his 

 respiration increased in a like proportion. 



In the cases of the celebrated fasters Tanner, Succi, and Mer- 

 latti, while it may be hard to prove that there was no fraud, the 

 precautions taken against it seem to have been ample to make it 

 extremely improbable. They, moreover, all endured their fasts 

 under special conditions. Merlatti ate a fat goose, bones and all, 

 before beginning ; Succi took a drink to which he attached great 

 importance. The diminution of weight was less considerable than 

 in the other subjects mentioned, but in Merlatti's case the whole 

 amounted to twenty-seven per cent at the end of the fifty days, 



