LONG FASTINGS AND STARVATION. 543 



Hasselt who was found alive after having been shut up for forty 

 days without food. 



Succi and Merlatti were perhaps insane or melancholy. Per- 

 sons who are taken in good health resist less effectively than ma- 

 niacs. M. Lepine cites the case of a girl who had constriction of 

 the oesophagus, who died after having lived sixteen days without 

 food or drink. There is also the extremely interesting case of a 

 German merchant who, having been unfortunate, went into the 

 woods to starve himself to death, and died after eighteen days. 

 He was still breathing when discovered. He had noted down his 

 impressions daily. After five days he wrote : " If I only had fire, 

 a little fire ! How long the nights are how cold they are ! " On 

 that day he drank. Three days afterward, cold water which he 

 tried to drink made him vomit. A week after that he tried 

 to go to the water, but his strength failed him and he stuck to 

 his resting-place. During these eighteen days of suffering he 

 therefore drank only once. These periods of nineteen, seven- 

 teen, and sixteen days, in persons not out of their minds, justify 

 the estimate of twenty days as the length of the fast which will 

 bring death to healthy persons under no nervous waste. But the 

 time admits of a considerable extension among insane persons and 

 those who have made preparations for their fast. Succi, who 

 fasted thirty days, had been twice in an insane asylum. Cardan 

 relates the case of a Scotchman who lived thirty days in a prison 

 without eating. Devilliers, in the " Journal de Me'decine," men- 

 tions an insane person who died after seventy-five days of partial 

 fasting, in which he took only a few glasses of liquid a little 

 wine and bouillon. The amount of weight lost at death can not 

 be closely determined, but may be estimated at about thirty per 

 cent. 



These conditions relate to sound or nearly sound persons. 

 Respecting the stories told of diseased persons, we have to steer 

 between a Scylla and a Charybdis of excessive credulity and ex- 

 cessive incredulity. A Prof. Licetus, of Padua, near the beginning 

 of the seventeenth century, wrote a rather stupid folio in Latin, 

 " On those who can live a Long Time without Food." It contains 

 various chapters, on " those who live eight days " ; " those who 

 live a month " ; " those who lived three months " ; " those who lived 

 from one year to eight years " ; " those who lived more than twelve 

 years " ; and ends with the story of the seven sleepers of Ephesus, 

 who went to sleep in the reign of the Emperor Decius and woke 

 in that of Theodosius. We can more than doubt some of the 

 stories of Licetus ; but there are facts as remarkable as some of 

 them, concerning long fasts by diseased infants and girls, which 

 we can not question. 



The excessively long fasts, whether experienced by men, 



