544 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



women, or children, have usually been observed in hysterical 

 persons for it is now known that hysteria exists in men and 

 children as well as in women. Taking up almost any of the 

 numerous stories related by the old authors, we find manifest 

 traces of hysteria in them. Here, for example, is "the memora- 

 ble and prodigious history of a girl who for many years neither 

 ate nor slept nor voided, and yet lived by God's admirable grace 

 and virtue" (Frankfort, 1587). She was Catherine Binder, of 

 Heidelberg, who at twenty-seven years of age all at once lost the 

 taste for warm food (a hysterical fancy), and ate nothing warm 

 for five years, when she was treated by a quack, and also lost the 

 taste for cold food. She neither ate nor drank for seven years. 

 While we may entertain some question respecting the accuracy of 

 this affirmation, there is no doubt that the girl was nervously 

 affected. She had been deprived of hearing and speech for three 

 years ; she had spasms when she tried to eat, so that she could not 

 swallow ; and, during two weeks that she was watched, she neither 

 ate nor drank. Another girl (1586), religiously affected in her 

 hysteria, was taken with an aversion to everything eatable, and a 

 difficulty in swallowing, and lived for four years on nothing but 

 water and, at long intervals, a little bread dipped in water. Apol- 

 lonia Schrierer, of Berne (1G04), lay physically insensible but wide 

 awake day and night. She was kept apart from her mother and 

 constantly watched by the officers for two weeks, during which 

 she took no food. In the same book with this story is that of a 

 girl of Spires, watched for twelve days, who was assumed to have 

 lived for three years upon nothing but a few drops of water or 

 wine, which she took in her lips. She was twelve years old, and 

 slept most of the time. A girl of Cologne, who lived four years 

 without food, fainted whenever they tried to put anything into her 

 mouth. Passing over several other cases related by these old 

 authors, which vary but little in their general features, we come 

 to a number of cases recorded in medical publications of the 

 eighteenth century, in all or nearly all of which the long fast is 

 accompanied by some kind of disorder of the body or mind. In 

 many of these instances, as in some of those described above, 

 the fast was not absolute, but was occasionally relieved by the 

 introduction of a few drops of milk or broth. Such a fast can be 

 continued indefinitely as in the case of a woman described by 

 Vandermonde in 1760, who lived thus for twenty-six years. 



The present century furnishes numerous fairly well authenti- 

 cated instances of extraordinarily long fasts, which were nearly 

 always associated with some form of hysteria. We can not men- 

 tion them all here, and omit those which are most frequently 

 cited in the medical books. Anna Garbero is described by Ricci 

 as having, after a sleep without eating of forty days, been taken, 



