i EXCHANGE OF MATERIAL 19 



asylums before the introduction of forcible feeding. Some of these 

 fasts lasted as long as twenty to thirty or even forty days before 

 death from exhaustion supervened. 



(d~) The fasts of most use to us are those undertaken voluntarily 

 for the purposes of experiment. Ranke, Pettenkofer, and Voit were 

 the first to make experiments to study the metabolism of man 

 during a fast of two or three days. Lehmann, Miiller, J. Munk, 

 Senator, and Zuntz (1893) studied fasts of seven to ten days 

 in the professional fasting men, Cetti and Breithaupt ; Johansson, 

 Sonden, Landergren, and Tigerstedt (1898) studied a five days' 

 fast in a medical student. A long experimental fast was that 

 undertaken by the professional fasting man, Succi, whom I studied 

 in Florence in 1888 with the help of some junior assistants. This 

 fast lasted thirty days, during which there was a loss of weight of 

 about 19 per cent. This is not the longest well-attested fast. It 

 is well known that Dr. Tanner, an American, fasted for forty days 

 in 1879, and the painter Merlatti abstained from food for fifty days 

 in 1886 at Paris ; but these cases were not scientifically studied. 



Succi is the classical type of professional faster. He has fre- 

 quently fasted for twenty to thirty days at different times in Cairo, 

 Milan, Paris, Florence, Rome, and in various cities in America. 

 His fasts differ from those undertaken by others, in the fact that 

 he is capable of doing without food for a long time, and yet 

 remains in an almost physiological general state of health ; in his 

 case all the important functions, circulation, respiration, production 

 and regulation of heat, muscular and nervous activity, and the 

 sense of well-being, are maintained within normal limits. 



According to Senator, Cetti also remained in perfect health 

 during his ten days' fast, with the exception of the seventh day, 

 when he suffered from colic, which ceased after the bowels had 

 been emptied. The newspapers of the day relate that Tanner did 

 not suffer appreciably from fasting until the seventeenth day, 

 when giddiness, nausea, weakness, and cramp in the stomach set 

 in, followed by vomiting and lowering of the temperature during 

 the last days, so that many people thought he would lose his 

 bet. In the case of Merlatti inanition took an abnormal course : 

 after the first five days, during which he suffered from hunger, 

 there was a long physiological period, followed by a third period 

 of morbid conditions, during which threatening symptoms and 

 a lowered temperature forced him to take to his bed. 



V. The long fasts, which are accidental and unnatural in man 

 and the higher animals, are the rule in plants and the lower 

 animals. Insects, molluscs, reptiles, batrachians, and many fish 

 spend the whole winter in a fasting condition. During this fast 

 a state of almost total functional inactivity sets in, so that life 

 appears to be suspended. This state of minimal, almost latent life is 

 termed hibernation, and is quite distinct from inanition, during 



