FASTING. 



149 



which was evidently present. Some miners, bolder 

 than their companions, made a new attempt on Fri- 

 day, and, guided by the traces of his work, found 

 the unfortunate man lying on his face, in a cavity. 

 He could raise his head, out his hands and feet were 

 cold, and pulsation almost extinct. Immediate relief 

 was afforded ; but next morning he became indiffer- 

 ent about food, and, having announced his own disso- 

 lution, expired in a few minutes, on Sunday afternoon, 

 after fasting seven days. This example illustrates 

 the opinion of Hippocrates, though it is not corrobo- 

 rated by others, namely, that fasting less than seven 

 days is not invariably fatal ; but, atter that period, 

 notwithstanding individuals may survive and take 

 food, their previous abstinence will occasion death. 

 It is to be observed tliat here was an instance of 

 absolute privation. In the year 1768, captain Ken- 

 nedy was shipwrecked, with twelve companions, in 

 the West Indies. They preserved a small quantity 

 of provisions, which were totally consumed in seven 

 days, amidst extraordinary distresses. During eight 

 succeeding days, though in absolute want, both of 

 meat and drink, and exposed in an open boat, the 

 whole survived ; but, after obtaining relief, some of 

 the people perished. In this case they were evi- 

 dently supported by being frequently drenched with 

 sea-water. Sir William Hamilton, in an account of 

 a dreadful earthquake which devastated Sicily and 

 Calabria, in the year 1783, relates that he saw two 

 girls who were miraculously preserved in the ruins 

 of a house. One had survived eleven entire days, 

 and the other six, totally deprived of food. 



It must not escape observation, that the difference 

 between absolute privation of food and a supply of 

 any portion of it is incommensurable. The same 

 may almost be said of water ; for it materially con- 

 tributes to preserve life ; and hence the difficulties 

 of ascertaining what is truly protracted fasting. The 

 negro couriers, who traverse the deserts on the 

 western coast of Africa, perform long and fatiguing 

 journeys on about four ounces of food daily. It is 

 said that, in common situations, both they and the 

 Moors are frequently seen to subsist eight days on 

 three ounces of gmn daily, without sensible dimi- 

 nution of health or vigour ; and some maintain that 

 they can fast three days without any inconvenience. 

 The whole store of a courier, at his outset, consists 

 only of a pound of gum, a little grilled rice, and 

 several ounces of hard animal jelly, compounded with 

 a fourth of its weight in gum. This substance is 

 decidedly nutritious ; for we are told that, when the 

 whole provisions of a caravan had been exhausted in 

 the deserts between Abyssinia and Egypt, a thousand 

 persons subsisted on gum, which was found to form 

 part of the merchandise ; and the caravan reached 

 Cairo in safety, without any remarkable accidents 

 from hunger or disease. The compound of the negro 

 couriers may possess particular qualities in repelling 

 hunger, such as that which, among the primitive 

 inhabitants of Great Britain, is said to have proved 

 sufficient, if equivalent to a bean, for a whole day ; 

 and some of the American Indians, when engaged in 

 long excursions, have expedients for blunting the 

 keen sensations which they would otherwise expe- 

 rience. A composition of calcined shells and tobacco 

 juice is formed into a mass, from which, when dry, 

 pills of a proper size, to be kept dissolving between 

 the gum and the lip, are made. Long and perilous 

 voyages have been accomplished without more than 

 a ship biscuit divided into a number of pieces daily. 

 Captain Inglefield and eleven men, of the Centaur 

 man of war, which foundered at sea in the year 1782, 

 sailed 800 miles in a yawl, during a period of ten or 

 fifteen days, while their sole provisions consisted of a 

 twelfth part of a biscuit for each of two meals a-day, 



and a glass of water. Still more perilous was the 

 voyage of captain Bligh and eighteen men, of the 

 Bounty, who sailed a great portion of 3GOO miles in 

 an open boat, in stormy seas, on an allowance of an 

 ounce and a quarter of biscuit daily ; and sometimes 

 when a bird, the size of a pigeon, was accidentally 

 caught, it served for a meal to the whole crew. 

 We shall not be much surprised, therefore, at the 

 experiments made by some people on themselves, 

 from which it appeared that fasting on half a pound 

 of bread daily, with a pint of liquid, was productive 

 of no inconvenience. Still there is an infinite differ- 

 ence between all this and absolute privation. Sea- 

 weed has afforded many grateful meals to famished 

 sailors. In the year 1652, two brothers, accidentally 

 abandoned on an islet in a lake of Norway, subsisted 

 twelve days on grass and sorrel. Few instances can 

 be given of absolute privation both of solids and 

 liquids ; but, in the case above referred to, where 

 seventy-two persons took shelter in the shrouds of a 

 vessel, fourteen actually survived during twenty-three 

 days, without food, though a few drops of rain were 

 occasionally caught in their mouths as they fell. 

 Some of the survivors also drank sea-water ; but it 

 was not so with all. In the year 1789, Caleb Elliott, 

 a religious visionary, determined to fast forty days. 

 During sixteen, he obstinately refused all kinds of 

 sustenance, and then died, being literally starved to 

 death. It is said that two convicts in the jail of 

 Edinburgh lived fourteen days without food, by 

 receiving liquids only; and, in the records of the 

 Tower of London, there is reported to be preserved 

 an instance of a Scotsman, who, strictly watched, 

 was seen to fast during six weeks, after which he 

 was liberated on account of his uncommon powers of 

 abstinence. Morgagni, an Italian physician, refers 

 to an instance of a woman who obstinately refused 

 all sustenance, except twice, during fifty days, and 

 took only a small quantity of water, when she died. 

 An avalanche, some years ago, overwhelmed a village 

 in Switzerland, and entombed three women in a stable, 

 where there was a she-goat and some hay. Here 

 they survived thirty-seven days, on the milk afforded 

 them by the goat, and were in perfect health when 

 relieved. 



But one of the best authenticated instances of ex- 

 cessive fasting in modern times, and in which there 

 is no evidence of any particular morbid affection of 

 the body, is related by doctor Willan. In the year 

 1786, a young man, a religious visionary, and sup- 

 posing himself to labour under some inconsiderable 

 complaints, thought to operate a cure by abstinence. 

 He suddenly withdrew from his friends, occupied 

 himself in copying the Bible in short hand, to which 

 he added his own commentaries, and resolved to 

 abstain from all solid food, only moistening his mouth, 

 from time to time, with water slightly flavoured with 

 the juice of oranges. He took no exercise, slept 

 little, and spent most of the night in reading, while 

 his daily allowance was between half a pint and a 

 pint of water, with the juice of two oranges. In 

 this state of abstinence he persisted sixty days ; but, 

 during the last ten, his strength rapidly declined, and, 

 finding himself unable to rise from bed, he became 

 alarmed. The delusion which had hitherto impressed 

 him of being supported by preternatural means now 

 vanished, and along with it his expectation of some 

 remarkable event, which should follow his reso- 

 lution of self-denial. On the sixty-first day of his 

 fast, doctor Willan was summoned to his aid ; but 

 the miserable object was then reduced to the low- 

 est state of existence ; and, although his eyes were 

 not deficient in lustre, and his voice entire, he 

 exhibited the appearance of a skeleton on which 

 the flesh had been dried; and his personal decay 



