STARVATION. 53 



felt in their usual force b , cannot abstain from food a whole day 

 without great prostration of strength, nor scarcely beyond eight 

 days without danger to life." 



Hippocrates says that most of those who abstain from food for 

 seven days, die within that period ; and, if they do not, and are 

 even prevailed upon to eat and drink, that still they perish. Sir 

 William Hamilton, however, saw a girl, sixteen years of age, appa- 

 rently not in bad health, who was extricated from the ruins of a 

 house at Oppido, in which she had remained eleven days without 

 food : an infant in her arms, but a few months old, had died on 

 the fourth day, as the young are never so able to endure absti- 

 nence. d A moderate supply of water lengthens life astonishingly. 

 Dr. Willan was called to a young gentleman who had voluntarily 

 abstained from every thing but a little water, just flavoured with 

 orange juice, for sixty days: death ensued a fortnight afterwards. 6 

 Redi cruelly found that of a number of starved fowls deprived of 

 water, none lived beyond the ninth day, whereas one indulged 

 with water lived upwards of twenty. f If the water is not swal- 

 lowed, but imbibed by the surface or lungs, it may also prolong 

 life. Fodere mentions some workmen who were extricated alive 

 at the end of fourteen days from a cold damp cavern in which they 

 had been buried under a ruin, f 



In abstinence equally great imbecility of mind takes place as 

 of body : extreme emaciation and oedema of the legs present a 

 frightful spectacle ; urine may still be secreted, but the alvine 

 discharge is greatly diminished, or suppressed altogether; the pain 



b " Consult, among innumerable writers on long fasting, James Barthol. Bec- 

 carius, Commentar. Instituti Bononiens. t. ii. p. 1.; and Flor. J. Voltelen, Me- 

 morab. Apositice Septennis Hist. Lug. Bat. 1777, 8vo." 



c De Carnibus. 



d Phil. Trans, vol. Ixxiii. p. 191. sq. 



e Medical Communications, vol. ii. 



f Osservaz. intorno agli anim. viventi. 



E Fodere, Medecine Legate, t. ii. p. 285. A hog, weighing about 160 Ibs., was 

 buried in its sty, under thirty feet of the chalk of Dover Cliff, for 160 days. When 

 dug out it weighed but 40 Ibs., and was extremely emaciated, clean, and white. 

 There was neither food nor water in the sty when the chalk fell. It had nibbled 

 the wood of the sty, and eaten some loose chalk, which from the appearance of 

 the excrement had passed more than once through the body. (Linncean Transact. 

 vol. xi. See London Med. Journ. vol. xxxv. 1816.) Pigs will not only eat 

 coals, but keep in good condition upon them alone. Coals, however, are a vege- 

 table substance. Cuningham's Two Years in New South Wales, vol. i. p. 301. 



E 3 



