24 



HAKOLD L. HIGGINS 



that the metabolism of men is higher than that of women. It is not, there- 

 fore, illogical to believe that a lowered metabolism in men may reduce or 

 even obliterate sex interest" (Benedict, Miles, Roth and Smith, 1919). 

 It is interesting to note, as one of the factors in the Malthusean doctrine 

 of population, that undernutrition or starvation, physiologically (and 

 psychologically) acts to help reduce the birth rate. 



Possible Duration of Fasting 



Having discussed the effects of fasting on the physiology and metab- 

 olism, the question arises as to how long an individual can fast, and what 

 is the causative factor in his death when it does occur. A man cannot 

 survive very long without water, a time usually believed to be not over a 

 week. If water is furnished, so that water starvation is not added to the 

 general starvation, a man can live a considerable period of time, the dura- 

 tion depending somewhat upon the state of health and nutrition at the be- 

 ginning of the fast. The average duration is probably between two and 

 three months. Certain hunger strikers in Ireland recently lived about two 

 and a half months with practically no food. The duration of life on un- 

 derfeeding is more difficult to predict as so many factors enter in. 



However, one can make a general rule for man and animals, that death 

 usually occurs when the body has lost forty per cent of its body weight. 

 Table 13 shows results obtained with various animals. 



TABLE 13 

 PERCENTAGE Loss OF BODY WEIGHT IN STARVATION 



(Table from Lusk.) 



Some individual exceptions to this have been found ; thus a dog of seven- 

 teen kg. died after ninety-eight days with loss of sixty-eight per cent of 

 its body weight (Kumagawa and Muira, 1898). In babies it has been 

 observed clinically that the child with a feeding disturbance may lose one- 



