54 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and there was great danger of a fatal result from the enfeeble- 

 ment of the nervous system. The faster persisted in going on to 

 the end, after being advised to discontinue the experiment, and 

 vomited immediately after taking the first food. Nevertheless, 

 he presided at a banquet given in his honor, and fully recovered 

 in two months. Cetti, whom M. Senator put on an experimental 

 fast of ten days, and who drank all the water he wanted, lost 

 more weight during the first than during the second five days. 



In view of other facts showing less capacity to endure long 

 fasts, we have to conclude that such persons as Tanner, Succi, and 

 Merlatti performed their experiments under exceptionally favor- 

 able conditions. They had no severe weather to face, no concern 

 about their fate, and knew that they had only to make a sign to 

 have a savory repast brought to them. Quite different is the situ- 

 ation of persons who have been buried, for example, under land- 

 slides. Cut off from the rest of the world, they know that no help 

 can come to them for the moment, but that to reach them tunnels 

 must be bored and large masses of earth and stones removed. 

 Long privations of food have often to be suffered under such con- 

 ditions. Berard mentions men who were confined for fourteen 

 days in a damp cellar. Licetus was shut up for seven days. The 

 miners of Bois Mousil were confined for eight days after a land- 

 slide, without suffering greatly. 



Other examples are afforded by shipwrecked persons. There 

 is an interesting story of a party wandering on the ice-fields who 

 were exposed to a terrible cold for seventeen days, in 1809, with- 

 out other nourishment than water thawed from sea-ice. When 

 found, their skin was sticking to their bones, their eyes were sunk 

 deep in their orbits, and they had fetid breaths and earthy com- 

 plexions, their skin was covered with a sooty scurf, and their 

 tongues were black. This sooty aspect of the skin is a common 

 symptom in great famines, such as occur in India and China. 



We have many instances of individual fasts. An Italian 

 seventy-seven years old, mentioned by MM. Monin and Mare'chal, 

 lived without food to the thirty-seventh day, only drinking oc- 

 casionally a little brandy and water ; then went to eating again 

 without feeling any inconvenience. A man named Granie, con- 

 demned to execution, starved himself to death in sixty-three days. 

 Antonio Viterbi, in 1821, allowed himself to die of hunger in 

 order to escape the penalty of death. He had also resolved not to 

 drink ; but at one time, taking water in his mouth to refresh him- 

 self, he could not restrain himself and swallowed it. He had 

 vertigo and nightmare, but suffered most from thirst, and died 

 on the seventeenth day. This period, from seventeen to twenty 

 days, represents the mean duration of life of a man in normal 

 conditions who is starving. But Simon Goulart tells of one 



