STARVATION. 55 



cines in various diseased states, be borne with wonderful indiffer- 

 ence ; and this occurs chiefly among females. But the most 

 extraordinary case that I recollect, stated upon unquestionable 

 authority, is that of a young Scotchwoman, who laboured under 

 an anomalous nervous affection, and, excepting that on two occa- 

 sions she swallowed some water, received no nourishment what- 

 ever for eight years. She passed urine enough twice a week to 

 wet a shilling, and for three years had no intestinal evacuation. 10 



remembered among the seniors there : she was hang'd by the Neck near half an 

 Hour, some of her Friends thumping her on the Breast, others hanging with all 

 their Weight upon her Legs, sometimes lifting her up and then pulling her down 

 again with a sudden Jirk, thereby the sooner to dispatch her out of her Pain, as 

 the printed Account of her informs us. After she was in her Coffin, being ob- 

 serv'd to breathe, a lusty Fellow stampt with all his Force on her Breast and 

 Stomach, to put her out of Pain. But, by the Assistance of Dr. Peity, Dr. Willis, 

 Dr. Bathurst, and Dr. Clark, she was again brought to Life. I myself saw her 

 many Years after, between which Time and the Date of her Execution she had, 

 as I am inform'd, borne several Children." (Physico- Theology, \>. 1 56.} Her 

 nervous insensibility appears from another writer, who states, that '' she neither 

 remembered how the fetters were knocked off, how she went out of prison, when 

 she was turned off the ladder, whether any psalm was sung or not, nor was she 

 sensible of any pain that she could remember. What is most remarkable is, that 

 she came to herself as if she had awakened out of a sleep, not recovering the use 

 of her speech by slow degrees, but in a manner altogether, beginning to speak 

 just where she left off on the gallows." (Plott's History of Oxford.) 



m Phil. Trans, vol. Ixvii. In a remarkable instance of imperfect abstinence 

 during fifty years, the woman voided a little feculent matter like a piece of roll- 

 tobacco, or a globule of sheep's dung, but once a year, and that always in March, 

 for sixteen years. (Edinb. Med. and Phys. Essays, vol. vi.) It would be inter- 

 esting to examine the changes induced in the air by the lungs and skin of such 

 patients. 



Pouteau mentions the case of one of his patients, a young lady thirteen years 

 of age, who was affected with convulsions and insensibility at a certain period, 

 generally every day, sometimes not quite so often, and great irritability of stomach, 

 lived eighteen months, and grew more than two inches and a half, on syrup of 

 capillaire and cold water. Here, the abstinence was not part of the disease, but 

 the extraordinary state of the system enabled it to bear the abstinence. (Euvrea 

 Posthumes, t. i. p. 27. 



Still, many cases of abstinence have been impostures and exaggerations ; and I 

 cannot illustrate this better than by quoting the case of Eue Fleigen, the Dutch 

 prototype of our own Anne Moore of Tutbury. She contrived to deceive the 

 world for fourteen years (from 1597 to 1611), pretending that she took no 

 nourishment all that time, She had no nervous derangement to render food 



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